[Galaxy Note 10.1 General] BarryH_GEG:
Very interesting review. I'm anxious to see AnandTech, GSMArena, or Swedroid do a detailed evaluation of the display. Below are some comments from PhoneArena discussing the N10's display. Samsung had shown two possible variants yet it appears the N10 is using a third. That would explain some of the loss of brightness and contrast Engadget mentioned.

Samsung showcased two 10" 2560x1600 panels at the FPD expo last year, one with the PLS-LCD technology plus the IGZO driver elements Apple got so fond of with its Sharp investment, and the other with an RGBW matrix arrangement, which is essentially a PenTile version for LCD screens.

The IGZO screen was still in development then, and Samsung said it didn't have any plans yet what to do with it, whereas the PenTile one was ready to go into mass production this year, but it actually seems that Google wanted the RGB stripe type, as two reports quote its reps calling the Nexus 10 screen "True RGB Real Stripe PLS".

Thus we have a true 300ppi pixel density, with three subpixels per pixel, but there might be minor tradeoffs in the RGB matrix version compared to the PenTile 2560x1500 screen. First off, the specs for the stripe matrix Samsung display quoted at the FPD expo were 300 nits vs 400 nits of brightness, since the PenTile arrangement is RGBW, with one clear (white) pixel that lets more backlight through, thus lowering power consumption to what you normally get with 1280x800 screen. Besides this lower brightness, the RGB type was quoted to have 500:1 contrast, compared to 900:1 for the PenTile version.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Goog...ush-4-million-pixels-are-they-PenTile_id36103​

I'm kind of surprised at the performance. On paper an A15 chip, even dual core, should outperform an A9 chip. Even Teg3, a dated 40nm SoC that's fifteen months old outperformed it; running an overlay no less. I know a lot of you guys loath TouchWiz and Samsung's tweaking of the OS. But they tailor each device’s s/w to the individual h/w it's running on. Android 4.2 is generic and has no optimizations specifically for the N10. I'd bet that's why some of the scores are as low as they are more so than poor h/w performance. I think the N10 will be like the GN. Out of the box both are pretty average. Because they are AOSP the development and performance improvement potential is huge. I think in the hands of the devs you'll see those Engadget scores blown through the roof.

AnandTech, GSMArena, or Swedroid also do a much better job at benchmarking than the utility sites like Engadget. I'll bet a detailed analysis of the GPU will show some pretty spectacular results. I ran GLBenchmark 2.5 and got 15FPS where the N10 got 33.

I'd also like to see some more standardized testing of battery life than Engadget's casual testing.

So at the end of the day the N10 is just like every other Nexus device. Generic in its approach and offering good value. I doubt the general consumer looking at it will see anything but the pixel count of the display. With its retina display, Apple's trained people that the higher the PPI the better and more premium the product. Hell, even they are taking flack based on using a perfectly fine but not "retina” display on the Mini.

Interesting times ahead...