[Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Q&A, Help & Troubl] snake2332:
Mine used to take 2 - 3 seconds every time. The launcher I was using didn't make a difference. I made the following changes and it performs better, usually about 1 second to unlock now (I don't know which of these settings actually made it perform better):

1) Disabled S Voice & My Magazine "home button" access in their respective options

2) In Developer options, I set the Window animation & animator duration scale to OFF and Transition animation scale to 0.5x. The two settings that I set to OFF don't affect anything I care about, as I haven't noticed missing animations. The Transition animation setting affects all transitions (if you're using Nova launcher and it's set to "system" and not ICS or Jellybean) and 0.5x speeds it up nicely and cuts down on the visual choppy framerate that you might see when opening and exiting graphically-intensive apps.

3) I use a pattern to unlock, so in options -> device -> lock screen, I turned off the unlock effect because the watercolor smear effect was always a little laggy feeling anyway. Also, if you aren't a security-nazi, I would turn off "lock instantly with power key" and set "lock automatically" to something like 5 minutes, so if you turn the screen off or let it turn off then soon later need to wake it back up, it will wake up faster because it won't have to load the lock screen.

4) Switched from a live wallpaper to a static one, then switched back to a live one. I couldn't tell if this made it unlock faster, and I really like my live wallpaper. When I first switched it to static, I swear it felt faster, but now I can't tell a difference.

5) Power saving mode = OFF. Other toggles that I have off but shouldn't affect the screen-on time: reading mode, air view, smart stay, smart pause, smart scroll. I don't think these toggles or the wallpaper affect the wake up time.

For what it's worth, the "Force GPU rendering" does not seem to affect mine, and that option toggles itself off, I've noticed (after reboot perhaps?).

Also, I had the Asus TF701 and it was just as slow to unlock. It felt exactly the same as the Note, 2 to 3 seconds on average when the device was fully asleep. So I wouldn't associate this behavior with just Exynos chips. I would like to see the LTE S800 version of this tablet and see if it's faster than this.

I have a magnetic cover for my Note and it honestly isn't that different than when I open the magnetic cover on my iPad4. The iPad isn't instant-on either, though it might be a hair faster than the Note, with less variance - like, the iPad always takes 0.8 seconds (or whatever) and the Note takes between 0.7 and 2.4 seconds or something (very rough estimates).

Maybe I should make a video of me opening my Note next to my iPad and see what real difference there is.

UPDATE: I timed my Note just now and the screen turns on 0.62 seconds after pressing the power button. I put in my pattern to unlock it, then lock it again and then time the screen, 0.62 sec every time pretty much. If it had a massive game in the foreground and I turned it off, then tried to wake it up, I am guessing it would take longer than 0.62 seconds. To test this, I fired up FIFA14, entered a penalty shoot-out to get the graphics to load, then put the Note to sleep (and waited 30 sec for it to lock). The next screen-on time: 0.68 seconds. Pretty fast, let me try again... 0.64 seconds....hmm I thought it would affect it more. I then tested static vs live wallpaper - it makes no difference. There are times when it takes 0.95 seconds to unlock, but I can't figure out why. So in my testing just now, it's either around 0.62 seconds or 0.95 seconds, not sure what causes the variance.

UPDATE AGAIN: Now that I'm home from work, I did a little test. I timed it with a stop-watch, so there is a bit of human lag involved with each timing. I just did 5 wake-ups of the Note and iPad by using the cover and then 5 more by using the power button. The results are interesting.

I actually ditched several timings when I felt like I wasn't RIGHT ON, so these are pretty accurate results.

Time, in seconds. Note 2014 (build JSS15J.P600) vs iPad4 (iOS 7.0.3):

The Note takes longer to wake up with the cover than it does with the button. When waking it up with the cover, I noticed the capacitive buttons lit up early, like after 0.4 sec, then the screen wakes up at around 0.9 sec. When waking it up with the home button instead of the cover, the capacitive buttons light up immediately and the screen is on at 0.6 sec. This shows that there is a delay of about 0.3 seconds from when the cover is opened until when the Note registers that action (and lights up the capacitive buttons).

The iPad4 wakes up with the power button just as quickly as it does with the cover, which is around 0.55 seconds. There appears to be no delay with the cover detection. Apple designed that well, kind of like the response time of their touch screens (be it software design or hardware or both).

Both tablets took an extra 300ms or so when it was, like, more asleep. There might be a deeper sleep that they go in to as well, so next time they are sitting here for a long time without usage, I might time them again. Basically, I expect around 1.2 seconds for the Note to wake up when I open the case and 0.90 seconds for the iPad4. Or if they were recently awake, 300ms less than that. And when waking up the Note with the home or power button, it's really close to the iPad4, less than 100ms difference, but the iPad still has the somewhat trivial edge.

I'm interested to see other people's wake-up time for their Note. Please share!

UPDATE: When it's asleep longer than a few minutes (or whenever it enters deep-sleep), the first wake-up is still taking around 2 seconds, and if I don't do my pattern to unlock it but rather just the screen go black just for a second, it takes just under 2 seconds to wake up from a home-button press. Sub-sequent lock-unlocks are clocking in around 0.9 a couple times and then 0.6 sec every time, kind of like in my lame little chart above.