[Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) General] ryancstl23:
I purchased the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) from amazon two weeks ago with overnight shipping. I received it the next day and was impressed by the build quality, except, the right side speaker is slightly loose. I did not notice it was loose until I read another post here saying they had a loose speaker and many others started to find out that theirs was too. Other than that, everyone was perfectly constructed.

When I turned it on for the first time everything was fast and fluid, even with Samsung's TouchWiz and all the other bloaty widgets and apps they come with. I have to say, Samsung can really make a polished piece of hardware, but that is where they should stop, unless they are going to invest a much larger amount of energy in to developing their software platforms. I have the Galaxy S4 as my phone, and now the Galaxy Note 10.1 Tablet, and I always love everything about the Samsung products except for almost 100% of the software they develop... but I will get in to that a little later.

One of the big reasons that I chose this over other Samsung tablets to be my first tablet since I got an Archos Internet Tablet (in 2008 or 9 O.o), well besides the obviously beastly processor and RAM, was because it had the physical button on the frame and a software digital button. I know a lot of users here and elsewhere hate the physical button, but I don't understand why when you are just wasting space on your screen when the frame of your device would have been actual wasted space without the button. I've used the Galaxy Tab 2 10inch and one of my biggest annoyances was the on-screen buttons because I use the app Splashtop to remotely control my PC, and those damn software navigation buttons always got in the way.

Anyways, on to other things, this thing is fast and powerful. 20-25 apps running in the background and no slow down of any noticeable amount. After a few days though, TouchWiz started lagging tremendously whether there were any apps running or not. Now I've replaced the stock TouchWiz with Nova Launcher Prime, and the Lock Screen with WidgetLocker, and never have I seen any lag on this device since. Plays large, HD quality games like FIFA 14 perfectly.

The S-Pen is actually really cool and I'm a fanatic about productivity and some of the features related to the S-Pen are really great when trying to be productive. It has a feature that lets you scrap book any video, image, text, area of the screen, etc. that I use often to research certain topics and bring them together. Action memo allows me to write down an address that someone is telling me over the phone, then circle it with S-Pen and it will pull up gMaps to direct me there automatically. It was a little strange getting used to writing on a tablet though but now it feels as fluid as if I were writing with a real pen.

I have to say something about the graphical quality of the screen though. It is beautiful, and I have not seen a better quality screen for such a device ever before. The resolution is higher than my Desktop PCs and it definitely shows. It is definitely better than even the iPad Air that I went to check out a couple days ago. Apparently this factor alone is the reason that this Dual-Quad-Core tablet requires that much processor, but that's fine with me.

The Note came with a host of perks such as a $25 Google Play gift card, a $50 Samsung Hub credit, Hulu+, Newsweek, premium "wifi hotspot" membership for 18 months and more that I won't every use. This brings me back to my biggest downfall with Samsung though. They give me $50 to spend on the Samsung Hub (Their version of the Play Store) and when I go there, everything is either junk, already pre-installed on my device, or just something I'm not interested in. I really wanted to use the Samsung Credit to buy some Tech E-Books through their book store and use the Play Store credit for apps/games, but their store only has about 25 tech-related books! So when I decide I won't be buying any books there and try to get some apps and games, half of the decent games worth buying take me directly to the Play Store instead. I feel like I may have this Samsung Credit for a while..

But getting less free stuff than I wanted is not going to detract even 1 star from this bad ass hog. Overall the thing is more powerful than any tablet in its price range, has the highest quality video capabilities, comes with a unique S-Pen that other tablets just don't have, and is a Droid!

:good: 4.5/5 is what my rating would have to be, because they have created a great tablet, and could have got a full 5/5 if they just polished and worked on their software platforms until completion.

Hopin to get KitKat Soon, came stock with 4.3. Thanks for reading.