We’re sure you’ve been salivating over the newly-announced Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear, but if you’re a fan of the company’s previously released tablets, especially tablets in the Galaxy Note family, then you have something to look forward to as well. Samsung has just announced a new Galaxy Note 10.1 during an event hosted in Berlin earlier today.
First off, before we get into our hands-on impressions of the Galaxy Note 10.1, let’s take a look at what Samsung is doing to improve the experience of its popular tablet. The new Galaxy Note 10.1 is equipped with a 10-inch 2560 x 1600 super clear LCD and features a 1.9GHz Exynos octa-core processor, 3GB of RAM, an 8MP rear-facing camera, 2MP front-facing camera, an improved S Pen and an 8220mAh Li-ion battery. The Note 10.1 is certainly a step above Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 3 tablets based off of those stats alone, but let’s take a look at the overall experience Samsung is offering in its latest tablet.
After reviewing both the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 and 8.0, I can tell you the first thing I noticed was how fast the Note 10.1 felt when simply navigating through the tablet, launching applications and other activities. That’s thanks to the Note 10.1’s 1.9GHz Exynos octa-core processor as well as the 3GB of RAM.
Once I moved on from gushing over how fast it was, I moved on to looking at the actual design of the Note 10.1, which offers a similar design as the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1. As with the Galaxy Note 3, the Note 10.1 features a material that sort of felt like leather covering the entire rear of the tablet, which also had a stitched look surrounding the rear’s perimeter. The 8MP camera sits right in the middle of the Note 10.1 towards the top, while the middle of the tablet is where a Samsung logo can be seen.
The outer rim of the Note 10.1 has an aluminum strip surrounding the tablet, which has small grooves to help the user grip the tablet better. When holding the Note 10.1 in its landscape mode, the top area is where you’ll find the tablet’s sleep / power button and volume rocker, the right side houses one of its speakers and a slot for the S Pen towards the upper portion, while the microSD and SIM slots. The bottom portion only has the Note 10.1’s microUSB port, and to complete the outer rim, the left side is where its additional speaker and 3.5mm headphone jack are located.
It was difficult to judge just how heavy the Galaxy Note 10.1 felt while holding as there was a cord that was holding the tablet tightly, but for the most part, it didn’t feel too heavy and felt comfortable during our time with it. The 2560 x 1600 display looked really nice when combined with a super clear LCD as colors looked vibrant and high-definition images had a nice amount of detail to them.
Our first experience with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 was extremely positive, especially considering just how responsive and quick it felt overall. Hopefully we’ll get our hands on a review unit sooner rather than later so we can give the tablet our full review rundown, but until then, we think you should be looking forward to the Note 10.1, especially if you’re a fan of its previous versions.
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