Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 and 10.1 Review
by Jarred Walton on March 22, 2014 9:30 PM ESTSamsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 Subjective Analysis
Visually, the Tab Pro 10.1 looks very similar to the 8.4, only larger. There are a few little differences, however, like the fact that the 10.1 is designed to be held and used primarily in landscape orientation. Again, we have the same potential issue with the navigation buttons being integrated into the display bezel – if you’re not in landscape mode, “you’re holding it wrong.” What it really boils down to however is personal preferences. I just finished saying out I tend to like the 8-inch class tablets as a nice middle ground between smartphones and laptops, but I can certainly see the draw in larger devices. The bigger display can work better at times (i.e. if you’re watching a movie with a friend), and depending on your eyesight it might simply be easier to read.
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The I/O and port options are identical to the Pro 8.4, with the only real difference being their locations. The micro-USB port is on the bottom again (but in landscape mode this time). The stereo speakers are moved to the left and right sides near the top, which creates a better soundscape in my experience (though headphones would still produce much better audio). The headset jack is on the left just above the speaker in the corner, the microSD slot is behind a cover on the right, and the power and volume controls are on the top edge near the left side along with an IR port in the center.
Like the Pro 8.4, the display is again beautiful, and the colors are actually better as well (particularly white levels). Samsung does have three screen modes on the 10.1, and considering the other similarities I was surprised the same option didn’t exist on the 8.4. Anyway, you can choose between Dynamic, Standard, and Movie modes, with an option to automatically adapt the display based on your current app. We’ll see in a moment how those modes compare in terms of color quality, but if you’re not a stickler for having accurate colors you’ll probably never notices. This is a tightly bonded display, so you almost feel like the content is resting on the surface of the device rather than residing below the glass. Reflections can still be a problem (especially in sunlight), but that’s pretty much the case with every tablet out there; in general the display can get bright enough to remain usable outdoors.
Other than being larger and heavier, the feel is otherwise identical to the 8.4. There’s a metal trim around the outside edge with a slightly rounded edge, and the back has a faux-leather (plastic) finish. We received the white model for review, though you can also buy the Pro 10.1 in black if that’s your preference. I find white tends to not show fingerprints and smudges as much, though actual dirt and grime can become a problem over time. The in-hand feel is excellent, with slightly rounded corners that don’t become uncomfortable to hold. Battery life is also quite a bit better than the 8.4, thanks to the larger battery capacity and perhaps the change in SoC as well.
I mentioned performance being better on the 8.4 in many of our benchmarks, but let me clarify that a bit before we get to the actual scores: in practice, the difference is often imperceptible. Yes, there are cases where the 8.4 might score 20% higher in benchmark frame rates, but there are other instances where the Exynos CPU cores appear to be faster. Most of the time, you can use either one and not really worry about the lower level details. With graphics, however, I do notice the difference between the devices. Angry Birds Go! for example just runs a bit better on the 8.4 than on the 10.1. If you’re looking for a device that can handle all the latest games well, I’d go with the 8.4; if you’re more interested in browsing the web, checking contacts, etc. and want the larger display, there’s nothing wrong with the Pro 10.1 – and if you want a really large tablet, you can always look to the Galaxy 12.2 models. I already feel like 10.1 is a bit large and heavy for a tablet, though, so you’d need a very specific use case to convince me that a 12.2-inch display is the way to go.
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SilthDraeth - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
On my note phone if I want to take a screenshot, I hold the power button and the Samsung Home button. Give that a try. Or, on my wife's note 10.1 first edition, it has a dedicated screenshot softkey that appears where your normal android home keys, etc appear.FwFred - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
LOL... 'Pro'. Surface Pro 2 just fell off the chair laughing.garret_merrill - Friday, October 3, 2014 - link
Really good tablets, although I would seriously consider the Note Pro series too (highly ranked by a number of sources, see http://www.consumertop.com/best-tablets/). But either way, the Samsung tables deliver fantastic quality.Brian Z - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Antutu? Really... Maybe somebody kidnapped Anand and Brian. Frigging Antutugrahaman27 - Saturday, March 22, 2014 - link
Better than just posting the browser speed tests for CPU, and draw final thoughts from that, which they have gotten in a habit of doing.JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
What's wrong with running one more benchmark and listing results for it? Sheesh... most of the time people complain about not having enough data, and now someone is upset for me running AnTuTu. Yes, I know companies have "cheated" on it in the past, but the latest revision seems about as valid in its reported scores as any of the other benchmarks. Now if it wouldn't crash half the time, that would be great. :-\Egg - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
You do realize that Brian has, for all intents and purposes, publicly cursed AnTuTu and mocked the journalists who used it?JarredWalton - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
The big problem is people that *only* (or primarily) use AnTuTu and rely on it as a major source of performance data. I'm not comparing AnTuTu scores with tons of devices; what I've done is provide Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 vs. 10.1 scores, mostly to show what happens when the CPU in the 10.1 hits 1.8-1.9 GHz. It's not "cheating" to do that either -- it's just that the JavaScript tests mostly don't go above 1.2-1.3GHz for whatever reason. Octane and many other benchmarks hit higher clocks, but Sunspider and Kraken specifically do not. It's probably an architectural+governor thing, where the active threads bounce around the cores of the Exynos enough that they don't trigger higher clocks.Don't worry -- we're not suddenly changing stances on Geekbench, AnTuTu, etc. but given the odd clocks I was seeing with the 10.1 I wanted to check a few more data points. Hopefully that clarifies things? It was Brian after all that used AnTuTu to test for cheating (among other things).
Wilco1 - Sunday, March 23, 2014 - link
The reason for the CPU clock staying low is because the subtests in Sunspider and AnTuTu only take a few milliseconds (Anand showed this in graphs a while back). That means there is not enough time to boost the frequency to the maximum (this takes some time). Longer running benchmarks like Geekbench are fine. I wouldn't be surprised if the governor will soon start to recognize these microbenchmarks by their repeated bursty behaviour rather than by their name...Of course the AnTuTu and Javascript benchmarks suffer from many other issues, such as not using geomean to calculate the average (making it easy to cheat by speeding up just one subtest) and using tiny unrepresentative micro benchmarks far simpler than even Dhrystone.
Also it would be nice to see a bit more detail about the first fully working big/little octa core with GTS enabled. Previously AnandTech has been quite negative about the power consumption of Cortex-A15, and now it looks the 5420 beats Krait on power efficiency while having identical performance...
virtual void - Monday, March 24, 2014 - link
You cannot disregard the result produced by something just because the load generated by the benchmark comes in very short burst, that is the _typical_ workload faced by these kind of devices.The result in Geekbench give you some hint how the device would handle HPC-workloads, it give you very limited information about how well it handles mobile apps. Another problem with Geekbench is that it runs almost entirely out of L1$. 97% of the memory accesses where reported as L1-hits on a Sandy Bridge CPU (32kB L1D$). Not even mobile apps has such a small working set.
big.LITTLE is always at a disadvantage vs one single core in bursty workloads as the frequency transition latency is relatively high when switching CPU-cores. Low P-state switching time probably explains why BayTrail "feels" a lot faster than what the benchmarks like Geekbench suggest. BayTrail has a P-state latency of 10µs while ARM SoCs (without big.LITTLE) seem to lie between 0.1ms - 1ms (according to the Linux device-tree information).