6 Sep
2011
For the last month or so I've had the opportunity to use a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 courtesy of Verizon Wireless. It's been long enough for all tablet computers except the Apple iPad2 to be declared abject failures. Long enough for HP to become the tech industry's Gary Busey. Long enough for the Amazon Kindle tablet to be declared the best non-Apple tablet before its even been released. I shudder to think what would happen if I held onto the thing any longer.
The thing is, I like it. Despite what everyone tells me I'm supposed to think, I like it a lot. I've already addressed what I think about the charge that it's just a knockoff of the iPad2. While I appreciated the potential of the Xoom, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a better device in many, many ways. Not perfect, mind you, but nothing ever is. And that includes products Designed by Apple in California™.
Physically the tablet weighs just over a pound and is a mere 1/3 of an inch thick. When holding it in portrait orientation it's 10.1 inches tall and 6.9 inches wide. There's a lot of evidence that the designers mean for you to hold it in its landscape orientation. The cameras, both front- and rear-facing, are placed at the center of one of the long edges. The charging port is located along the opposite edge. Orient the tablet with the camera on the top edge and you'll find the volume and power buttons located on the top left edge. Unfortunately, if you're using the tablet for reading at night as I tend to do, you can't see the camera and it's hard to tell which way you're holding it. The buttons are such low-profile you have to hunt for them a little if they're not where you expect them to be. Some reviews have complained about the plastic not feeling substantial, but I didn't find that to be the case at all. What I found it to be was easy to hold without it slipping out of my hands.
The screen is, in a word, gorgeous. I don't know what the contrast ratio of the screen actually is -- various web searches give numbers anywhere from 890:1 up to 1150:1. Whatever it is, it does a great job with wide dynamic ranges. I watched a couple movies that featured dark scenes and I had no problem with a muddy image. The screen can get quite bright and stays readable in anything that isn't direct sunlight. The auto-brightness levels are better in bright light than in dim. When reading at night I often disabled the auto-brightness feature to turn the screen down a bit more. Colors are nicely saturated no matter the brightness level.
The device ships with Android Honeycomb 3.1. As seems to be typical of all manufacturers of anything that can be updated, there's no word when or if the device will ever see a newer operating system. I can't imagine either Honeycomb 3.2 or Ice Cream Sandwich, the next version of Android, would overtax the tablet's dual processors, so its really a matter of what Samsung wants to do with it. With Ice Cream Sandwich coming in the next couple of months, I could certainly see Samsung not bother with the 3.2 update, but who knows? I don't want to single out Samsung here for bad behavior since everyone does it, but I wish some company would simply say if they intend for a product to be upgradable, then not make the upgrade process a waiting game.
Back to the device as it is. The touch screen is extremely responsive. I'm not crazy about the Samsung-supplied soft-keyboard, but the stock Honeycomb keyboard is included and it's an easy switch. I use SwiftKey X on my Android Phone (a Droid X) and would buy the tablet version if the unit I was using was actually mine. As it was, I didn't want to shell out $4.99 for something I'd only use on a review unit.
Samsung sells a WiFi-only model of the tablet, but the one I tested was from Verizon, as I mentioned before. That means it has 4G LTE. That is a very, very good thing. I took it with me on a long weekend trip to Chattanooga, TN which happens to be a city with Verizon 4G service. The hotel we stayed in had pretty good WiFi as hotel WiFi goes, but the 4G blew it away. Battery life has been an issue on the first generation of LTE phones, but I didn't observe any issues with the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The marketing blurb says 12 hours of battery with constant use. I didn't do any formal testing, but that feels a little high. With moderate use I could easily use it for a couple of days without sticking it on the charger and not worry about it running down. A streaming HD movie that was just under two hours long took the battery down by about 15%, a more than acceptable rate
The tablet I tested had 16 GB of memory, though there is a 32 GB model. I was really disappointed that there wasn't a slot for expandable memory. I also wish Samsung had opted for a mini-USB port for charging rather than a proprietary connector. (Hey, maybe they were copying Apple!). The retail price of the 16 GB unit with LTE as tested is $699.99 through Verizon. The 32 GB version is $100 more. With a two-year contract, the price is subsidized to $529 for the 16 GB and $629 for the 32 GB.
I think it's safe to say the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the best Android tablet out there right now. If you already use an Android phone, I'd argue it's the best tablet out there, period. This isn't true for everyone, but in my life there's a place for a device that's bigger than a phone, but smaller than a laptop. I appreciate the passion of e-ink device users have for the reading experience on them, but backlit screens don't happen to bother me. Thus, for me, a tablet is great for reading, watching video and light-to-moderate computing needs like e-mail, blogging and other writing tasks.
If you've been thinking about a tablet, you owe it to yourself to check out the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
