Gadgetory

which one of Samsung's Galaxy Note tablets are the best I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition versus the Galaxy Note 8.0 Samsung's Galaxy Note series is particularly unique in that it offers an incredible amount of productivity driven features as well as hardware which caters to that sort of use case this time we're taking a look at two of Samsung's latest Galaxy Note tablets the Note 8.0 and Note 10.1 2014 edition which is the better tablet is the Note 8.0 is compact nature enough to offset the extra power of the Note 10.1 let's find out on the outside these two tablets are a lot alike yet at the same time they're distinctly different the Galaxy Note 8.0 is obviously much smaller it measures two hundred and ten point eight millimeters tall one hundred and thirty five point nine millimeters wide and only eight millimeters thick the Note 10.1 on the other hand is two hundred and forty three point one millimeters tall 170 one point four millimeters wide and seven point nine millimeters thick as a result the Note 10.1 is also significantly heavier at five hundred and forty grams the Note 8.0 is a staggering 202 grams lighter although both tablets require two hands for use the Note 8.0 is also much easier to hold with one hand and use with the other while the Note 10.1 will often be held with two hands and used with thumbs between February when the Note 8.0 was announced in September Samsung adopted a slightly refreshed design with new materials or at least a new finish like the Galaxy s4 the Note 8.0 offers wide radius corners rounded edges and a hyper glazed finish around back the Note 10.1 is more like into the galaxy note 3 with its hard edges and a line faux metal trim mortifying corners and a faux leather backing in this short time period Samsung also took the opportunity to upgrade specifications across the board internally these two tablets have almost nothing in common the Note 8.0 comes with an X and O's 4412 chipset power-play 1.6 gigahertz quad-core CPU it has 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage for the micro SD card slot two gigabytes of RAM a five megapixel rear camera and a forty six hundred million power seventeen watt hour battery the Note 10.1 2014 edition comes with the X octa chip or two quad-core CPUs one clocked at 1.9 gigahertz and the other at 1.3 it has 16 32 or 64 gigabytes of storage with a micro SD card slot 3 gigabytes of RAM and 8 megapixel camera and a 31 watt hour battery with a capacity rating of 80 to 20 milliamp hours both come with Bluetooth 4.0 and infrared but the Note 10.1 comes with Wi-Fi AC and neither tablet has NFC onboard the biggest Hardware difference however is their displays of course they differ in size 2.1 diagonal inches to be exact but we're talking purely about the quality of the respective panels the note 8.0 has an 8 inch display at a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels that's only 189 pixels per inch the TFT panel offers decent color reproduction very wide viewing angles deep blacks passable contrast and it's quite bright but pixelation is noticeable even from a comfortable viewing distance this is not a problem we've had with the 10.1 inch 2560 by 1600 pixel resolution display on the larger note it's Super Clear LCD display offers fantastic colors viewing angles contrast deep blacks and it's incredibly bright we'd wager that is one of the best displays we've ever held period and in the same trend of the Note 10.1 superiority trickles down to even the finer points of the hardware the s-pen the Note 8.0 uses the older s-pen with a hard plastic tip it's but is carved to the shape of the corner of the tablet which means it's hidden and integrated more seamlessly but the Note 10.1 location is more natural for unsheathing the s-pen and it's easier to locate without filling around for it its s-pen can be inserted in two different orientations and it's tip is made of rubber which causes some friction this takes some getting used to but after you spend some time with it you learn to like it even more as it helps with control and stability of use think of it as writing with a felt tip on paper instead of a ballpoint on ice and virtually every hardware category the Note 10.1 is superior to its older cousin not just because it features better specifications across the board but because it has been designed with more care Samsung is tirelessly refining the Galaxy Note brand and it shows the Note 10.1 feels executive and premium whereas the Note 8.0 still feels somewhat like a toy to us the software side of things is still in favor of the newer larger more awful tablet but much less so than in hardware the Galaxy Note 8.0 originally shipped with Android 4.1.2 missing some of the best features of jellybean such as lock screen widgets daydream mode and a dedicated page within the notification shade for toggles fortunately the Note 8.0 has received Android 4.2 with all these useful features in tow the Note 10.1 however comes with Android 4.3 the differences between what the stock Android versions of these firmwares come with are pretty slim especially to the naked eye you get trim and OpenGL ES 3.0 support in 4.3 as well as multiple user support with restricted profiles Bluetooth smart ready support and additional project butter enhancements multi-user support is effectively killed by the TouchWiz skin and some may argue that project butter performance improvements are counterbalanced by how heavily latent TouchWiz is it's fair to say though that the biggest difference is between the software versions of these two tablets are found within Samsung's own software anyway both notes come with the most notable TouchWiz features and bloat smart stay s note group play Samsung Apps Samsung hub S voice watch on etc but there is what some might consider fragmentation from within Samsung's own ecosystem the S Pen optimizations are far less prevalent on the note 8.0 holding the S Pen button and long pressing on the display will take a screenshot on either tablet but holding the button at double tapping the display will open S note on the note 8.0 but it will open action memo on the note 10.1 removing the S Pen from it slot opens the far more useful and accessible Air Command pop-up both tablets also come with the multi window feature but the note 10.1 has some optimizations beyond those of the 8.0 you can create preset pairs of applications to open within multi window and you can also drag and drop content between applications you can't do either of these things on the note 8.0 these may only be small discrepancies but they make a lasting impression especially after you get used to using the newer features hopefully these enhancements will find their way to the note 8.0 before long but for now the Note 10.1 takes the cake performance surprisingly enough is not so much in favor of the Note 10.1 at least not in day-to-day tasks opening applications switching apps and even using a multi window the Note 8.0 is a half beat snappier than the note 10.1 pressing the home button brings you out of the app your homescreen faster even loading apps is quicker and so is opening the application drawer the difference is negligible in most cases though if you used both devices apart from one another you probably never tell but something we haven't been troubled with on the note 8.0 is intermittent freezing the note 10.1 has a problem with hanging mid load more than we care to admit this is an issue Michael have with the International Galaxy Note 3 also powered by the Exynos octa-core is quite well in benchmarks and it's able to maintain higher frame rates during gaming for multimedia and entertainment purposes the Note 10.1 is fantastic but it struggles with the simple things we credit the Note 8.0 snappiness to the difference in pixels it's pushing only one-fourth of the number of pixels the Note 10.1 is pushing something else worth noting since the 10.1 has an additional gigabyte of RAM it is capable of keeping more in memory for a longer period of time the Note 8.0 has to load some recent apps from scratch the speaker performance on the 10.1 is markedly better as the Note 8.0 is bottom edge speakers are incredibly easy to cover up entirely they're more tinny not as loud and just don't do a multimedia tablet any justice by no means are the Note 10.1 speakers terribly impressive particularly when you compare them to the Nexus 10 battery performance isn't bad on either tablet to be honest the 17 watt hour battery inside the Note 8.0 managed to last us about a day and a half to two days on a single charge and standby was tolerable during a review period though in much heavier usage you could probably manage to kill the Note 8.0 in a single day the 31 watt hour battery inside the Note 10.1 is noticeably better in use but it's standby leaves room for improvement we're still testing the battery on the note 10.1 however so look for more detailed information in the full review the camera on the note 8 is well there it takes pictures but don't count on its quality the 5 megapixel image sensor is outpaced by most smartphones on the market from the last two years images like sufficient color reproduction detail and contrast they're dull and full of noise in just about any lighting conditions the Note 10.1 is markedly better at picture taking but it's not terribly impressive either outdoors and bright lighting conditions provide decent vibrant pictures anything else results in bland noisy images with lots of artifacts up these two samsung galaxy notes it's pretty clear which is the better tablet all around and it's easy to imagine how differently this sort of comparison would go if we were comparing the Note 10.1 to an updated Note 8 or if the 10.1 were powered by a Snapdragon 800 instead of the Troublesome Exynos octa-core vector and more steady performance of the Note 8.0 or the gorgeous display and better multimedia experience on the note 10.1 for us as much as we hate lag and stutters the display is a make-or-break feature in a tablet and the Note 8.0 isn't up to the challenge plus the additional s-pen features and build quality of the Note 10.1 seals the deal for us that said we like the form factor of the Note 8.0 better and we can't wait to see what the refresh of the Note 8.0 will be like once it arrives that's all for now if you enjoyed the video let us know by clicking the thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to see more videos in the future videos like this one and different types of videos from different PocketNow editors you can find us on Twitter Facebook and Google+ @ pocket now you can find me on twitter at casper tech i'm taylor martin and i will see you next time