Gadgetory

right on schedule Samsung announced its third-generation Galaxy Tab 10.1 but is it worth the upgrade or the $400 introductory price I'm Taylor Martin this is PocketNow and this is our full review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 hardware is exactly what you would expect from a 2013 tablet from Samsung like the two previous 10.1 inch Galaxy Tabs it follows Samsung's virtually universal design language the back side has a hyper glazed finish atop the polycarbonate back the trim is a bronzed foe brushed metal and despite its size and landscape nature it even features the same exact button configuration as every other recent Galaxy device a physical home button in the middle flanked by capacitive menu and back buttons unlike its brethren however this configuration doesn't make a lot of sense on a device this size yes it will primarily be used in landscape but on the occasion you have to rotate into portrait which often happens due to applications that do not support tablets the buttons are sideways and awkward to use in essence this device is like a giant galaxy s4 which can be taken to one of two ways if you have no qualms with Samsung's excessive use of plastic the Tab 3 10.1 may not be so bad on the other hand if you're a fan of exceptional build quality and design the entire Tab 3 lineup will leave you feeling empty and well bored it's certainly not much to look at but we can applaud Samsung for holding some standards such as physical size and weight the IR blaster along the top edge is a nice touch and the speaker grills along the sides which mimic the machine drilled speakers on the Nexus 10 look nice however they're fairly easy to cover up and it's easy to muffle the audio on accident and just like its appearance the specifications aren't terribly impressive either the 10.1 inch TFT display features a meagre resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels which is unfortunate the color reproduction is nice and although it's not up to Super AMOLED standards the contrast isn't bad but the pixelation is quite noticeable the processor is quite simply the best thing about this tablet in fact it's the only thing about this tablet that even remotely sets it apart from similar devices it's powered by a 1.6 gigahertz dual-core Intel Atom chipset which is quite powerful but it's hindered by only one gigabyte of RAM the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 also comes in either 16 or 32 gigabyte models has a microSD card slot for expansion a 3.1 megapixel primary camera 1.3 megapixel front camera and a 68 hundred million power battery the worst part about the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 the hyper glaze finish it's bad enough on a 5-inch phone but on a 10-inch tablet the entire device becomes a mirror fingerprint and scratch magnet and it's literally impossible to keep it clean using a cloth to wipe off the oily fingerprints only seems to smear them around and create swirls in almost every way the Tab 3 10.1 feels like Samsung thought well this worked on the galaxy s4 so it must work on the tab 3 as well unfortunately it doesn't and the end result is a flawed and conflicted unpolished product and the conflicted nature of the Tab 3 10.1 carries down into the software kudos to samsung for shipping the Tab 3 10.1 with Android 4.2.2 this brings features like daydream and lock screen widgets and if you're an existing Galaxy device owner you'll feel right at home in the tab 3 10.1 it comes with the latest version of TouchWiz there are pre-installed Samsung applications like watch on chat on Smart Remote from peel s planner etc the home screen uses the same icons widgets and wallpapers as any other TouchWiz version but the software on the tab 3 10.1 is half-baked and reveals just how much time and effort samsung put into this tablet will give you a hint not nearly as much as this older more mature sibling the Galaxy Note the first indicator of lack of optimization is in the notification shade unlike on stock Android tablets the 4.2.2 notification shade on the tap 3 is full screen meaning visually that can be like into applications not updated with tablet support a single notification spans across the entire display and swiping to dismiss feels silly also the quick toggles at the top of the shade all display in the default view unlike other versions of TouchWiz you cannot scroll this bar left and right however there is still a button to show all toggles in the top right corner and landscape it does nothing but hide the brightness slider and notifications which is useless it only works in portrait the lack of settings toggles is a telltale sign that more is going on than initially meets the eye naturally being a Samsung tablet we searched high and low for the multi window feature but it's nowhere to be found and more are any of the recent TouchWiz features such as air view air gesture or smart Paul's only smart stay and smart rotation are included we were excited to get our hands on the tablet since it equips an Intel Atom chip with two cores clocked at 1.6 gigahertz we didn't expect it to be the most powerful chip in history but it was quite snappy out of the gate applications open quickly scrolling was smooth and even task switching happened quickly but it didn't take long for the Intel chip to get bogged down and the one gigabyte of RAM didn't help matters either multitasking left much to be desired as such synthetic benchmark scores were a hit or miss neither bad nor terribly impressive the 6800 milliamp hour battery in the tab 3 10.1 is one of the tablets more positive qualities no it doesn't offer the best battery life ever but it should get you through a full day of use even on heavy days pulling two email accounts one Twitter feed Google+ updates and a few instant messenger accounts it managed only drain about 6% over a full eight hour night in spurts of heavy usage like gaming or streaming videos the battery will drain rather quickly but at the very least it should last a day and a half to two days on a single charge and normal usage just remember to keep the brightness down finally the camera if you're looking to use a tablet for taking pictures or videos we would be hard-pressed to recommend this one the 3.1 megapixel rear camera is nothing to get excited over worst of all its fixed focus so don't expect much out of close-ups in great lighting and at short distance it can capture mediocre shots with little detail washed out colors and a little contrast and the video quality is quite bland as well plus a little shaky we hate to be harsh but the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 simply doesn't make sense other than the Intel Atom chip there isn't much to talk about and it's not terribly impressive either point-blank the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is a tablet built to 2011 standards with 2011 specifications yet Samsung is selling it for moderate 2013 price at $400 there is simply better options and for $100 more you can buy a much better Samsung tablet with a lot more value proposition the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 isn't necessarily a bad tablet but it certainly isn't great it's middle of the road in every way and instead warrants a price tag in the 300 dollar range we give the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 a 6 out of 10 that's all for now if you enjoyed the video and found it helpful be sure to give it a thumbs up and click the subscribe button and follow us in all the usual places twitter google+ and facebook at pocket now i'm taylor martin you can find me on twitter at casper tech and i'll see you next time