Gadgetory

so you've got $500 burning a hole in your pocket you're in the market for an Android tablet with a big screen and powerful innards and you don't see the need for a stylus well Samsung's Galaxy Tab pro 10.1 was built just for you the question is will you like it if you take it home let's find out I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is our video review of the Samsung Galaxy Tab pro 10.1 the Tab pro 10.1 hardware will hold very few surprises for those accustomed to seeing Samsung tablets on retail shelves it's a wide thin lightweight device with a trio of controls below it's 10.1 inch Super Clear LCD the screens pixel density stands just shy of 300 pixels per inch producing a crisper image than we're used to seeing at this size though straying far from the center line will get you a substantial wash out in the color palette in the hand the Tab pro 10.1 suffers from the same handicap of nearly all tablets with an 8 to 5 aspect ratio it's fairly difficult to type on in landscape and fairly awkward to use in portrait but in exchange you've got a nice wide screen area for viewing HD video and browsing the web so there's that in terms of innards our review model is the SMT 520 the Wi-Fi only Edition with the Exynos 5 octa backed up by 2 gigs of ram and 16 gigs of storage there's also a microSD expansion available for those interested in loading their own media onto the tab Bluetooth 4.0 Wi-Fi AC and IR round out the connectivity package with LTE included only on the Qualcomm powered variant the Galaxy Tab pro ships with the newest major build of Android 4.4.2 kitkat with Samsung's newest third-party UI running on top the magazine UX and all of it is running on hardware that's some of the newest and most powerful available sadly despite all this newness Samsung's software still struggles it's the half-baked sense of it all that bothers us the most the widgets inexplicably sliding off the homescreen the surprise app crashes the formatting problems when using multi window that last bit really gets under our skin multitasking is one of Samsung's most compelling offerings and to see it executed so terribly with apps like YouTube and Twitter is very disappointing and then there's the magazine portion of the magazine UX which turns out to be much less ambitious than we were led to believe at CES it's less a home screen replacement than an accessory while you can plug in features like a calendar more Samsung's email client those add-ons are very limited at this point and even when displaying the news and social feeds it's designed to show it's pretty wonky it doesn't always automatically refresh itself it has only the barest customization options and our version frequently timed out with a Flipboard error when we tried changing its settings we're hoping an update will arrive to fix these and other shortcomings we've reached out to Samsung for comment and if the company provides one it'll be available in our full review linked in the description on the plus side there are some enhancements worth getting excited about the new multi window launch pad makes much more sense anchored to the side of the display the new multitasking button is very welcome and Samsung's watchon feature for controlling a home entertainment system is still excellent if you're the type of couch potato who splits your attention between the TV screen and your tablet display when you're vegging watch on is meant just for you we use the Galaxy Tab pro 10.1 over the course of a week in home and office settings for work samsung includes the excellent han come office suite and remote pc software as well as NOx and on device encryption for play even graphically demanding titles play well on the 10-inch screen and for both worlds Samsung offers an array of Galaxy perks to sweeten the pot when you buy one of these the aged megapixel camera around back is nothing to throw a party over but it's nothing to sneeze at either well you probably wouldn't want to take pictures with it in public it's plenty capable of doing so in a pinch and it adapts well to a range of lighting conditions it's also plenty sharp for photographing text to be scanned into a document the front-facing camera will portray you in a reasonably during light under most conditions as well video from the primary camera is surprisingly clear with quick auto focus and exposure adjustments though the framerate isn't the best we've seen and the microphone is very susceptible to wind noise we should mention that this is a rather windy day so audio artifacts can be expected in my hands are shaking a little bit not that it's cold but speaking of noise the Tab pro 10.1 x' speakers can make some it's not as loud as some other devices we've used but the sound from the left and right speaker ports is crisp and should serve you well for watching video or streaming audio in a quiet room finally there's the matter of battery life the Tab pro 10.1 packs a 31 watt hour battery and despite the high resolution screen at lasts a fairly long time with heavy use we've been able to average two days between charges with the screen on time of between 4 and 5 hours without USB 3.0 though the Tab pro does take its sweet time charging around 5 hours from empty to full so make sure you top it off before a road trip in the end the Galaxy Tab pro 10.1 is a mixed bag we like its broad feature set it's powerful suite of bundled software and its high resolution screen and controlling a TV from a tablet never fails to give us a geeky thrill but the software is just so inconsistent it feels almost like a pre-production beta build of an Android UI and it's not it's on sale right now for $499 a price tag we think is a little high for software so in need of polish were you expecting more well that's what the written review is for for benchmarks screenshots and in-depth impressions and more check out the full review of the Galaxy Tab pro 10.1 linked in the description down below the very first link you see also down there a like button please press it if you did enjoy this review and please leave a comment down below with your thoughts on the 10.1 if you own one or have played with one long enough to gain valid insight thank you for watching as always follow us on social media so you can see what we're talking about in the Twittersphere the Facebook world the land of Instagram and at forums pocketnow.com most importantly once again thank you for watching we'll see on the next one