SAMSUNG'S GALAXY NOTE 8 IS FAST, WELL DESIGNED AND PACKED WITH FEATURES, BUT IT'S LET DOWN BY A SERIOUSLY HIGH PRICETAG
You've got to hand it to Samsung: grabbing the attention in a market crowded with capable, keenly-priced rival devices is no mean feat, yet it's managed exactly that with its Galaxy Note 8.0. Not content with merely battering its rivals in the performance stakes, Samsung's petite premium slate has gone one step further by adding something altogether more unusual - a stylus.
The so-called S Pen docks neatly into a slot on the bottom right of the tablet, and compared with capacitive styluses, it's a revelation. Samsung has sandwiched a Wacom digitiser beneath the 8in touchscreen and the LCD, and this allows the Galaxy Note 8.0 to provide accurate, pressure-sensitive stylus input for scribbling notes, doodling or just tapping away at onscreen items.
A panel in the stock Samsung keyboard allows for pen input, and apps such as S Note are designed to make the most of the stylus. Handwriting recognition is quick and accurate, too.
Visually, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is a super-sized clone of Samsung's high-end smartphones. The rear of the tablet is finished in silky white plastic, and while it can't match the luxurious solidity of Apple's iPad mini - there's noticeable flex if you twist it from side to side - it feels well put together.
The screen is stunning. The 800 x 1280 resolution is nothing special, but the image quality certainly is. Brightness peaks at a vivid 500cd/m2 and the display sparkles with saturated, life-like colours.
It also ranks highly in performance terms. The 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos 4412 CPU keeps things slick and responsive, with web pages and screens sliding with impressive fluidity.
In the benchmarks, the Note's quad-core CPU dominated the opposition:
with its score of 2113 in Geekbench, it soared well clear of its closest competitor. It repeated the feat in the HTML5 Peacekeeper test, with a score of 736. Oddly, it struggled in the SunSpider benchmark, dropping into last place, although it was back on form in the graphics-intensive GFXBench test, with an average frame rate of 6.4fps, ahead of the other Android tablets and only just behind the iPad mini's 6.7fps.
The processor takes its toll on battery life, though. In our looping video test, the Galaxy Note 8.0 sat near the rear of the pack, lasting only 7hrs 44mins.
As you'd expect, given the premium price, there are plenty of features. There's a microSD slot for expanding the 16GB of onboard storage; a micro¬USB socket handles data transfer and charging duties; and an IR emitter.
The 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera is nothing to write home about, but the rear 5-megapixel camera captured crisp, detailed photos in bright conditions. Only its low-light performance let it down.
That aside, Samsung has built a fantastic tablet. Performance is excellent, the stylus works well and there's no shortage of features.
However, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is as expensive as consumer compact tablets get. With Asus' Fonepad delivering solid all-round performance and 3G for a significantly lower cost, Samsung's tablet is plainly overpriced for what it delivers.
Posted By Lotfi Ben Taleb
Tunisian Blogger obsessed with technology news and innovations around the world. contact me
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