In the past months we have seen tablets drop from almost every brand name, from Acer to Motorola all claiming to be the same or better than the Apple’s iPad2 but only one has stated that they are Apple’s true competitor and that’s the Samsung Galaxy 10.1.
Style
The Galaxy 10.1 is the sexist Honeycomb tablet out, it measures just 8.6mm thick, 0.2mm thinner than the iPad 2 very lightweight had no problem toting it around or holding it for an hour while watching a video. Also, it has a 3-megapixel back camera and a 2-megapixel front camera, and powerful dual speakers, the speakers are so small that I was really impressed with the sound that came out of them, Samsung includes a set of ear buds in the box, and they’re actually comfortable, the speakers are located on the left and right side of the tablet. The only ports you will find are 3.5mm headphone and proprietary charging jacks. There is a volume button and a power button on the top of the tablet. I was disappointed that there is no MicroSD card slot or Micro-USB port even though it’s a 16GB tablet I would have like the option to have a SD card.
Experience
Galaxy 10.1 is running Android 3.1 with 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 processor and 1GB of RAM makes web surfing fast and easy, while having three tabs open at the same time (Twitter, Facebook and You tube) there was no hesitation, I moved smoothly between each app. Watching videos with 720p was great I watch a video on IGN and there was no lagging or pausing, there’s no color distortion at any angle and images appear bright. Of course you have Android market, you can also custom your home screen with apps and widgets. Samsung preloads a few apps, including Quick Office HD, Pulse news reader, and Samsung’s Music Hub and Apps. Samsung has its own app store which really isn’t worth looking into since they have only have 11 apps, hopefully they will be adding more soon. You can also play HD games like Dungeon Defenders, Contract Killer and of course Angry Birds.
You have two Email apps, the first one of course is the Gmail app, which is easy to use similar to the desktop version, then you have the Email app which you can set up to another email account such as AOL and Yahoo.
The virtual keyboard is big and spacey, typing on it was easy, I didn’t have to go back and erase a word because the letters weren’t too close together. The 3 megapixel camera and its LED flash are located on the on the top rear of the tablet, the pictures that were taken came out pretty good considering picture’s I’ve taken on another tablet, the camera does have auto-focus but no zoom option. The front-facing camera didn’t take as sharp images as the rear facing camera, they came out a little dark, but you can change the white balance, resolution, on the left hand side of the screen, so you don’t have to go looking through the menus. You can also apply different scene modes as you’re shooting. Capturing Video was smooth and clear.
Performance
For the battery life I squeezed 7 and a half hour just surfing the web. While watching videos I only got 5 hours battery life. You can charge the Galaxy with the normal AC adapter or use the UBS cord, which I don’t recommend it will take you forever.
Samsung had the right idea to make its tablet thinner and lighter than the iPad2. The Galaxy 10.1 is now the thinnest tablet on the market and yet doesn’t sacrifice battery life or performance for its slimmer dimensions. I have heard that the Galaxy 10.1 takes better pictures than the iPad2. Does this make the Galaxy better than the iPad2? Depends on what you are looking for, some say yes, some say no but in my opinion the Galaxy 10.1 is the strongest Android Tablet out and at $499 retail for both, I think Samsung is giving Apple a run for their money.
Specifications
Width: 6.71 in
Height: 9.69 in
Weight: 1.32 lbs
Display Type: 10.1 in TFT active matrix
Display Resolution: 1280 x 800
RAM: 1 GB
Processor: NVidia Tegra 2 1 GHz
Multi-Core Technology: Dual-Core
OS Provided: Android 3.1 Honeycomb
