After close to 45 days of non-stop use of the Tab I feel now is a good time to post a review on it.
I asked a friend to pick it up for me from the US. I chose the 16GB Wi-Fi version for $500. It comes neatly packed in a prominently white box (did they copy Apple on this too!!??). Open the box and you’re greeted with a super slim tab that also feels very light in your hands. It comes with a USB charger, earphones and a manual. Peel the screen protector and fire it up and you see a super bright crisp display come to light.
So why did I buy the Galaxy Tab 10.1 over the iPad2?
I could argue about the pros and cons of each till the cows come home. End of the day it is a matter of preference. Although I’m a proud owner of other Apple products, I’ve skipped buying into their mobile ecosystem. My biggest gripe with Apple is the absence of true multi-tasking. Yes, I would take that over a slightly lower battery life. Apple is miles ahead in terms of apps but Android has enough to get you started and as with the Android phone apps I’m sure apps for the tablet will increase in about a year’s time. Also I didn’t want to deal with the dreaded iTunes to manage my files on the Tab. I prefer drag and drop. Android gives you a lot more options for customizing your experience which I prefer over Apple’s approach to their UI.
I bought my first Android device, the Nexus One, almost 2 years ago and have not been disappointed. I waited for almost a year till the tablet version of the Android OS matured from Froyo ports to a dedicated tablet OS, the Honeycomb. Even with Honeycomb there were a slew of devices that came out like the Motorola Xoom and a few others. Having read the reviews and played around with a couple of them at stores, I realized they were not even close to the gold standard – the iPad!! The wait was finally over when I heard of the new Galaxy Tab 10.1 (See the older version of this tab here). On paper, the specs matched the iPad on all fronts. The OS also had matured to a great extent by now. The question was how good was the final product. After reading numerous reviews I came to the conclusion that is was it!! It was sleek, well-designed (even if they copied Apple they did a good job of it), reasonably well priced and had good features.
What do I like about the Tab?
Screen:
A Gorilla glass display that measures 10.1″ approximately with a resolution of 800X1280 pixels, 16 M colors and PLS TFT capacitive touchscreen. Display is crisp, bright and vivid. Superb for watching movies, viewing pictures and also equally good for reading. The form factor is fantastic for watching movies which I would never have imagined. In fact I loved watching movies and TV shows on the Tab more than I have with my 13.3″ Macbook. The reason I believe is because the Tab gives you a more personal and intimate feeling of holding it in your hand and watching it. In portrait mode, reading books on this Tab is a pleasure. I’m almost done with a fairly long read (Reality is broken – Jane McGonigal) entirely on this Tab and my eyes haven’t felt strained one bit. The added benefit of adding highlights and bookmarking is great. The touch screen is pretty responsive and the UI is quite intuitive as well. Of course Apple scores marginally higher on this front for sheer simplicity and super quick responses to touch. But the Tab-Honeycomb combination is probably the best in the Android tablet market right now and you don’t really notice the lag. It definitely doesn’t hamper the user experience. In terms of ease of use of the interface, I feel it’s quite easy. Although people new to the technology world might find the iPad easier to use.
Multi-tasking:
With a dedicated multi-tasking button, they couldn’t have made it easier than this to switch between apps. Just tap, and you have a panel of windows which you can scroll through on the left, tap on a particular panel and switch to the task immediately. And they all run in the background without bringing your system to a grinding halt. You don’t have to quit any apps. They retain their state, so you can be browsing, have your tweetdeck open, chat with friends on gtalk and be playing games. I’ve had the Tab slowing down to the point it needed a restart only on one or two occasions. So the credit goes to Google for designing a great multi-tasking system that manages the memory efficiently.
Google’s ecosystem:
If you’re a heavy Google user you will love the Tab. It brings all your favorite Google apps together beautifully and integrates it seamlessly. Managing your email, contacts, calendar, chats and photos is a breeze. Add to this the ever growing Android Market and the experience only gets better.
Browsing:
You get near desktop web browsing experience on the Tab! A very Chrome-like browser with tabs, bookmarks and all that. Websites load quick and they render quite well for the most part. I’m not a big of Adobe Flash but you have the ability to watch flash based videos and surf flash based websites on the Tab, which of course is famously not available on the iPad. If you use Google bookmarks on Chrome and have it synced with your Google account you should be able to access it on the Tab. Although on mine I can’t seem to see the file structure. A bug that I hope Google fixes soon.
Keyboard:
Typing on this device is fantastic. The Samsung Keyboard wasn’t so great so I switched to the default Android keyboard. You also have the option of using the Swype keyboard which I’m not a great fan of, but some people seem to love it. The keys are well spaced out and you can use both your hands to type in the landscape mode. I can type almost as fast as I would type on a physical keyboard. You can thumb-type if you hold the the Tab in portrait mode.
The response to keystrokes is quite fast and there is not much lag so the the typing experience is overall great on this device.
Widgets:
-
This is an Android feature that I love. The ability to create widgets is awesome. I can have a twitter widget for quick access to my timeline or a nice weather widget. But the best widgets on the Tab are the Gmail and Google Calendar widgets. You can scroll through mails and appointments right from the main screen without having to open the app. There are shortcuts to composing a new email or adding events as well. And the UI looks and feels fantastic when you scroll through them.
My Favorite Apps!!
ES File Explorer – The Touch Wiz comes with a “file explorer” app but I prefer this one. You can browse files on all the computers connected to your network and also your network storage devices, which is a huge plus for me. I can simply copy and move files between the Tab and my network HDD without having to turn on any computer or plug in any USB cable!! It also comes with a music player and since Android supports Flac audio files I can simply play them directly off my network hdd without a problem. Try doing that on an iPad!! 🙂
Google Apps – Gmail has been specially redesigned for the Tab and it shows. UI is beautiful and intuitive. Calendar works perfectly as well. Gtalk is fantastic since it makes use of the front facing camera for video calls. I’ve had a few long video calls on the Tab with my brother in the US and it worked flawlessly. No lag, good audio and video quality. I haven’t felt the need to use Skype at all. I need not say much about Google search and how well it is integrated with the system. And there is always Google Maps!!
Evernote – Excellent for taking notes. But the reason I use it is because it’s available on Windows, Mac and Android. So it syncs my notes across all my devices.
aWARemote Pro – I used the free version and then upgraded to the paid since I liked it so much. If you use Winamp for listening to music on your PC and have all your music organized into playlists on it, then use this app. It’s a full featured remote that syncs the entire media library information including album art covers, ratings, equalizer settings and of course all the playlists. Perfect when you’re on the bed or couch and want complete control of your Winamp
Winamp – Now I wish this app had all the features of the one above as well but Winamp for Android is still great for transferring music from your PC to the device. It nows supports wireless sync so you don’t need to plug in the Tab to your PC. Tab gets detected on your Winamp running on the desktop and all you need to do is drag playlists or songs from your media library onto the device and the music gets transferred.
Unified Remote – This is another great app for controlling your PC. It has half a dozen remotes all in one app. Control your PC volume, VLC player, mouse, keyboard and a lot more.
Pulse – If you’re someone who reads a lot of articles on the internet from various sources then this is a must have. Good replacement for your RSS or Google Reader. UI is great. Reading and browsing through all the content it aggregates for you is wonderful.
Tweetdeck – I use it on the desktop. Great twitter app specially if you have varied interests and want to keep track of all of them. Just create lists and it makes it so much more easier to follow all of them. Very well designed app.
RockPlayer Lite – This is where the Tab/Android scores over the iPad/iOS. Supports more formats and most importantly you don’t need iTunes to transfer videos on to the device. This player plays most video formats.
MultiPicture Live Wallpaper – Neat little app that allows you to use any picture as your wallpaper without cropping it off. It also allows you auto change wallpapers at set intervals or have different wallpapers on different screens.
I’d love to know what are you’re favorite apps on the Tab!!
Battery Life:
I get an entire day and slightly more of regular usage on a full charge. No complaints on this front. It might be a couple of hours less than the iPad but I’m okay with that trade off. It can be charged only via the power adapter though. Tab doesn’t charge from a PC’s USB port unlike my phone. I haven’t checked if it charges from my car USB charger.
A Few Cons:
“Oil-slick” issue – Potentially the biggest issue although not everyone might face it. It appears that in their quest to make the device really slim (slimmer than the iPad actually!!) they may have overlooked this issue of what looks like the glass display touching against the LCD beneath it. This could be a deal breaker for some. I was initially horrified to see it, but as time went on I realized it isn’t a deal breaker for me as it does not hinder my use of the device. It is only visible when the device is turned off or viewed from extreme angles. But in your regular usage when the screen is turned on the oil slick (also called Newtons rings) is not visible at all. So my recommendation is if you are buying it from a physical store, check the piece!!
Lack of accessories – Apple has a small dedicated industry around it making just accessories for all Apple products. Other products don’t have such a luxury. But you will find the basic accessories you need from Samsung itself or from third-party companies. I definitely recommend the Leather book case which doubles up as a stand. There is a keyboard from Logitech for Android which is worth considering if you have the need for it. Screen has Gorilla Glass which is scratch proof (the same glass used on the iPad2) so you don’t need to buy those screen protectors.
Back panel is not scratch proof – Although the grey version looks cool with a nice texture to it but is unfortunately not scratch proof like the iPad2. Mine already has a few tiny scratches already despite me being very careful with my handling.
Touch WIZ UI – Samsung prefers to put its on UI layer on top of the vanilla Honeycomb OS. When I initially started using the Tab I was running plain Honeycomb. After a couple of weeks Samsung pushed an OTA update and the Touch Wiz UI got added on. Now it’s not terrible but neither is it perfect. It felt like the system, specially switching apps, slowed down a bit. It did add some nifty little features though which kind of makes up for it. There’s now a RAM manager, and a dock that pops up from the bottom for quick access to a few apps.
I have to end this by saying that I would not have bought this device or even thought that a tablet would be of any use if it wasn’t for Steve Jobs. You’ll be amazed how well the 10.1″ form factor is suited for reading and watching content on the device. It definitely surprised me. Thank you, Steve!!
