Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 review: It's big, real big
Samsung has a lot of tablets. With competition in the form of the iPad Air and iPad mini, the Korean manufacturer is attacking on all sides with enough devices to address every possible consumer need.
Newly added to the vast tablet line-up is the Galaxy Note Pro. Like a bigger version of the recently reviewed Note 10.1 '2014 Edition', it ships with the now ubiquitous faux leather backing of Samsung Note devices.
Alongside the usual interesting design choices, you get a truly class leading spec sheet, with an impressive display and a fresh take on Samsung's TouchWiz UI. So is it worth the cash?
Hardware and Design
In terms of hardware, the Note Pro is hard to fault, but when it comes to design things fall well short of the competition.
At £649, it costs more than a 32GB iPad Air. Admittedly, this device has a smaller screen and less powerful processor, but in the hand it feels so much more premium. Ever since the Note 3 arrived, we have been critical of Samsung's love of faux leather.
Nothing changes here. In the hand, the Note Pro feels fairly cheap, which is a shame, because even the slightest use of some sort of premium material would elevate it way above its current design offering.
Other than that, the rest of the Note Pro's design is perfectly acceptable. It's a big device, with that 12.2-inch screen bumping the device's footprint up to 295.5 x 204 x 8 mm. It also weighs 753 grams.
Given the display size, this device can compete with some laptops, which comparatively puts it in a more portable place. Against other 10-inch tablets though, this thing feels big.
The payoff is that you get a 12.2-inch 2560 x 1600 pixel display. That's a lot of resolution to play with and ensures you get 247 ppi even at this screen size. While it isn't the most pixel dense of displays, it looks just as nice as any 'Retina' offerings that Apple might make. It also doesn't put too big a strain on the Pro's 9,500 mAh battery, which managed around 9 hours of usage.
The use of an LCD screen rather than Samsung's usual AMOLED setup does mean brightness takes a dip as do black levels. Instead you get lovely balanced colour and excellent viewing angles, which we actually prefer.
Internal hardware is more than powerful enough to match entry level Ultrabooks at this price range. The octo-core version we tested used a pair of quad-core processors in tandem, one clocked at 1.9 GHz and the other at 1.3 GHz. It also featured 3GB of RAM and a Mali T628MP6 GPU.
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition review
Interestingly, benchmarks show that the quad-core LTE Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 version of the tablet is actually marginally faster. In real world usage though, we doubt that these benchmarks translate to any significant difference whatsoever.
Instead, what you get is a very, very fast tablet. Apps load instantly and, thanks in part to Android 4.4 KitKat, the OS is slick and largely lag free, but more on that later.
Really, you have so much power to play with when using the Note Pro that there is pretty much nothing in the Google Play store that will push it to its limits. Instead, you can multi-task as much as you want, while still enjoying a slick user experience.
Camera
The Note Pro features a pair of cameras, as is the de-facto standard for tablets nowadays. 8-megapixels on the back, with 2-megapixels on the front, both of which match up fairly close in quality to what you will get from a smartphone.
Crucially, both are 1080p video capable, which makes video calling a rather nice experience on the Note Pro, especially given its larger screen. Why exactly you would want to use it in place of a smartphone for standard photography is slightly beyond us, but still, it's nice to know the quality is there.
Samsung's camera UI continues to be crammed full of functionality, but uses a layout that we aren't hugely convinced by. There are just too many buttons to press and not enough explanation of exactly what they do. A simpler, more slick and automated UI might be preferable, with the processor taking the load off automated shooting.
Still though, it's nice to see tweaks like 'beauty face' and HDR making an appearance, both of which can drastically alter your photo for the better (or worse). Auto is perfectly good too, as is the speed at which the camera catches bursts of photos.
The photography side of the Note Pro comes into its own when you open photographs up in the included photo editor and S Note app. Being able to draw, crop and edit using the pen is very handy indeed.
You can take things further though, using Autodesk's SketchBook for Galaxy app. Import a photo into that and the sky really is the limit in terms of editing. Paired up with the S Pen, it's even more impressive.
Which brings us onto Samsung's Note Pro user experience. For the most part, it's very good, with minimal amounts of bloat added to stock Android.The S Pen functionality is the same as that of the Note 3, in that the entire tablet can be controlled using the included pen. Apps like S Note feature accurate pen inputs and translate well to other integrated services.
With a screen this big, the likes of Evernote work especially well alongside the S Pen and S Note app. Being able to scribble pages of text on the Note Pro and then view them back on other devices, synced up with Evernote, is very handy indeed.
Other apps include the AutoDesk software we already mentioned and a huge number of other S Pen related tweaks that you can read about in our Note 3 review.
Unique to the Note Pro is the new look home screen. Bolted on to TouchWiz, it behaves like a combination of the Windows 8 start screen and Flipboard.
Various widgets can add different functionality to your home screen, alongside the downloadable Android offerings. Scroll to the left and things get far more Windows 8-like, with widgets that fill the entire screen which can be customised to things like your calendar, email or RSS feeds.
It's definitely a nice touch, but we never had any problems with the vast number of widgets already available on Android.
Taking advantage of the big screen is a multi-window setup that can be accessed via a swipe from the right of the display to the left. From here you can open up various apps that can be windowed, so you can use the large display to the full.
YouTube, Google Maps and Chrome all work well enough and run with minimal lag. The problem is that it's just not as fluid and slick as what you would get on a fully fledged Windows PC or a Mac.
The notifications bar and menus have also changed in line with what we expect will be the new look UI on the Galaxy S5. Scaled up to 12.2-inches, massive notifications do look a little strange. Still though, we prefer the cleaner and more colourful approach to design that Samsung is taking.
Ultimately, the Note Pro feels like an Android tablet. A few tweaks succeed in separating it from the Note 10.1 2014 Edition, but we imagine you might struggle to match the functionality of an Ultrabook with the same screen size. But then it would never be as portable.
Movies and Music
The usual rules apply when it comes to Android music and movie content, in that there is a ton of it.
The difference here is that you can watch things back on a high resolution 12.2-inch screen. Backed up by some decently beefy speakers, it can make for a better than average mobile movie viewing experience.
Ultimately though, the difference is negligible over a 10-inch tablet and keeping the heavier Note Pro balanced in your hands for long periods of time isn't easy.
The competition
Given the Note Pro's asking price, it's right up there with the best of the current tablet market. You could go for an iPad Air and still have some change left over, but then you would lose out on the display size and the flexibility of Android, so that one really is up to you.
iPad Air review
Alternatively, you have the joys of Windows 8 tablets, including Microsoft's Surface 2, to choose from. If it were up to us, the Samsung is a better option right now, unless you absolutely have to have proper Office functionality.
Verdict
The Galaxy Note Pro is, like most Samsung tablets, very good. Basically, it's a bigger version of the Note 10.1 2014 Edition with a few UI tweaks thrown in for good measure.
While this is definitely a good thing, we also find it slightly irritating. In its rush to swell the market to bursting point with tablets of every shape and size, we feel like Samsung is spreading itself too thin. We can't help but wonder if the brand took the Apple approach and focussed on one single device, if we wouldn't have something extra special on our hands.
Issues aside, if you are in the market for a larger than life tablet, the Note Pro is more than adequate, especially when you factor in the functionality the S Pen adds.
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