The Google Books PDF Death Match series of posts:
– Part One: Barnes & Noble Nook HD+
– Part Two: iPad Mini
– Part Three: iPad 4 with Retina Display
– Part Four: Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
Supplemental/Additional:
Third Samsung Galaxy S III Test
Google Books PDF Death Match: 2013 Nexus 7
Google Books PDF Death Match: Dell Venue 8 Android Tablet
Google Books PDF Death Match: iPad Air
The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition is the latest tablet from Samsung. It boasts a 10.1” 2560×1600 pixel TFT screen, 3GBs of RAM, and a 1.9GHz octa-core Exynos 5420 CPU.
Its AnTuTu X score says it has horsepower:
That score in the 32,000-range puts it on par with the HP Slate 8 Pro.
So I was looking forward to this test.
I grabbed Foxit Mobile PDF:
And then, unphotographed, the test issue of The American Magazine.
And this video is the result:
What you might not notice in the video is the lack of snap. Overall, the entire tablet lacks the snap that is so evident in the Galaxy Note 8.0.
That puzzled the hell out of me. I really expected to be blown away by the performance, but I just wasn’t.
Here is the same PDF on the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0:
I was also curious about using the old Palm OS Graffiti on it, so I grabbed the free version of Graffiti for Android by ACCESS and here’s a photo:
The wee black band at the bottom is Graffiti. It’s so small I didn’t even bother to try it. I would have liked it to scale to take up almost the same amount of space as the default Samsung keyboard, but it didn’t. I can’t use my fingertip in such a cramped area.
So the surprising result is that I prefer the Galaxy Note 8.0 over the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition.
Update: Corrects “Tab” to “Note.”
Mike Cane’s xBlog 
Don’t you mean the Samsung Galaxy *Note* 10.1 (2014 Edition) and in the last sentence Galaxy *Note* 8.0 ?
The high resolution on a larger screen may be the reason for the reduced performance.
But it has a better GPU than the Note 8 too.
I knew something was wrong somewhere but couldn’t pin it down. Thanks. Fixed.
There are some interesting general points in an interesting comparison of the two Dell Venue 8 versions, android and windows, at http://www.zdnet.com/dell-8-inch-tablets-face-off-in-android-versus-windows-cage-match-7000023928 (via the comments to The Guardian’s excellent tech blog, which links to a Venue 8 review which brilliantly describes it as “Fast enough not to be annoying”)
I’ve been owning Note 10.1 2014 LTE for some time now. It’s an excellent device if you don’t mind the 10.1” form factor. Battery lasts really long, it’s thin and light, screen is gorgeous and the pen ability is really useful once you get used to it. What I don’t like is the amount of bloatware Samsung puts on such a powerful device. On clean boot 1.5/3GB of ram is already taken by 10 000 Samsung and their partner apps. This is effectively killing the smothness this device should have (when you look at the hardware specs alone).
mikecane,
I notice that the 8.4 has a faster processor than the 10.1.
The 8. 4 has a “Snapdragon 2.3 GHz” and the 10.1 has a
“Exynos 5400 1.9 GHz.” Is the better pdf-book performance of the 8.4. explained by these different processors ?
But what do you make of these “performance benchmarks” in the bar charts at the link below that suggest (empirically show?) that the 10.1 is “faster” than the 8.4? Do you have a surmise as to why these tests here show that the 10.1 is “faster”:
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Samsung-Galaxy-Tab-Pro-8.4_id8276/benchmarks
Bottom line question: in _your experience_, is the 8.4 a better, quicker tablet in most respects than the 10.1?
There are no benchmarks there for the 12.2 — AnTuTu, etc. All I can say is what I saw in the PDF test — you can always compare the videos of both the 12.2 and the 8.4 too.
Thanks–but both the benchmarks and your experiments indicate experience and measurements of the 10.1 and the 8.4–note I didn’t mention, and am not really interested in, the 12.2
Oh, sorry. I should have clicked through to my own post. I thought this was a Comment about the recent 12.2 post.
OK. I’ve gone back and watched both of my videos and re-read what I wrote. There is a slight difference in speed due to the increased number of pixels of the 8.4’s screen. If you’re deciding between the two, your main decision should be screen size and how long you want the tablet to last. If 8.4-inch is good for you, buy it. If having a tablet that will be capable enough to run the next version of Android is also important, then the 8.4 again. Note that my tests are really very narrow and concentrate on Google Books PDFs because it’s only been recently that tablets have been able to handle these files — and reading those files will be my major use for a tablet.