Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 With Verizon 4G LTE Review

Samsung has been on a roll creating beautiful, functional, and powerful devices. They have the Galaxy S4 that is dominating the smart phone market now, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has the potential to the same in the tablet market. It’s speakers are front facing which allows you to hear all the sound without all the hassle of cupping the speakers in the back of the tablet. The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 comes with 16GB of storage for $500 or 32GB for $550. The unique addition of the S Pen, which is just a styless that only works on the Galaxy Note, is neat but is super buggy.

The S Pen is a creative idea that makes the tablet stand out from others like the iPad. The pen is supposed to act and feel much like a real pen and paper. Your able to use the S Pen note taking app and write notes or draw pictures. Its a note taking app that take advantage of the pen that’s able to quickly switch between being a pen and an eraser by simply pressing a button on the side of the pen. After you done with the pen your able to tuck it away in a special slot built right into the tablet. Other apps like Flipboard use the pen for hovering over a story and giving an expanded view of the news story.

The Note 10.1’s IR blaster with Peels tv guide and use of the IR Blaster helps turn your tablet into a remote control for your TV. Peel can take the place of your cable or satellite channel guide and display a list of shows currently playing locally on your provider’s channels. This works great and has amazing support, and the app is well-built. The app lacks Hulu or Netflix support which should be a must considering they are such big players these days. Also a search feature of some sort would be a huge help, although I don’t know if I would use it all that much.

The only other notable included apps are the ones most compatible with the S Pen: S Note and Photoshop Touch. However, learning how to use these apps is like moving from Windows XP to Windows 8. Its not easy and can be very hard to understand and use. While Photoshop Touch thankfully has a very useful tutorial and according to Samsung is optimized for S Pen use, it’s strange that the pen’s pressure sensitivity features isn’t turned on by default.

The tablet I have is powered with Verizon 4G LTE. The service was amazing and really allowed me to take advantage of the tablet even when I was not near wifi. It was fast and the tablet almost always had full signal no matter where I was. The one major downside I see to any Android device built from Samsung is the touchwiz face that is put on top of stock Android. I know without it many of the amazing feature that Samsung has added to the tablet would be un-usable. The tablet is a great consumer facing tablet with a large price tag. It fits the needs of many, but cannot reach more because the device is expensive compared to other Android tablets. Tell us what you think of the Galaxy Note 10.1 in the comments below.

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