 Hey guys, it's Neil at The Verge. I'm here with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. Samsung's stylus-stabled version of the Galaxy Tab. As you can see, it's a pretty handsome looking tablet. It has Samsung's new design with speakers on the front and kind of this chrome ridge. On the back, it's pretty plasticky. It's a little bit lighter than you might expect. There's a camera with a flash, an IR port, a microSD slot, and a headphone jack. The screen is pretty nice. It's a 10.1 inch LCD display. It has pretty good viewing angles all the way around. It's not nearly as good as the iPad display. It's only 1280 by 800. But I think the most important part is obviously the stylus, or Samsung calls it the S Pen, or as I call it, the Spen. It's actually based on Wacom technology, and it has 1,024 points of sensitivity. So as I draw kind of lightly on the screen, you can see it's barely showing up, but if I push harder, it gets a lot darker. And if I move the pen around in different ways, it changes what the ink looks like on screen. When you pull the stylus out of the integrated slot, it actually opens up a quick action menu to show you some of the apps that Samsung loads on it. What's weird is that you can't change this, so I guess crayon physics is going to be there forever. But this is actually just one piece of Android that Samsung has changed fairly dramatically with TouchWiz. It's Android 4.04 underneath, so it's Ice Cream Sandwich, but TouchWiz on top of here is really intense, and it feels like it's slowing the entire system down. You can see it's a little bit jerky. Some of these giant widgets don't do much of anything. Every single menu option you pick on the Galaxy Note is accompanied by a blooping sound, and that level of intrusiveness by TouchWiz seems to permeate everything on the tablet. There's also a lot of built-in apps. The main big app that they've added in is S Note. S Note actually has pretty decent handwriting recognition, so you can just write on it and it'll figure out what you're trying to say usually. But you have to write directly across. If you're like me and you write at an angle, it won't know what you're trying to say at all. So, S Note is exactly what I wanted to say there, obviously. And if you write at any other weird angles or you don't have perfect handwriting, or if you write in block print, it'll think you're always writing capital letters. Unlike an iPad stylus, which basically just fakes being your finger, the S Pen is really good at acting like a real pen. The problem is that it's sometimes a little bit slow, and there's not a lot of places to use it around the system. Only S Pen-enabled apps understand that it's different than a finger, and they'll get confused if you try to use both your pen and a finger in an app that doesn't support the S Pen. Samsung's also replaced Android's built-in calendar app with its own app called S Planner, which doesn't seem to have any purpose for existing other than to look like a copy of the iOS calendar application with this terrible faux leather at the top. It's functional and it works fine. It's just not clear why Samsung felt the need to replace the stock calendar application. Another way that Samsung is billing the Note as a productivity device is the ability to run two apps at once, which I was initially very excited about. Sadly, that's not meant to be. Only Samsung's special apps can run in multi-screen mode. So I can open S Note, hit multi-screen, and then open the browser. And now that I've got two windows open here, switching back and forth between them is actually really laggy. So I can write over here, but it's not showing up. And now that I've got S Note active, switching back to the browser is completely unresponsive. So I can scroll the browser. I'm trying to switch back to S Note. It's not doing anything. This is even worse if you open another app like email. These applications are not running simultaneously. They're running kind of one at a time, and they're very noticeably switching back and forth which one is active. The bigger problem, of course, is that that's not Chrome, and that's not Gmail. They're in fact weird Samsung versions of each application that I don't want to use. In many ways, this is a dream that has been turned into a terrible unresponsive nightmare. It's particularly perplexing because the Galaxy Note actually benchmarks faster than any Android device I've ever used, but it's really sluggish. It should be able to handle this kind of workload without breaking a sweat. But Samsung does let you use all that power in interesting ways. You can text and watch a video at the same time. You do actually use the pop-up player feature on the Note. Things slow down even more. You'll notice that none of this is particularly responsive as I move it around, but the video does keep playing because it's being offloaded to the GPU. One thing that's really strange is that although the Galaxy Note phone lets you do handwriting recognition on the keyboard, the Galaxy Note 10.1 doesn't seem to have any handwriting recognition on the keyboard at all. In fact, there's just this button that shows you the last things you've put in the clipboard and not anything useful at all. Ultimately, the biggest problem with the Galaxy Note is that it's really two products in one. It's a pretty mediocre, regular Android tablet that's plagued by performance issues, not nearly as fast as something with Jelly Bean like the Nexus 7. And it's a stylus-based tablet that doesn't really have any compelling stylus apps yet. The app support just isn't there, and the apps that do support the stylus kind of don't take full advantage of it the way that you want it to. For $499, you're probably better off buying an iPad, or if you definitely want an Android tablet, you should buy the Nexus 7, which is excellent. But I'm willing to say the Galaxy Note 10.1 is kind of a first generation product, and I'm really hoping future stylus-based devices are much, much better.
 Hey guys, it's Neil at The Verge.
 I'm here with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.
 Samsung's stylus-stabled version of the Galaxy Tab.
 As you can see, it's a pretty handsome looking tablet.
 It has Samsung's new design with speakers on the front and kind of this chrome ridge.
 On the back, it's pretty plasticky.
 It's a little bit lighter than you might expect.
 There's a camera with a flash, an IR port, a microSD slot, and a headphone jack.
 The screen is pretty nice.
 It's a 10.1 inch LCD display.
 It has pretty good viewing angles all the way around.
 It's not nearly as good as the iPad display.
 It's only 1280 by 800.
 But I think the most important part is obviously the stylus, or Samsung calls it the S Pen,
 or as I call it, the Spen.
 It's actually based on Wacom technology, and it has 1,024 points of sensitivity.
 So as I draw kind of lightly on the screen, you can see it's barely showing up, but if
 I push harder, it gets a lot darker.
 And if I move the pen around in different ways, it changes what the ink looks like on
 screen.
 When you pull the stylus out of the integrated slot, it actually opens up a quick action
 menu to show you some of the apps that Samsung loads on it.
 What's weird is that you can't change this, so I guess crayon physics is going to be there
 forever.
 But this is actually just one piece of Android that Samsung has changed fairly dramatically
 with TouchWiz.
 It's Android 4.04 underneath, so it's Ice Cream Sandwich, but TouchWiz on top of here
 is really intense, and it feels like it's slowing the entire system down.
 You can see it's a little bit jerky.
 Some of these giant widgets don't do much of anything.
 Every single menu option you pick on the Galaxy Note is accompanied by a blooping sound, and
 that level of intrusiveness by TouchWiz seems to permeate everything on the tablet.
 There's also a lot of built-in apps.
 The main big app that they've added in is S Note.
 S Note actually has pretty decent handwriting recognition, so you can just write on it and
 it'll figure out what you're trying to say usually.
 But you have to write directly across.
 If you're like me and you write at an angle, it won't know what you're trying to say at
 all.
 So, S Note is exactly what I wanted to say there, obviously.
 And if you write at any other weird angles or you don't have perfect handwriting, or
 if you write in block print, it'll think you're always writing capital letters.
 Unlike an iPad stylus, which basically just fakes being your finger, the S Pen is really
 good at acting like a real pen.
 The problem is that it's sometimes a little bit slow, and there's not a lot of places
 to use it around the system.
 Only S Pen-enabled apps understand that it's different than a finger, and they'll get confused
 if you try to use both your pen and a finger in an app that doesn't support the S Pen.
 Samsung's also replaced Android's built-in calendar app with its own app called S Planner,
 which doesn't seem to have any purpose for existing other than to look like a copy of
 the iOS calendar application with this terrible faux leather at the top.
 It's functional and it works fine.
 It's just not clear why Samsung felt the need to replace the stock calendar application.
 Another way that Samsung is billing the Note as a productivity device is the ability to
 run two apps at once, which I was initially very excited about.
 Sadly, that's not meant to be.
 Only Samsung's special apps can run in multi-screen mode.
 So I can open S Note, hit multi-screen, and then open the browser.
 And now that I've got two windows open here, switching back and forth between them is actually
 really laggy.
 So I can write over here, but it's not showing up.
 And now that I've got S Note active, switching back to the browser is completely unresponsive.
 So I can scroll the browser.
 I'm trying to switch back to S Note.
 It's not doing anything.
 This is even worse if you open another app like email.
 These applications are not running simultaneously.
 They're running kind of one at a time, and they're very noticeably switching back and
 forth which one is active.
 The bigger problem, of course, is that that's not Chrome, and that's not Gmail.
 They're in fact weird Samsung versions of each application that I don't want to use.
 In many ways, this is a dream that has been turned into a terrible unresponsive nightmare.
 It's particularly perplexing because the Galaxy Note actually benchmarks faster than any Android
 device I've ever used, but it's really sluggish.
 It should be able to handle this kind of workload without breaking a sweat.
 But Samsung does let you use all that power in interesting ways.
 You can text and watch a video at the same time.
 You do actually use the pop-up player feature on the Note.
 Things slow down even more.
 You'll notice that none of this is particularly responsive as I move it around, but the video
 does keep playing because it's being offloaded to the GPU.
 One thing that's really strange is that although the Galaxy Note phone lets you do handwriting
 recognition on the keyboard, the Galaxy Note 10.1 doesn't seem to have any handwriting
 recognition on the keyboard at all.
 In fact, there's just this button that shows you the last things you've put in the clipboard
 and not anything useful at all.
 Ultimately, the biggest problem with the Galaxy Note is that it's really two products in one.
 It's a pretty mediocre, regular Android tablet that's plagued by performance issues, not
 nearly as fast as something with Jelly Bean like the Nexus 7.
 And it's a stylus-based tablet that doesn't really have any compelling stylus apps yet.
 The app support just isn't there, and the apps that do support the stylus kind of don't
 take full advantage of it the way that you want it to.
 For $499, you're probably better off buying an iPad, or if you definitely want an Android
 tablet, you should buy the Nexus 7, which is excellent.
 But I'm willing to say the Galaxy Note 10.1 is kind of a first generation product, and
 I'm really hoping future stylus-based devices are much, much better.