Samsung Galaxy NotePRO 12.2 Review

Introduction

There comes a time in a person's life when they ask themselves how have they remained productive for so long without a 12" stylus-wielding tablet with extremely high resolution display. That's precisely the moment Samsung is betting on when it introduced the Galaxy NotePRO.

It's the largest member of its Note family, and Samsung argues that the 12.2” NotePRO offers PC-like productivity in today's mobile age, which blurs the lines between computing device segments. If we look at the specs of this Android tablet, they are certainly top-notch, but barely different than other high-end slates. NotePRO does add a larger display diagonal, compared to the typical 10” tablets, and even if compared to the Tab PRO 12.2, it is one S Pen stylus ahead, but is that enough? Can it really compare to a small and light convertible with desktop-grade Windows? Let's see what's on offer with the largest device in Samsung's Note portfolio...

In the box

• Wall chargerUSB cable with proprietary connector
• Four spare S Pen stylus tips with tip replacement tool

Design

Much larger and heavier than your average tablet, the NotePRO closes in on Windows 8.1 convertibles

Samsung has used the artificial leather look with stitching accents that it pioneered with the Note 3 here. It arguably gives its electronic devices a more buttoned-down and sophisticated look than sheer plastic, and we have to say you can be fooled it is a leather notepad looking from afar. It is still plastic, but nicer to the touch than the usual glossy coat. Glossy, however, is offering more traction for your hands, as it just sticks to your fingers, whereas the back here is more slippery. There is a metallic-looking rim surrounding the sides of the NotePRO, further adding to the more premium looks.

The tablet manages to stay in the sub-8mm category, which is where all the catwalk stars of the tablet arena belong, too. The exact dimensions are 11.64 x 8.03 x 0.31 inches (295.6 x 204 x 7.95 mm), and we'd say this is as compact as a 12-incher can get, while still leaving some bezel on the side for resting your thumbs during handling. For comparison, one of the closest competitors - the Sony Vaio Tap 11 - sports an 11" screen, but its volume is pretty close, at 12" x 7.40" x 0.39".

The issue here is weight, though - at 26.56 oz (753 g), Samsung's largest tablet isn't feathery to carry around, or keep in your hand for a long time. Sony's Tap 11 weighs about the same, but it carries an Intel Haswell processor, powering full desktop-grade Windows 8.1. When you tack on keyboard folios, like the one Logitech introduced for the NotePRO, it starts to equate ultra thin and light laptops, which carry much more oomph than this huge tablet.

S-Pen Stylus

We get Samsung's excellent S Pen stylus with the NotePRO, which sits tucked neatly in a silo at the top right corner of the slate, ready to alternate your productivity urges with doodling sprees. It is very easy to take out or push back in, yet feels snug, and not wobbly in the silo. The S Pen itself is pretty ergonomic and easy to handle, with an action button that is comfortably situated, and with good tactile feedback.

Display

One of the largest high-res displays on a tablet offers good outdoor visibility

Samsung is betting on a very high resolution display, which not many devices with this screen diagonal are able to offer yet. At 2560x1600, the 12.2" panel crams four million pixels on its surface. At 247ppi, this is the most pixel density you can currently get from a 12-incher, and that is more than enough so you won't notice any detail imperfections from a normal viewing distance.

We examined it with a macro lens, and it seems to be of the PenTile variety. The pixels are arranged in a diagonal “diamond” matrix, that is different from the standard “stripe” RGB one. You can only notice that looking very closely at solid colors, and if you know what to look for.

Samsung calls the new screens Super Clear LCD, which is a term used for its LCD screens since the dawn of the original Galaxy S, so don't get your hopes high it is a brand new screen technology, much different than the PLS-LCD panels on Samsung's high-res tablets of late.

The screen comes with several color presentation modes to choose from in the settings, such as Movie or Dynamic, which change the image characteristics, like color saturation. Colors look most natural in the Normal mode, while Dynamic flares them up quite a bit. The display's black levels are a tad too bright, appearing greyish and washed-out, which worsens with the change in viewing angles. Peak brightness is pretty high, and the panel's reflectivity coating is good, which makes the screen rather visible outdoor, even in direct sunlight.

Interface and functionality

The new tablet-oriented Magazine UX is both pretty and functional; enhanced Multi Window and Pop-up view modes will boost your productivity

The tablet ships with the newest Android 4.4 KitKat, but Samsung's TouchWiz Nature UX interface we are accustomed to, has been given a fresh coat of paint. So fresh, in fact, that it has received a different moniker – Magazine UX – indicating a brand new tablet-oriented interface. Apart from that we get a completely overhauled system font and iconography, with flatter, rounded icons in various colors.

The Magazine UX overlay is akin to a traditional printed publication face, and this impression is enhanced by the largish screen diagonal. It offers tiled layout called "dashboard", for categorizing your favorite content in terms of news feeds (powered by Flipboard), social networking updates, or frequently used apps. Those tiles can be various sizes, vertical or horizontal, and they can serve as static widgets, throwing info and notifications at you, or be interactive, letting you scroll within the sections.

Traditional home screens, where app shortcuts and third-party widgets can be placed, are still available, should you prefer using these instead of Magazine UX. But if that's the case, you might be a bit disappointed to learn that at least one Magazine screen has to remain enabled.

As we mentioned above, many features found in previous TouchWiz versions – Smart Stay, Blocking Mode, S Voice, and KNOX – haven't been omitted. Furthermore, we get a new Multi Window mode, as you can now split the screen in not two, but four different resizable sections, which comes pretty useful, on account of the large screen real estate. You can also open up to 5 applications in Pop-up View - windowed mode that floats above every home or menu screen underneath, aiding multitasking significantly, and reminding of desktop Windows.

In addition, the Galaxy NotePRO will ship with a selection of pre-loaded apps, content and services, such as Bitcasa, Bloomberg Businessweek+, Blurb, Cisco WebEx Meetings, Dropbox, Easilydo Pro for Tablet, Evernote, Hancom Office for Android, LinkedIn, LIVESPORT.TV, NY Times, Oxford Advanced Learner’s A-Z, and Sketchbook Pro. Not all of these apps and services will be available in all regions, but in general Samsung is throwing a free or timed access subscription to most of those, which cover a lot of work or play scenarios.

S Pen functionality

Since with the NotePRO we also get the excellent S Pen stylus with Wacom digitizer, its features further contribute to the stellar array of input options that comes with the tablet. All the bells and whistles that come with Samsung's stylus are present, like Air View and Air Command, Action Memo, the Scrapbook clipper. The Pen Window mode is also very handy for calling a hovering app anywhere on the display, as you can predetermine the windows size and placing simply by drawing a random shape on the display with the S Pen.

In addition, the stylus is optimized to work in the browser, gallery, or calendar, for example, letting you easily clip and annotate info, draw on pictures, or scribble down events. Moreover, Samsung includes a few excellent S Pen-tailored apps with its Note line, like S Note, or SketchBook for Galaxy, that lets you write, sketch, draw or paint with various virtual pens and brushes.

Processor and memory

Top-shelf processor and 3 GB of RAM ensure stellar performance

Depending on whether you want LTE connectivity with your Galaxy NotePRO or not, the tablet ships with two different chipsets. One is the new "true octa-core" 1.9 GHz Exynos 5420 Octa, which can have all eight cores firing up at once. It pushes those four sections of the Multi Window mode with ease, even when a Pen Window or two are running on top. The LTE version comes with the no less powerful quad-core Snapdragon 800, clocked at the respectable 2.3 GHz.

These chipset alternatives won't leave you longing for more, no matter how you stress the NotePRO, as these are currently the fastest kids on the block. Samsung went the extra mile, though, and equipped the tablet with 3 GB of RAM. The company knows full well that with this screen real estate and resolution, you might be using the split-screen and Pen Window modes more often than on a regular tablet, running a number of productivity and entertainment apps at once.

Samsung also stepped it up on the storage front, starting the NotePRO at 32 GB (26 GB user-available), instead of the typical 16 GB that today's larger Android slates wield. Of course, this being a Samsung tablet, you also get a microSD slot for storage expansion, which takes up to 64 GB capacity cards.

Internet and Connectivity

The NotePRO offers a great screen for browsing, and a full suite of connectivity options, too

Samsung's stock browser has received a minimalistic overhaul, but the Adobe Flash support has gone with NotePRO's default Android 4.4 KitKat version.

We already mentioned that there is an Exynos 5 Octa version of the NotePRO, which can be Wi-Fi-only, or carry an HSPA+ radio, with up to 21 Mbps download speeds. The NotePRO version with Snapdragon processor will be able to get on your carrier's fast 4G LTE network. The HSPA+ model will cover the global 850/900/1900/2100 MHz bands, whereas the LTE one will hop on the 800/900/1800/2600＋850/2100 bands.

As for the other wireless radios, the NotePRO doesn't skip a beat, sporting fast Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac in a dual-band MIMO (2.4 & 5 GHz) setup, Wi-Fi Direct, AllShareCast, BT4.0, infrared, and GPS with GLONASS support. Wired connectivity is taken care of with the microUSB port in the 3.0 standard, ensuring very fast transfer of files to and from the slate.

Camera

Pretty good 8 MP camera makes for decent photos and video recording, but shooting with the large slate is unwieldy

The 8 MP camera on the rear of the NotePRO is of the auto focus variety, and comes accompanied by an LED flash. Featuring zero shutter lag, it takes advantage of the numerous shooting and scene modes the typical Samsung camera interface offers, such as Panorama, HDR, Sports, Night and so on. You also get a 2 MP front-facing shooter, which does 720p video recording.

The photos come out nice, with amount of detail akin to the resolution. Contrast seems to receive a slight boost in Auto mode, compared to the actual scene, resulting in more intensive colors, and overall frame that often appears a tad underexposed. When you shoot contrasting scenes, we'd recommend to use the Rich Tone (HDR) mode of the tablet, which does a fine job of toning down bright objects, and highlighting the shadows at the same time.

Indoors the tablet also performs well, with accurate color presentation, and minimal blur when you hold the tablet steady. Visible noise creeping up only in the darkest of scenes, and the LED flash does a decent job illuminating the scene from a five feet distance.





The NotePRO records 1080p video with 30fps, and the footage stays fluid regardless of the light around, without noticeable artifacts. Exposure compensation is fast when you pan around with the tablet, but shooting video with a 12-incher is, needless to say, a funky experience.

Multimedia

The gallery offers a split-screen view with folders on the left, and their content shown in grid preview on the right. The tablet offers very rich editing options, which are enhanced with stylus-friendly features to draw and annotate on your photos.

Your tunes catalog gets a new, minimalistic tabbed layout in a conservative, but very readable black and white color scheme. The player's controls themselves have received a minimalistic redraw, too, those these keep Samsung's blueish color scheme. The NotePRO has a number of sound modes and equalizer presets, while the two stereo speakers on the sides are powerful, but the output is not particularly full or clean.

Most manufacturers stopped support for DivX-encoded videos recently, and Samsung is no exception. You can play MKV and Xvid videos in up to 1080p resolution with the NotePRO's stock player, but not DivX ones. That can be easily remedied with a trip to the Play Store, though. Video playback looks beautiful on the huge and luminant high-res display, so watching movies or other footage is one of the selling points for this tablet.

Battery

With a 9500 mAh, Samsung's Galaxy NotePRO is quoted to last 10 hours of video playback on a charge. That is above average for an Android slate, so you can rest assured it will get you through a whole day at the office, or on the go when you are away from a charger. Indeed, when we finished our battery testing procedure on the NotePRO, the recorded result was excellent. Samsung's tablet climbed to the top of our battery endurance chart, beating narrowly the previous record holder in tablet land - Apple's iPad Air. 

Conclusion

Samsung was rumored for a while to enter the 12” tablet arena, and it did indeed, with the NotePRO, and the Tab Pro 12.2. Betting on the large display, that allows easier multitasking, and the additional input options granted by the S Pen stylus, Samsung says that the NotePRO offers PC-like productivity.

However, with grand screen size comes grand weight – anything over a pound or so is considered too heavy in the days of the iPad Air and Tablet Z fashion models, while the NotePRO weighs almost two.

The big and heavy slate is thus limited in portability, which is the whole point of carrying around a tablet. When you tack on cases, keyboard folios or other accessories, you might be better off with a Win 8.1 ultrabook, or convertible, some of which weigh less than a NotePRO with a keyboard, like Sony's Vaio PRO line, and offer more.

Samsung has priced the basic NotePRO at the respectable $749, and the price will climb up should you go for the LTE version. You can save a hundred, and get the Tab PRO 12.2, which has the same size and specs, but doesn't sport an S Pen stylus, and has 16 GB of storage, so it's not really worth the sacrifice, if you'll be lugging around a two-pound slate anyway.

A more functional alternative would be the Sony Vaio Tap 11, starting at $800, which weighs as much, and sports a keyboard plus a stylus. Its battery life is half that of the NotePRO, though, and pixel density is less, but it comes with desktop-grade Windows, not to mention the 128 GB of storage.

If a 12-inch tablet defeats the purpose for you, going down to the 10” realm will reveal plenty of excellent slates with more manageable footprint. In the $400-$500 range you can get most good Android or iOS slates, like the iPad Air, or Samsung's own Note 10.1, if you have to have a tucked-in S Pen.

If your job or hobby requires a pretty large tablet display that is still somewhat portable, the NotePRO might entice you with its excellent suite of apps and multitasking abilities, with its high-res display, and S Pen stylus modes. For most users, however, it seems destined to stay a niche device.

Software version: KOT49H.P900KXUANAH