Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition) Review
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on October 1, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Tablets
- Samsung
- Mobile
- Galaxy Note 10.1
GPU & Performance
Although Exynos 5420 fixes the big underlying issue with Samsung’s silicon on the CPU front, it’s actually the GPU that sees the most dramatic change. ARM once again wins Samsung’s GPU business and equipped the Exynos 5420 with a 6-core Mali-T628, replacing the PowerVR SGX544MP3 from the previous Exynos 5410. Overall performance takes a huge step forward. Looking at T-Rex HD (offscreen) we see the best example of where the Mali-T628MP6 lands: about 11% slower than Adreno 330 and 8% behind IMG’s PowerVR G6430 in the iPhone 5s. It’s definitely a competitive GPU with the latest and greatest from IMG and Qualcomm, but not faster than either. It’s incredible to think of just how far we’ve come. It wasn’t too long ago that we were complaining about non-Apple SoCs not taking GPU performance seriously, but here we are talking about competitive performance across the big three ARM vendors.
NAND Performance
We've been tracking storage performance on these devices for a little while now and have noticed forward progress over the generations. The new Note 10.1 does reasonably well in our IO tests, with its strengths being sequential read and random write performance (arguably the two more important metrics). Since the tablet ships with Android 4.3 it should feature FSTRIM support (something we're still verifying on the 2014 Edition), which will help keep NAND performance high as long as you don't fill up all of your storage (remember: try to keep ~20% of the internal NAND free at all times).
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misfit410 - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
I have an iPad 3 and an iPad mini, my experience is not smooth on either.. can't even browse engadget or Gawker without crashing safari.badcode - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I thought that was only occurring on my ipad 1 because it was so old. Now I know I will either wait for a Tegra 4 tablet or get a surface pro 2. Thanks for the infocrankerchick - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
Late reading the review, but I wish you guys had touched on how the device runs in actual use. Benchmarks are nice, but some want to know how laggy the tablet feels using it, especially in multi-window mode or with the stylus. That's what makes this tablet unique, and it doesn't seem to be touched on at all.sundragon - Wednesday, October 2, 2013 - link
Interesting as this is typical excuse I read when people blast Apple for being slow but when when someone introduces a faster Android based device, the same excuse isn't used.A 1.3 GHz ARMv8 based dual core CPU (designed by Apple, fabbed by Samsung) is beating a 1.8GHz Samsung ARMv7 A15 quad core CPU (designed by ARM, fabbed by Samsung).
All the excuses for javascript, multi-threaded performance, etc are BS.
Will you use the same excuse when Samsung introduces an ARMv8 64-bit Exynos next year in the Samsung Galaxy 5?
If it beats the 5S willl ya all be making excuses for Android being different from iOS?
I think not, I think admitting to being biased is a bit better than making excuses...
P.S. the chart Anand created to show the cheating on the Android side of things (except Motorola/Google) is telling as to the business ethics of the companies listed...
Now go polish a turd and try to sell it to me...
IUU - Thursday, October 3, 2013 - link
Apple is not slow but its intentions are sinister.I would rather buy "a polished turd" from any other "incompetent Apple rival" than let Apple destroy the progress of computing.
And by the way... Apple has offered a palatable computing performance only with its recent mobile products. Yet, they can't get over the fact that they actually had to incorporate performance parts into their devices, and they started to iterate the same old crap about "user experience", hoping they ultimately sell outdated tech with high profits.
I won't say more, I am fiercely anti-apple, but there are some very good reasons for this, whether you want to believe it or not.
ESC2000 - Sunday, October 6, 2013 - link
Or to put it more simply, competition is good for us all. Consumers would be screwed if everyone bought only apple, but I get the sense from the rabid apple lovers that ideally we'd all use apple products for everything. Thank God that's only a fantasy. Apple's awesome hardware is totally wasted on its closed down gimp OS.jasonelmore - Friday, October 4, 2013 - link
That's the thing, 90% of the gains werent from amazin soc design, it was from moving to a 64 bit instruction set, which dropped laggy legacy support of the past 20 years that slowed things. Moving forward, all these oem's will do the same, and that's when we truly see how good apple's new soc is.ddriver - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
Not really, while it is not a reference ARM design, apple have only modified it slightly, but it is still a conventional arm v8 chip.Note that the benchmarks the 5s is better at are:
1 - JS benchmarks using different browsers with different JS engine implementations
2 - single threaded, which plays in favor of apple, since they have lower core count
The snapdragon 800 is actually considerably faster in HPC workloads. The A7 has better single threaded performance, but not that much higher to make up for it...
Naturally, I don't expect from someone with your screen name to be capable of objectivity. And no, I don't own a single samsung device, so I am not biased even a little bit. If anything, I am a Dell and Asus guy...
MrSpadge - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
I really dislike Apples closed software environment - but you have to give credit where it's due. The 2-core A7 at 1.3 GHz beating this 4+4 core with A15's at a maximum of 1.8 GHz is really impressive. Apple is doing something right here! And seriously, who cares about HPC workloads on a tablet?ddriver - Tuesday, October 1, 2013 - link
So why do you need high performance on a tablet if high-performance computing is not needed on a tablet(or a phone for that matter)?I mean it is either that we need and care about performance or not. If we don't why would a faster chip be considered an advantage? Because it can do something in 0.002 seconds rather than 0.0025?