Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0, very good but not for everyone

The small Korean wants to beat the mini tablet competitors on the grounds of flexibility. The nib is his secret weapon, but the price may deter

 

Price 529 €
Category: tablets
Display: 8 "layer with wacom
Operating System: Android 4.1
Manufacturer: Samsung
Availability: June 2013

The first to successfully usher in the season of the tablet mignon was an outsider in 2011. It was the Amazon Kindle Fire, which in one way or another then stimulated competition with the excellent Google Nexus 7 and Apple's iPad Mini. Samsung for its part has a line up well underway, but with the Notes 8.0(Galaxy Note2 Cases) wants to strike a powerful blow to Apple's tablet-equal diagonal, without forgetting a challenge to the whole category, thanks to unique features and interesting hardware features.

If you know the Galaxy line of Koreans, the design of the Notes 8.0 you will be familiar by now: rounded corners, chamfered edges, good build quality (although not to the levels of the iPad and Nexus), massive use of plastic materials ... It seems to have something to do with a Galaxy S4(Galaxy S3 I9300 Screen protector) under the influence of one of the mushrooms from Super Mario.

8 "diagonal and there are many notes you can put in your pocket, even (when it will arrive in autumn) in the interior of the jacket. In exchange, however, is virtually non-existent, it is with little effort in a briefcase in his hands and is well balanced and undemanding. Even here, however we do not reach the levels of competition portability of Google and Apple.

But when turned on, Notes retrieves the disadvantage: the display will in fact arrive at a resolution of 1280x800 pixels, more than the own small tablet of Cupertino and the same as the champion of Mountain View, but spread over a larger area. The result still leaves look with pleasure, accomplices saturated colors and good brightness, that 50% is enough to make everything readable in any environment where there is direct sunlight.

The secret weapon of Note? The included stylus. How about the other notes, even here in the body is hidden the S-Pen, a pointing device that communicates to the touch surface up to 1024 levels of pressure. The accuracy of the instrument, combined with the many features supported by standard Notes, is the luck of the small Samsung tablet. And especially in the use of the stylus, the diagonal 8 "is perfect nor as bulky as that of the Notes 10.1, nor narrow as that of Note 2(Samsung Galaxy Case).

Also because of the microSD slot and micro USB socket, then the Notes 8.0 also becomes a good business partner, able for example to exchange data with cameras or expand the onboard memory: something that his opponents are not in the same category able to do. Even the dual-screen function to open two apps at the same time and keep them in the screen is effective, though still rudimentary. And Android 4.1 will not be the latest version (available on the Nexus 7 instead), but still offers excellent games, productivity app functional and a stable structure, fluid and flexible enough to temporarily replace your laptop or PC.

Here is also a help in the technical sector that between the processor (quad core) and RAM (2GB) only lacks a decent camera, but the essence is that the Notes 8.0 in general proves to be a great tablet, but burdened by a large mole: a price over the top, perhaps justified by the excellent S-Pen, but just out of scale if they are considered the main contenders that Samsung wants to blow slices of the market. After all, if you use the tablet with your fingers, you may find unappetizing a product that relies entirely on the nib.