At this year’s CES, Samsung announced it’s largest tablet yet, the Galaxy NotePro 12.2 and TabPro 12.2. I’ve become quite fond of my high density screen and S-pen equipped Note 10.1 2014 edition, so I was very curious to see how it differed in size, handling and user experience with the new NotePro series. Today we compare these two Pen equipped heavyweights.
When I said heavyweights I wasn’t being facetious. The NotePro 12.2 comes in at 750 grams. But I will give Samsung this – it doesn’t feel as heavy as it perhaps should given its size. Sure, it will get heavy pretty quickly in one hand, but the NotePro was never designed to be used that way. Rather, you can imagine it lying down on on a tablet like this or even on a dock with a small tilt.
Of course next to the NotePro 12.2, the Note 10.1 feels positively feather like at 547 grams. The extra 2.2 inches of diagonal screen space absolutely dwarfs the Note 10.1, with 5 centimeters additional width and nearly 3 centimeters additional length. The NotePro manages to retain virtually the same thickness as the Note 10.1, which probably aids in the perception of being light for its size. The fake leather back also feels familiar in its gripability.
There are actually many similarities to both models that the NotePro 12.2 could be considered to be a blown up version of the Note 10.1. The overall design is the same, with the hardware button and capacitive buttons on the wings, the speaker and button placements along with the headphone jack, SD card slot and S-pen holder.
Same quad core Snapdragon 800 chipset with 3 gig of RAM, 8MP back camera and 2MP front camera, and the same screen resolution – although because the NotePro12.2 is so much larger, the pixel density does drop to 246 ppi. But after looking at the screen a fair bit, I can report that text still looks very sharp and streamed video content also looks great.
The NotePro 12.2 does follow the Note 3 with the same USB 3 style connection, but it does still accept a standard micro USB 2 for connection and charging. So if the hardware external and internals are all but the same albeit with a larger screen, what’s the difference? Well it turns out that 12.2 inches makes for an awesome multitasking real estate, as we would know using notebooks around that size.
The Note 10.1 runs on Android 4.3, and the NotePro 4.4.2, and although I haven’t dug into the nitty gritty yet there are a few obvious changes, like the more stylised drop down menu that doesn’t extend the whole screen width as it does on the Note 10.1.
The biggest changes are two fold. The multi window on the Note 10.1 is for a split between two apps. The multi window on the NotePro 12.2 can handle up to 4 apps running on the screen together.
The other big software difference is in the flipboard-style overlay called Magazine UI. With large tiles that dynamically update based on your schedule and nominated categories of interest, you can scan these customised pages before digging into specific articles.
The Note 10.1 has something similar as well but it’s more of an app that aggregates articles and is hidden for the most part, rather than a service that feels part of the OS.
So comparing the two tablets, most of the benefits are in the software tweaks which deliver stunning multitasking and therefore positions the NotePro 12.2 as the best productivity tablet – maybe a notebook replacement for those that don’t necessarily need a keyboard. The s-pen provides great editing power, particular in graphics applications and marking up documents, and this is true across both the 10.1 and the 12.2 models.
So that’s the choice – a one handed tablet with a great looking screen and the S-pen with all the apps and benefits that provides, and a more than generous oversized screen with the S-pen plus the extra multi window and fresh interface – that could potentially take over from where a notebook left off.
What are your thoughts now that you’ve seen both of these, are either one of these Note products what you are looking for in a productivity tablet, and which one makes most sense for you?
[…] of the main questions I’ve had about about the new Galaxy NotePro 12.2 was about the Touchwiz interface, how it’s changed and what it looks like now compared to the […]