Tablets aren't just for fun and games. That's long been Microsoft's stance when it comes to its Windows 8 tablets and convertibles. But Samsung is now targeting the professional-minded and PC holdouts with its latest lines of tablets: the Galaxy TabPRO and Galaxy NotePRO.
First and foremost, Samsung says these devices offer the "ultimate viewing experience." While different models come in sizes ranging from 8.4 to 12.2 inches, the display resolution is uniform at 2560 x 1600 -- that's over 4 million pixels.
Another hallmark of Samsung's 2014 tablets is a completely redesigned home screen the company calls Magazine UX. It looks a whole lot like the Windows 8 home screen, dividing the display into square or rectangular tiles. With three separate home screens (Work, Personal, and Social & Media), you can customize what apps and widgets inhabit each, and like Windows 8, each of these tiles displays relevant, real-time information. You can also perform split screen multitasking, and can multitask with up to four apps at the same time. For that, you can resize the content in each individual window so it takes up the desired amount of space. You can also have multiple instances of the same app, like the browser. The PRO tablets even offer a remote PC app, for sharing files and accessing programs on your main machine, and built-in e-conferencing.
Both tablets come loaded with approximately $700 with of premium subscription apps and services like Cisco Webex Meetings, Sketchbook Pro, and the NY Times.
As for the hardware, the Galaxy NotePRO is the flagship, coming in the 12.2-inch screen size and sporting a similar aesthetic to Samsung's current Note tablets, with a silver bezel and white faux-leather textured rear. Yes, it has an S-pen. Inside, it's got a 2.3GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, and it sports an 8-megapixel camera on the rear and a 2-megapixel shooter on the front.
The Galaxy TabPRO comes in 8.8-, 10.1-, and 12.2-inch versions and does not have an S-pen stylus. It's back plate is also pleasantly textured. All three sizes share the exact same processor and camera specs as the NotePRO -- it just comes in different flavors to suit your tablet size needs.
After some hands-on time with the devices, I was impressed by the lightness and bright, signature over-saturated high-res display on the tablets -- which looks fantastic for video playback -- but the software performance and execution was lacking. There was noticeable lag in some onscreen interactions, and a lot of the navigation was not intuitive -- when the onscreen keyboard pops up, for example, it initially pops up as a small modal rather than taking up the width of the device. A barely noticeable keyboard icon on the left lets you toggle between keyboard modes. But, you have the option of a traditional, PC-style keyboard layout (complete with normal Control-V and Control-C type shortcuts), which could be nice for those doing serious documentation work.
Both tablet lines will go on sale in Q1 of this year. Prices have yet to be annouced.
