Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 review

The Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) is the Swiss Army Knife of tablets

Galaxy Note 10.1 review
The shiny and new Galaxy Note 10.1

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With features like the S Pen and Samsung's extensive suite of productivity apps, you probably couldn't say that the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 was built for media, but it excels in this area nonetheless.

A huge part of that, of course, is down to the tablet's beautiful screen which, as I've already mentioned, displays HD video and text as well as any other Android tablet.

Of course, this being Android, you also have access to the excellent Google Play Store for downloading a comprehensive range of movies, music and books quickly and cheaply (or at least competitively).

Google Play Store

While all of this media content is accessible through the one Google Play app, Google has also split the content up into its own separate colour-coded apps, which effectively act as shortcuts to the relevant sections. On the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, these can all be found tucked away in the Google folder in the app tray.

I often find it a little churlish when Android manufacturers relegate Google's stellar service offerings to a dusty corner of their custom UI in favour of their own inferior versions. I recommend promoting the Google folder to your home screen immediately.

Google Apps Tray

Back to the media apps: Play Movies & TV will provide all the video content you could possibly need. Prices for new movies tend to be £3.49 in SD or £4.49 in HD, while you can also rent older or less premium titles for as little as 99p ($0.99, AU$0.99).

You can also purchase titles outright, with newer or premium films costing £9.99 in SD or £11.99 in HD.

Google Play Movies

Samsung also has its own video store offering as part of the Samsung Hub, which is accessible through one of the oversized widgets found on one of the home screens.

However, it's markedly inferior to Google's offering - in attractiveness and usability if not price or range (which appear pretty much identical).

Video hub

Its inclusion seems somewhat superfluous, especially when you consider that purchasing films and TV shows here will restrict their usage to Samsung devices, whereas media bought through Google Play can be played back on pretty much any smartphone, tablet or desktop web browser.

Still, when it comes to actually playing video content, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 is unimpeachable. HD video looks stunning, with no hint of performance issues. Then there's Samsung's typically strong codec support. H.263, H.264, MPEG4, WMV and DivX all work without a problem.

Music is handled by the ever-excellent Google Play Music, which enables you to purchase MP3 tracks from a well stocked library. It also lets you upload 20,000 of your existing tracks for free, enabling you to stream them to any device with a web browser - or any tablet with the Google Play App, more pertinently.

Google Music

Google Play Music now even features a Spotify-like subscription service, offering unlimited access to its vast music library. It's a pretty comprehensive offering.

That hasn't stopped Samsung from adding yet another of its own offerings, though. Its Music Store is possibly the least necessary of the lot, given the all-round brilliance of Google Play Music, but here it is.

Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly serviceable MP3 store (powered by 7digital) that might have come in genuinely handy, oh, let's say, three years ago. But here and now, on a top-end Android device at the end of 2013? Not so much.

It's a similar situation with books. Google provides a fine ebook store in the Google Play Store, with plenty of well-priced books to purchase. Of course, it's hard to resist the ubiquitous Amazon Kindle service in this field, and that's only a free app download away.

Google Play Books

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 itself makes for a fine ebook reader, with its super-sharp display and reasonably light body making reading on it a pleasure. It's not quite wieldy enough to displace that Kindle or even that Nexus 7, mind.

Once again, Samsung provides its own Book Store Hub, and once again you needn't really bother.