When you boil it down, the question of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (Verizon Wireless) is this: Despite its myriad cool useful features, with only 16GB of storage, is it worth $600? If pressed on that question, my answer would have to be "no." That is, if you're simply looking for a simple tablet to do simple, tablet-y things. If that describes you, know that there are plenty of cheaper tablets that will meet your needs.
If you're looking for something more robust, something different, something that possibly scratches that artistic itch inside you, there is a strong argument that can be made in favor of the Note 10.1. Just know that there is a huge value caveat. The Verizon Wireless version costs about $100 more than the Wi-Fi version that was released in 2012. It also includes many (but not quite all, yet) of the UI and software updates Samsung pushed to Note 10.1 Wi-Fi owners in early 2013. These changes are smart, useful, and logical, and integrate the S Pen in ways users should have been experiencing from the get-go.
Also, Verizon offers quite a bit of 4G plan flexibility with no mandatory contracts, thankfully. Six-hundred dollars for an admittedly feature-packed tablet will still be too much for most, however, and unless you literally have "on-the-road" need of a cellular tablet, the cheaper Wi-Fi version that offers more feature flexibility and likely more timely updates is the way to go.
The Verizon Note, same as the Samsung Note
The original Wi-Fi version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 was released in the summer of 2012. Verizon is now offering the 4G tablet for $599 with 16GB of storage. That's a lot of money for a tablet, 4G or not. The original Note 10.1 started at $499 with 16GB of storage, and as of yet the price hasn't come down, despite a few specs getting a bit long in the tooth. The Note 10.1 has always been an expensive prospect, and with a 4G option, it's even moreso.
The basic physical design of the Verizon version hasn't changed at all; however, Verizon and Samsung have taken this opportunity to jazz things up a bit. The dull silver edges of the original are now brighter and shinier. The bezel and back are now a dark but somewhat bluish gray color. Also, there's now a large "Verizon" and "4GLTE" logo on the back.
Speakers grace the right and left bezel, and the top bezel houses a 1.9-megapixel camera that sits right next to an ambient light sensor. Directly opposite, on the back, is a 5-megapixel, LED-flash-supported camera. The top edge holds a power button, a volume rocker, a microSD slot (supporting cards of up to 64GB), an IR blaster, a headphone jack, and a SIM card slot. On the bottom edge are the dock connector and a microphone pinhole. The tablet is fairly light and comfortable to hold, but compared to the Nexus 10's grippier build, the Note 10.1 feels plasticky and less than durable.
(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)There's a 4-inch-long, poorly placed holding space in the tablet's bottom-right corner for the S Pen stylus. The problems with this placement are: 1) the S Pen can easily fall out if you're removing it while holding the tablet up; and 2) when the tablet sits in the docking station, the holding space is too close to the desktop for the S Pen to be removed, unless you undock it first. Not a huge design faux pas, but it's just a strange decision not to place the holding space on the top.
The S Pen has its sides squared off to keep it from unexpectedly rolling away. The pen button is grooved to make it easy to find with your fingertips, and while at first I found myself consistently pressing the button by mistake, I kicked that habit after a few hours of getting accustomed to using the pen. Samsung also built some useful shortcut gestures into the pen, making tasks like screen capture, calling up an app's menu, and going back to the previous screen a simple act of holding down the pen button and swiping or tapping the screen in the appropriate way.
(New) Software features
The Verizon version of the Note 10.1 ships with Android 4.1.2, Jelly Bean, which includes a number of legit and tangible Samsung-developed UI improvements. A Verizon rep told me it will support the tablet with future upgrades but was mum on details.
If you're familiar with Samsung tablets, the inclusion of the company's custom UI, TouchWiz, on the Note 10.1 will probably not shock you. Thankfully, Samsung has slowly toned down the oppressively Fisher-Price-ian look, now providing a more natural, quieter aesthetic. The mini apps tray now includes only those apps compatible with the Note 10.1's multi-window feature, which allows you to run two simultaneous apps on the screen. You can also now horizontally resize each app to your heart's content. The compatible apps are limited to a scant 13, and although the Wi-Fi version of the tablet includes multi-screen versions of apps like Twitter and Facebook, Verizon has yet to implement this feature. One of my favorite and most useful mini app-tray apps, the Task Manager, can now be accessed only after tapping the recent apps button or going directly through settings.
The unofficial poster child for the Note 10.1's interface innovation, S Note gets a some notable improvements as well, and the veil of inhospitable-ness that greeted me in the first version of the tablet has largely dissipated. S Note now includes a brief text and video tutorial to make jumping into the app a bit less confusing, and the interface has been tweaked slightly -- you can now easily load a completely blank sheet of "paper" -- toward the same purpose. Icons now present their functionality much more clearly when tapping them and can be further clarified by the new AirView feature which lets users hover the point of the S Pen over a menu option, which in turn displays a text bubble of each option's functionality.
Typing in a Web site URL, composing an e-mail, searching for an app in Google Play, or doing pretty much any action that would normally cause a software keyboard to pop up at the bottom on the screen, now triggers a notepad to appear. And instead of pecking away at each letter with the pen, you can now simply write your entry directly into the text field. It's an incredibly useful change that dramatically improves the flow of the entire user experience. Also, the pen-to-text translation software is now much more accurate and even when an error occurs, it's much more likely the fault of the user now.