Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 review

ANDROID

As is usual, Samsung hasn’t changed Android much. It has added a screenshot button to the soft buttons bar at the bottom of the screen, as well as a Mini Apps bar. Mini Apps are utilities that you can bring up in front of the main Android interface and include a calculator, music player and calendar, among others. They work quite well, but for us they don’t add anything over widgets or standard applications.

Samsung has also made minor changes to the mail and calendar apps. They’re mostly cosmetic, but S Planner, the calendar replacement, also lets you pinch-to-zoom to switch between day, week and month views. It’s a useful feature, even if the actual animation is a little jerky.

CAMERA

While the Note 10.1 has 5-megapixel camera, the Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 has a 3-megapixel one. Quality isn’t terrible, with the image well-exposed for the most part and bright colours. The low resolution images mean that there’s not a lot of detail in the image. Full HD video recording at 30fps is also possible. While the footage is smooth, the picture is very noisy and detail is lacking.

A 3-megapixel camera at the rear is fine for the odd shot, but you won’t capture a lot of detail

There’s a front VGA camera for video calling. Quality is as you’d expect: good enough for a quick video chat, but nothing else.

HARDWARE VERSIONS
The Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is available with 16GB or 32GB of onboard memory and you can add up-to 64GB more using the Micro SDXC card slot at the top of the tablet. Having this memory card slot means it’s probably more cost effective to buy the 16GB model now and upgrade storage later. You can also buy a 3G model, which costs around £100 more for than the equivalent Wi-Fi model.

This tablet is now old though, and so almost impossible to buy from reputable retailers. The vastly superior Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 is widely available for £280 and is an excellent Android tablet. The Galaxy Tab 2 runs an old version of Android, has an outdated processor and fairly paltry specifications by today’s standards. Despite that it is nearly as expensive as the newer, shinier, faster and better Samsung Galaxy Tab 3.

The Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 runs Android 4.2, has a 1.6GHz dual core processor, 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage. It only launched last year and is still a great Android tablet if you’re after a larger, 10in screen. Samsung is already preparing to launch the Galaxy Tab 4 range, including 7in and 10in versions, but no release dates have been announced for its latest Android tablets.

Such is Samsung’s almost constant update cycle its technology quickly becomes redundant and that’s exactly what has happened to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. While it was a decent tablet when it launched in 2012, this is now an old piece of technology. Even if you can pick it up on the cheap, we wouldn’t recommend it.