Samsung Smart PC - Windows 8 Atom Tablet Review

[Dutchie64]

Not sure if I would need the 'power'of the i5, and am looking at the Samsung ATIV with the digitizer. It's still a x86 tablet, so all 'legacy' software will apply. The only thing is the plastic back, but 'there's a cover for that'.... ;-)

Looking at battery life, the Atom might have the best all-round thing going on.

Do people already have real world numbers on battery life for the i5/7 W8 tablets out there? Despite all the W8 optimisations on battery life, I cannot shake the idea that battery life will be roughly half of that of Atom/ARM cpu's.

rob

[ToneKnee]

Just to let people know there is another alternative with the Acer Iconia W700 which the base model being ?599: i3 Processor, 4GM RAM, 8 Hours battery life, wireless keyboard, caddy and so on, just thought I'd throw that out there, gets released this friday, I'll be getting one in hopefully 2 weeks.

[Dutchie64]

No active digitizer, and as all tablet sold over here, -with- a dock :-(

[Osiris]

Great review!

After reading this, I finnaly deceided to go with desktop + atom tablet route. From what you say, and judging by some youtube videos, atom should be plenty powerful for my mobile/couch needs. And vivotab is way too expensive.

I will be traveling to USA in january, so I am wondering if someone can give me an advice where to buy this?

I searched a bit and found a mall that has tigerdirect retail place (compUSA?) right around the airport. So that's probably my first stop upon arrival :)

So my question is, is it possible for me, as a foreinger, to make sure they have a tablet in stock on a certain date? to make a reservation?

Also, while i'm at it, is there a special proceadure i need to follow concernign first battery load/cycle?

I hate hijacking a thread with off topic questions, but i had to :(

Heya, the Microsoft store should have a full range of stock by then and best buy etc also stock many of the win8 tablets. By the time you are over there shouldn't be an issue with getting this or other tablets from retailers.

The battery question is tricky in the sense that there's a Lot of different explanations and opinions out there, for me I just went with burning it down and fully charging it a couple of times at the very least this will provide more accurate battery numbers.

Do people already have real world numbers on battery life for the i5/7 W8 tablets out there? Despite all the W8 optimisations on battery life, I cannot shake the idea that battery life will be roughly half of that of Atom/ARM cpu's.

rob

There's no official reviews or benchmarks yet but from the people with the Samsung pro the consensus seems to be around 5 hours of constant usage, 3-4 of movies (with high screen brightness) and 6-7 hrs with power saver mode and silent fan enabled (throttles CPU to 1.2 ghz)

[Stoffel]

Thanks for the review, really enjoyed reading it.

It also gave me a better idea of what my options are.

Just a quick questions, when you say it's not good for games, you mean fancy games right, your standard Metro games and Angry Birds all just work fine, right?

If I can play simple games, browse with like 10 tabs, watch movies, listen to music. I'm golden

The Clovertrail tablets all of a sudden seem like a good option for me

[markizvonschnitzel]

Heya, the Microsoft store should have a full range of stock by then and best buy etc also stock many of the win8 tablets. By the time you are over there shouldn't be an issue with getting this or other tablets from retailers.

The battery question is tricky in the sense that there's a Lot of different explanations and opinions out there, for me I just went with burning it down and fully charging it a couple of times at the very least this will provide more accurate battery numbers.

I hope it's still gonna be around by january :)

Thanks!

[clopsicle]

This is, without a doubt the best review I have come across on the the interwebs, and has absolutely sold me on one of these beauties!

I see you are also from Australia.. I live on the Gold Coast, just wondering the best place I would be able to pick one of these up from...

"Cheers, it retails for circa $893 AUD with dock." - Where did you get this price from?

Only place I have seen them is http://www.expansys....ic-blue-238907/ for $886 (but I think GST still needs to be added + postage), which is still in the preorder stage. I have heard JB's are meant to sell them but none I have spoke to know anything about it.....

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[Osiris]

This is, without a doubt the best review I have come across on the the interwebs, and has absolutely sold me on one of these beauties!

I see you are also from Australia.. I live on the Gold Coast, just wondering the best place I would be able to pick one of these up from...

"Cheers, it retails for circa $893 AUD with dock." - Where did you get this price from?

Only place I have seen them is http://www.expansys....ic-blue-238907/ for $886 (but I think GST still needs to be added + postage), which is still in the preorder stage. I have heard JB's are meant to sell them but none I have spoke to know anything about it.....

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

Hey mate, glad you liked the review, Harvey Norman and JB as well as Video Pro stock these. Probably best to ring up your local stores and get them to search for the product code 'XE500T1C-A02' or A01 (01 / 02 at the end is with or without dock). They can also do a stock on hand search to see what stores in the area have them as supplies are still pretty limited at the moment but trickling in slowly more and more.

[dopydope]

Very good review.

I've now had one of these for more than 3 weeks now and I am facing A LOT of issues.

It crashes all the time, almost always due to driver issues. My system event log is full of DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE stop errors. But even when Windows doesnt crash, components will randomly stop working until I reboot. For example while typing this comment, my bluetooth mouse stopped working. I am clearly not the only one with these problems as you can see in the reviews of the tablet on amazon.com !

My problems are the following, ranked approximately by frequency of occurence :

- WiFi : this one is a major pain, networks keep disappearing, it is also unable to keep a connection with some access points, will keep disconnecting and fail to reconnect.

- Bluetooth unresponsive (laggy mouse)

- Keyboard disconnections ; not as bad as it used to be, the v4 of the BIOS somehow imroved it a lot but it's still disconnecting if you touch the screen

- Crackling sounds in the speakers, loss of sound altogether, and high pitch noise through the left speaker

- Video becomes all scrambled sometimes, mostly in youtube

- The touchscreen has also stopped working a couple of times

- The sensor for screen orientation has stopped working a couple of times

On top of all these issues, it always dies everytime I leave it off for more than a couple of minutes. I need to hold the power button for 5 seconds before it comes back up with a cold reboot.

Finally, I find the stylus to be a bit laggy even in the desktop mode, I never used a stylus before so I dont know how it should feel but I do notice a lag.

Dont get me wrong I love this device and I think it has a great potential but I think Samsung rushed to get it out ; besides I dont feel Samsung cares a lot about Windows anyway, they are too much in bed with google, busy selling truck loads of that virus called android.

It might be the reason why all other devices based on the same architecture are still not yet shipping : Lenovo Thinkpad tablet 2, HP Envy X2, etc...

I was planning to use it to fully replace my work laptop, clearly at this stage this is not an option. I cant have a full system crash 5 times a day plus annoyances like laggy mouse/loss of mouse etc...

I regularly check the SW Update app from Samsung but I dont have anything pending apart from all their crapware like Norton etc ...

So I would be interested to hear if anyone in this forum has had these issues, if you have contacted Samsung yet, and aything that could improve the situation ...

[Osiris]

@dopydope, im amazed you still like the unit with all those problems - being a first gen device unfortunately a few defective units are getting out into the while and I would have to chalk yours up to that. Common problems that can occur which I don't think neccessarily indicates a defective unit and could be hardware/windows:

* Losing touch after resuming from hibernation - known driver issue, most people report this fixed with drivers from the other week though

* Losing sound after resume/hibernation - known issue haven't seen a fix for this yet

* Laggy bluetooth - still waiting on BT stack update.

Wifi is a unique one have seen a handful of complaints about this one, I've connected and regularly connect to a couple of different networks and can't say I have seen that although like a couple of the other errors I have heard when people have done resets it has fixed it.

Overall hopefully you can get your unit replaced as the first 3 in the list above you could potentially chalk up to windows niggles but the whole list nope.

[dopydope]

Well I absolutely hate my unit but I love its potential :) Wish it would work just fine. I really dont think W8 is at cause as I have been in the various pilots my company ran on W8 so have been using it everyday for work since May and had no such issues, even during the previews.

I will try first to do a clean install of windows, kind of going off topic here but does anyone know how to boot on the USB port ? I tried yesterday and it didnt work.

[Osiris]

Well I absolutely hate my unit but I love its potential :) Wish it would work just fine. I really dont think W8 is at cause as I have been in the various pilots my company ran on W8 so have been using it everyday for work since May and had no such issues, even during the previews.

I will try first to do a clean install of windows, kind of going off topic here but does anyone know how to boot on the USB port ? I tried yesterday and it didnt work.

Poor choice of words on my part I meant software as in the drivers interacting with the OS as opposed to being soley the hardware at fault.

That being said testing Windows on X system and then getting a different result on Z system unfortunately does not rule out windows as a cause. What works fine on one may not always work on the other and whilst more often than not it may be hardware/driver related the OS is not above recrimination. As mentioned, I believe it to be mostly driver related for some of the issues but a lot of tablets over the years (and the current ones) Sony, Samsung and Asus, seem to have 'quirks' as a result of coming out of hibernation/resuming for example. The only common thing between them all is basically the OS...

[dopydope]

I think the new connected standby mode and the new power states are not yet properly supported in the drivers... i'm begging for updates !!! :)

[clopsicle]

I ended up buying this from JB this morning, Got a pretty good deal. $849 with keyboard dock. Overall I am happy with the unit, but I must mention some of the bugs I have experienced already in the few hours I have had to play with it:

1: The keyboard dock connection is as dodgy as... On a stable surface - no dramas. But as soon as there is ANY movement of the tablet it loses connection and can get in some 'disconnect-reconnect' loop. Fixes itself up once it is still again. It almost feels like it's the gyro meter sensing movement then signalling a disconnect.

2: A few times now in metro mode the keyboard input screen just will not pop up at all.So frustrating as there is no button to prompt it to appear (in desktop mode there is the button nn the task bar

3: Once already after coming out of sleep I have lost the stylus support (fingers still worked)

4: The sounds has dropped out a few times, however seems to fix itself after a few lock-unlocks

5. And one occasion of it refusing to come out of sleep mode until I held the power button down for 20 seconds.

Some other notes of interest:

The keyboard (when it works) is one of the best I have typed on in a laptop/hybrid.

The screen does not tilt back far enough when docked for my liking

Microsoft store has a loooooooong way to come

When everything does work, it's a pleasure to use.

So can anyone help me with the the bugs? I am not sure how to update BIOS or windows or anything.Will Samsung address these issues? Also is there anyway to view all the things on multitask or just swipe in the last app you were using? Also how do I stop the display from auto adjusting the brightness every 10 seconds, I have gone into control panel and disabled adaptive brightness, but ti still changes it....

Any help appreciated! :D

[clopsicle]

Just an update if anyone is interested. I found the SW updater and updated everything that looked important and the stylus and the speakers have not dropped out since. So most of the software issues seem to have been resolved.

As for the dock I took it into JB to demonstrate how bad the connection was, it was verified in store (the salesperson didn't seem to happy I had returned with a problem) and my keyboard was replaced with another one which works a LOT better. It now will only drop out if you are adjusting the position of the screen while typing (as opposed to little touchs and bumps) so everything seems to be working out OK.

Great product!

[kidnice15]

I am so glad that I found this review! I was at my local staples the other day with my girlfriend and her sister. Her sister was looking for a netbook for Christmas, and since I am the techie guy they always ask me questions about electronics. They asked me if I could go with them to staples to check out netbooks. So I go with them and check out some netbooks, of course they are a bunch of electronics there and i can't help myself so I work my way over there. I see this 649$ tablet. I am like what is that. I took a picture of it with my phone went back home and started looking into it.

To make a long story short. I sold my ipad 3 to my brother for 400 and next week picking up this tablet. I have been all over the interwebs trying to find reviews about this tablet. I think it's going to fit my needs perfectly. I don't do any photo editing, I am not into pc games. ( Console player here ). I can't wait to get my hands on it and start messing with it. I have a feeling I am going to be carrying it every where. Thanks again for the review!!