You won’t notice much of a difference between the Note 10.1 and the older Galaxy Tab 2 10.1— in fact, they look almost identical. It’s interesting Samsung’s stuck with this design, since it first debuted as a hasty lawsuit update to the original Galaxy Tab after Apple sued Samsung for copying the iPad. It’s certainly distinctive, though, with a dark silver border framing stereo speakers on the front edges, and a dark gray bezel around the screen.

It’s handsome enough, but it unfortunately it’s all plastic all the way around — and you’ll feel it the instant you pick it up. Not only does the plastic back flex in your hand, but the shiny finish quickly picks up fingerprints and other smudges, belying its faux brushed-metal texture. It all just feels a bit cheap — a stark contrast to other Samsung tablets like the Galaxy Tab 7.7 and the decidedly-premium feeling Nexus 7, which costs just $199.

The front of the Note is of course dominated by its 10.1-inch display, which is... okay. It has solid viewing angles and brighter colors than the Nexus 7 display, but at 1280 x 800, it’s nowhere close to matching the resolution or clarity of the new iPad’s Retina Display or even other similarly-priced Android tablets, which are starting to feature 1080p displays. I also think it looks a bit too contrasty and harsh, but I am extremely picky.

The Note has cameras, which I did not use. You will probably never use them either, because a quick glance at the recorded output of the cameras suggests that any other camera in range of your person is probably better.

Around the top edge of the Note you’ll find a headphone jack, a microSD card slot, the sleep / wake button, a volume rocker, and an IR blaster for use with the bundled Peel smart remote app. On the opposite edge you’ll find Samsung’s weirdly inconvenient proprietary charging connector, which looks almost exactly like Apple’s ubiquitous 30-pin iPhone / iPad connector but is something else entirely. A micro USB port would have been much more useful — Apple gets away with a proprietary connector because it enables a robust accessory ecosystem, but there’s no such benefit with the Note. Instead, there’s just the dawning realization you will one day lose this weird cable and find yourself alone in a room with a dead piece of plastic, tapping away with a pen that leaves no ink and no trace of your earthly existence.

Speaking of the pen, there is one. Samsung calls its stylus the S Pen, and it fits into a slot at the bottom right of the Note. The slot is actually quite clever, and can sense when the pen is inserted; the OS plays a little sound. A quick-launch menu pops up when you pull it out again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any way to customize the apps shown on this menu. I hope you like the Crayon Physics icon, because you’re going to see it every time you pull out the Note’s stylus.

The bundled S Pen is a nubby little thing — it’s much shorter than a regular pen, and weighs almost nothing in the hand. There’s a button on the side that engages various functions in different apps, but for the most part all of the action is in the tip, which can register 1,024 levels of pressure. Since it’s Wacom technology underneath, you can use any Wacom Penabled stylus, which is a nice plus.

So hey, it’s a Galaxy Tab with a pen. Let’s talk about it.

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