Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Vs iPad Air – Price and Specs Comparison

The iPad Air from Apple and the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 have emerged as the new contenders in the 10-inch category of tablets.

Both the tablets are great for casual browsing of the Internet and for gaming purposes, but now they also need to incorporate features for content creation. The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 offers a great feature for content creation with the S Pen stylus as well as many other productivity apps that are linked to it. However, the iPad Air has the advantage of ease of use and a better user interface.

Specs by Specs Comparison

The iPad Air is much lighter at 469g compared to the Galaxy at 540g. It is also slimmer at 7.5 mm compared to 7.9 mm of the Galaxy Note. The iPad Air has an aluminum body and offers CDMA connectivity. It is also available at a cheap base price. On the other hand, the Samsung Note 10.1 boasts of an S Pen stylus. Its screen is also sharper with 299ppi, as compared to the 264 ppi of iPad Air. The RAM is 3GB when compared to 1GB offered by the iPad air. The Samsung Note has an IR blaster as well, which can be used for functions of remote control for other devices like your TV. It has an expandable storage and a better camera at 8 MP with LED flash compared to the 5 MP and no LED of the iPad Air.

Hardware

Apple offers a 4:3 aspect ratio with a screen size of9.7”, whereas Samsung uses a screen of 10.1” with an aspect ration of 16:10. The Galaxy Note appears a little bigger, with the iPad Air favoring a portrait usage and the Galaxy Note favoring a landscape usage. The Samsung Note also offers audio enhancements with the help of Adapt Sound and the SoundAlive specifications. The IR Blaster is surely a great advantage for controlling your television or set-top boxes.

As far as connectivity goes, the iPad Air uses the Lightning adapter, but micro USB cables are more common and cheaper as well. The Lightning adapter in the iPad Air also offers TV Out features with an adapter and is useful for giving presentations or for watching movies. However, the advantage of a micro USB port in the Samsung Note is that you can use it for plugging keyboards, a mouse or an external storage device and even HDMI.

The iPad Air is available only in the 4G LTE versions, whereas the Samsung Galaxy Note comes in 3G and 4G LTE, but both the tablets do not have CDMA.

The Verdict

Apple’s iPad Air has a great aluminum body and it is also slimmer, lighter, and thinner than the Samsung Note, whereas the latter has a glossy plastic finish, but with a false leatherback, it also looks reasonably attractive and offers a good grip. However, if you are not interested in cheap storage options or if you prefer the metal look of the iPad Air and don’t mind a wired TV Out, the iPad Air is for you.

In addition, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 offers better options in terms of storage and it also has better connectivity along with an IR Blaster feature. The S Pen in the Galaxy Note easily fills the lack of the mouse and offers great accuracy as well as additional controlling options. You don’t have this Stylus in the iPad Air, but instead Apple offers you a great experience with its system of office suites, the maps, and the cloud and also creation of music, all of which are made by Apple. Such features are also available in the Samsung Note but these are outsourced to Google, Dropbox and to Polaris Office and so on.

New iPad Air: Lighter, thinner 9.7-inch tablet weighs just 1 pound, arrives Nov. 1

Apple announced the iPad Air, its fifth-generation iPad, October 22 in San Francisco at the company's annual unveiling event. Thinner, lighter, and with a more powerful processor, the 9.7-inch iPad Air with Retina Display brings some design and performance enhancements to the best-selling tablet, but not as many additions as we had hoped for, or as rumors suggested.

In fact, we'd say that Apple missed some opportunities to wow us with a tablet that could have perhaps had a larger screen with higher resolution, a higher-megapixel camera, or laptoplike accessories. At the very least, this was Apple's chance to recapture its spirit of innovation and give us something different, rather than what amounts to a polished iteration of what we already had.

iPad Air hands-on (pictures)

1-2 of 13

Scroll LeftScroll Right

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

For instance, there's no gold-hued version as with the iPhone 5S, and Apple mentioned nothing about incorporating the Touch ID fingerprint sensor that uses biometric data to unlock the phone and approve purchases. Also, by keeping many key specs on par with last year's model, Apple's full-size iPad and iPad Mini are now more similar than ever, except that the Mini costs $100 less.

Design and in-hand feel
From the moment you first pick it up, the iPad Air's weight and slimness are two of its most significant new features. Tipping the scale at just 1 pound, the iPad Air's heft is down from the 1.44 pounds of the fourth-generation iPad. It also measures an extremely thin 7.5 millimeters (0.29 inch), as opposed to the predecessor's 9.4mm depth (0.37 inch) -- that's a 20 percent slimmer build, if you're keeping count. The bezel is also much narrower, too; 43 percent so, in fact.

The weight makes it much easier to hold with one hand, and the pared-down bezel makes the screen absolutely pop. Our first impression: the iPad Air is like the iPhone 5S of iPads: refined, reduced, and overall improved.A tablet's heft plays a crucial role in how quickly your arms tire holding it. In this update, Apple has managed to reduce its hardware's weight by almost half a pound, an impressive feat that you're only likely to notice because you hardly notice it at all. In fact, even though we knew the specs, nothing can prepare you for how light and slim the iPad Air actually feels in real life.

Performance and other hardware
A new A7 chip inside makes the Air eight times faster than the iPad 4, according to Apple. For reference, this is the same 64-bit chip populating the iPhone 5S. Like Apple's latest smartphone, the Air's A7 also comes with the M7 motion coprocessor, which promises graphics that render at twice the rate of the previous iPad.

In terms of graphics, that means that this iPad Air is 72 times faster than the original iPad in GPU performance, but who's counting? All that really matters is how it stacks up against today's top tablet performers (and more on that to come when we actually get review units in-house.)

In terms of Wi-Fi, there's MIMO wireless technology onboard, but the Air is using the 802.11n standard, not the the more current "ac" Wi-Fi designation.

The iPad Air is Apple's extremely light fifth-generation iPad.

(Credit: Scott Stein/CNET)

We're sorry, but nobody looks cool taking photos with a tablet. However, if you must (and it's quite possible that your tablet contains the best camera you own), then the iPad Air has a 5-megapixel iSight camera on the rear that Apple says takes improved low-light shots. On the front, video-chatters will find the refreshed FaceTime HD camera, which gives you larger pixels to make images look clearer, according to the claim. Dual microphones will help capture even sound.

Apple is always cagey when it comes to sharing battery capacity details, but the company does list a 32.4-watt-hour rechargeable lithium battery, and promises to keep up its 10-hour battery life rate on the Air.

Apple unveils new iPads, MacBooks and releases Mavericks (pictures)

1-2 of 30

Scroll LeftScroll Right

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

On the software front, free and redesigned versions of core Apple apps -- like iPhoto, iMovie, Keynote, and GarageBand -- have been reworked for iOS 7 and the iPad.

iPad Air or iPad Mini 2?
With the iPad Mini 2's Retina Display and updated specs, the iPad Air becomes a little less dominant in this space. Its similarity to the $399 iPad Mini with Retina Display makes us wonder if Apple is cannibalizing iPad sales for the smaller, cheaper device.

Are you willing to pay $100 more for a larger screen? Yeah, you might be, if you value more expansive screen real estate and rely on that virtual keyboard.

Pricing and availability
As with past models, the iPad will come in both Wi-Fi and cellular versions that support LTE.

	16GB	32GB	64GB	128GB
Wi-Fi	$499	$599	$699	$799
Cellular	$629	$729	$829	$929

The iPad Air ships November 1 in space gray and black, and silver and white colors (but no gold, sorry). Prices start at $499 for a 16GB Wi-Fi version, with the cellular model coming in at $629. In addition to a wave of other first-release countries, it's coming to China with Wi-Fi, a first for Apple.

Although the iPad Air completely replaces the fourth-generation iPad, Apple will continue to sell the iPad 2 for $399.

Apple launches iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display

Apple took design cues from its smaller iPad mini and made the larger format tablet thinner and lighter, renaming it iPad Air. It also revamped the iPad mini with Retina display.

The new iPads have a number of small internal improvements which were seen in the recently launched iPhone 5S.

At an event in California US, on Tuesday, the company launched its new crop of products, including the two new iPads and Macbook Pro laptops, while also announcing the availability of its latest operating system OSX Mavericks as a free download.

The latest -- iPad Air and the new iPad mini with much-awaited Retina display -- come at a time when the Cupertino-based iPhone and iPad maker is facing a growing challenge from the Google Android-based tablets from manufacturers like Samsung, LG and Asus.

However, given the pricing of the iPads, it is obvious Apple does not want to compete in non-premium tablet category as it does in the smartphone business with iPhones.

iPad Air is 20% thinner, 28% lighter and has 43% smaller bezels than last year’s iPad 4, which has curiously been stopped by Apple even as it will continue to sell the earlier generation iPads. The 9.7 inch iPad Air with Retina display resembles iPad mini a lot. It is 7.5mm thick and weighs 1 pound. Apple claimed it is the thinnest full-sized tablet in the world.

iPad Air uses the same 64-bit A7 chip and the M7 motion co-processor that was introduced recently with the iPhone 5S. It can open files and render graphics twice as fast as the iPad 4, while still promising the same 10-hour battery life.

The new model will hit the shelves on November 1 and come in Space Grey and Silver colours. It will be available at $499, $599, $699 and $799 for the 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB Wi-Fi models respectively. The Wi-Fi and 4G models will cost another $130 over and above that in case of each model.

iPad Air comes with a disappointing 5MP rear iSight camera, but a 1.2MP front-facing HD camera for FaceTime with improved backside illumination sensors features larger pixels for better low-light performance. It is powered by iOS 7, which is the latest version of the software and brings features like revamped search, notifications, control centre and the iCloud Keychain password manager.

Curiously, while Apple phased out last year’s iPad 4 from its portfolio, it has retained in its lineup the iPad 2, which was launched two years ago. The fourth-generation iPad was launched last October.

Apple also unveiled the new iPad mini with Retina display which was much-awaited. The Retina iPad mini has twice the screen resolution than the first model at 2048x1536p in the same 7.9-inch display. It also runs on the 64-bit A7 chipset, a huge upgrade over the A5 chip used in the previous version. The new iPad mini too will be launched in November and come in Silver and Space Grey colours.

The mini-tablet also runs iOS 7 and comes with the same 5MP iSight and 1.2MP front camera for FaceTime. The Retina iPad mini will cost $399 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model and $529 for 16GB Wi-Fi and 4G variant. The 32GB, 64GB and 128GB Wi-Fi models have been priced at $499, $599 and $699, while their respective Wi-Fi and cellular variants cost another $130 over and above for each model.

The company has also retained the iPad mini launched last year, but cut its price by $30, from $329 to $299. Apple also showcased two covers for the iPad Air and Retina iPad mini priced at $69 and $79, respectively.

Both new iPads feature two antennas to support Multiple-In-Multiple-Out (MIMO) technology, bringing nearly twice the Wi-Fi performance with data rate possible of going up to 300Mbps. Cellular models too will have better LTE coverage as these will support more LTE networks worldwide.

Apple has sold over 170 million iPads and now has 4,75,000 iPad-exclusive applications in the App Store.