Samsung ATIV Tab Review: A Tablet To Hold Your Breath For?

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Microsoft set the standard for Windows RT-based hardware, but is there still room for partners to sell compelling alternatives? We take our first Qualcomm-powered Windows RT tablet for a spin to determine if Samsung's ATIV Tab is worth waiting for.

Performance: Samsung's 10.1" LCD Display

Samsung doesn't get specific about the display technology its ATIV Tab uses. However, our brightness benchmark suggests it comes from the company's SuperBright Plus family capable of 400 nits. The ATIV Smart PC 500T also uses a SuperBright display, but it delivers slightly better contrast. We're comparing two different display sizes from the same family, so this isn't entirely unexpected. After all, we've seen the same thing from full-sized desktop monitors.

Rendering 44% of the Adobe RGB1998 and 64% of the sRGB gamut, Samsung's ATIV Tab is only marginally better than Microsoft's Surface. If you look at the color map, the lines for both tablets almost overlap.

The Tab appears to have a slight advantage in rendering deeper blues and reds. Even so, we wouldn't call the win a definitive one. The Surface continues to deliver the best contrast ratio we've seen from any tablet. And as such, the real-world difference between the Qualcomm- and Nvidia-powered devices are very hard to see in the real-world, even when they're sitting side by side.

Andrew Ku
20 Comments Comment from the forums
  • tanjo
    Power consumption graphs says this tablet has Z2760.
    Reply
  • kyuuketsuki
    While we were at CES, however, we met up with Lazslo Kishonti, CEO of Kishonti Informatics and the developer of GLBenchmark. He pointed out that Atom-based tablets running Windows RT are more likely to deliver different levels of performance.
    Er, you mean Atom-based tablets running Windows 8? (Page 6, Paragraph 11)
    Power consumption graphs says this tablet has Z2760.Our setup is pretty basic: we set BrowsingBench to run in battery life mode, which prevents the browser from caching data. Instead of
    Where's the rest of this paragraph? (Page 6, Paragraph 13)
    Reply
  • kyuuketsuki
    Also, I'm not sure what's up with the Futuremark Peacekeeper and Rightware Browsermark results, but we know damn well the Krait S4 in this tab is a better performer in every way to the Tegra 3. Not sure why go with the S4 Play with the dual-core Krait and Adreno 225 instead of an S4 Pro with quad-core Krait and Adreno 320, though, especially in a tablet form-factor.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    KyuuketsukiNot sure why go with the S4 Play with the dual-core Krait and Adreno 225 instead of an S4 Pro with quad-core Krait and Adreno 320, though, especially in a tablet form-factor.Because Win8 is already a battery hog compared to Android, and adding power hungry cores will make that worse.
    I dont see any issues with S4 pro and Android.
    Reply
  • cangelini
    KyuuketsukiEr, you mean Atom-based tablets running Windows 8? (Page 6, Paragraph 11)Where's the rest of this paragraph? (Page 6, Paragraph 13)Fixed!
    Reply
  • dokterprio
    Why there is difference in power usage between ativ tab and ativ smartpc 500t. I think they are the same, except the screen size.
    Reply
  • adamovera
    tanjoPower consumption graphs says this tablet has Z2760.Apologies, fixed now.
    Reply
  • adamovera
    dokterprioWhy there is difference in power usage between ativ tab and ativ smartpc 500t. I think they are the same, except the screen size.Sorry, we had the charts labelled the same. The ATIV Smart PC 500T has an Atom and runs Windows 8, while the ATIV Tab has an ARM-based chip from Qualcomm and runs Windows RT - they are actually very different devices.
    Reply
  • ojas
    BrowsingBench scores: are the ipads in correct order?
    Reply
  • adamovera
    ojasBrowsingBench scores: are the ipads in correct order?Seems to be, I haven't used this benchmark yet myself, and I'd have to check with the author to be sure, but I'd guess that these results are inversely reflecting the resolution of the different iPads.
    Reply