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.

Battery Life And Recharge Time

Normalized Brightness Benchmarks (Background Info)

Samsung's ATIV Tab finishes in second place in the same Web browsing and MP3 playback test used on the previous page.

Amazon's Kindle Fire HD continues to top our chart, though the difference is a slim 12 minutes. Almost ironically, the Kindle employs an older Texas Instruments OMAP 44xx SoC to achieve its result. Samsung makes its statement with a notably faster APQ8060A.

As predicted, the ATIV Tab shines when it comes to hardware-accelerated video playback. Lasting more than twelve-and-a-half hours, this Windows RT-based tablet can play back more than just a couple of movies on an overseas flight. 

Gaming is more taxing, though the ATIV Tab still leads the field with more than six hours of run time looping Riptide GP's demo mode.

Recharging

We were frankly expecting the ATIV Tab to recharge quickly, since it shares the ATIV Smart PC 500T's battery pack. It took us by surprise, then, when the Tab went almost five hours before hitting 100% charge. That's as bad as Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, which we complained about a full year ago.

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