A Slender Tablet With Widescreen Ambitions

If you've ever experienced the anxiety of buying an Apple product while worrying that a new model will come out days later, Apple's competitors feel your pain. Three months ago when the iPad 2 was announced, their existing tablets suddenly seemed chunky compared with the super-thin new iPad.


But this week I reviewed the first tablet that's actually thinner than the iPad 2: the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. Never mind that the difference in thinness between these competing tablets is two-tenths of a millimeter. Thinner is thinner.

The Tab 10.1 is also lighter than the iPad 2, though (again) not by much: 1.25 pounds versus 1.33 pounds. Starting Friday, the 16-gigabyte model with WiFi, which I tested, will be available for $499 and the 32-gigabyte WiFi model for $599—the same prices as Apple's comparable iPad 2s.

So how do the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and iPad 2 really differ?

There are hundreds of thousands more apps available for the iPad 2's iOS operating system. The Galaxy Tab's front- and rear-facing cameras capture better-quality photos than the iPad 2. The Galaxy Tab's 10.1-inch screen is formatted for widescreen viewing and is slightly longer than the iPad 2's 9.7-inch screen.
Juice Test

But the most notable difference between these two tablets is in battery life: In my test with WiFi on, screen brightness at about 75% and a continuous loop of video playing, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 lasted for just 5 hours and 38 minutes. This is only a bit more than half as long as the iPad 2, which lasted for 10 hours and nine minutes in the same test. (Both the Tab and iPad 2 batteries would last longer in more normal-use scenarios.)