Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 review: Pros and gones

Premium apps

Samsung has positioned the Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 as a premium tablet and as such it comes with a rich app package similar to the Note Pro 12.2's suite. These are mostly centered on doing work.

The Office apps are courtesy of Hancom Office - Hword, Hcell and Hshow. They feature interfaces similar to the desktop Microsoft Office apps, meaning they are busy with tons of buttons. While they can be operated with a finger, we get the feeling it would be more comfortable to use a mouse with those.

Hword and Hcell

It's hard to use those apps without an external keyboard too - the large QWERTY just takes up too much space (from what little was left with such a complicated app UI). It's a good thing you can switch to one of the less intrusive on-screen keyboards in a pinch.

Hshow - viewing PowerPoint and PDF

Don't think that we're knocking these apps - they really do feel like a desktop Office package, which is not something you can have from the Play Store for free.

Dropbox and Flipboard are pre-installed, but Evernote and TripAdvisor (often found on other Samsungs) are missing.

This is followed by two collaboration apps - Cisco WebEx and Samsung e-Meeting. The first does conferencing (complete with screen-sharing), while the second handles peer-to-peer content sharing without the need for an intermediary server.

WebEx meetings pairs well with e-Meeting

There's more: the Remote PC app does just what it says on the tin. It gives you remote access to your home or office PC, which works great if you hook up a keyboard and mouse. SideSync does something similar, just in reverse. It shares windows and data between a computer and the tablet, so you can manage it on you PC.

Remote PC • SideSync 3.0

The premium app package doesn't end here, Samsung is promising up to $700 worth of content downloads. A lot of that is for subscriptions - you get a year of BusinessWeek+, 12 weeks of NY Times, 6 months of Livesport.tv, a 3-month LinkedIn premium, plus a free Oxford's Advanced Learners Dictionary. Those are all available for download over at Samsung Apps.

Free premium apps in the Samsung Apps store

Other apps are in the bundle as well, like Bitcasa, which offers a lot more storage than Dropbox - a whopping 1TB - but the subscription is for three months only. Note that the RemotePC service is also subscription-based (you get 2 years) and so are Evernote (3-12 month subscription, market dependent) and LinkedIn (3 months of Premium Membership).

App repositories

Google's Play Store is one of the biggest mobile app stores and offers an amazing number of applications, so whatever you need, you'll find it here.

You can also check out comments and ratings, as well as the number of downloads and so on, to help you decide if the app is worth it. Google has added a small "designed for phones" warning for apps that aren't tablet- optimized. Those can look bad on the large screen, so it's nice to be forewarned.

Samsung has naturally included its own Apps store. It features largely the same type of interface as Google Play, except here you'll find a far lower number of apps. The good news is Samsung uses this repository to distribute some exclusive titles and some promotional offers, available only to its customers.

The Google Play Store • Samsung Apps