Check out our review of the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet.
If you’ve been waiting for the latest Galaxy Note tablet, the Note 8.0, to go on sale, then your patience is about to be rewarded, as Samsung has announced it’ll do so in the U.S. by the end of this week. The price for the honor of owning it? Ready? It’ll cost you $400. We’ll come back to that in a moment, as Samsung has attempted to justify the price by adding in a few goodies. Buyers will get a 50GB Dropbox account free for two years, just like several other devices in Samsung’s range, plus if you register the Note 8.0 you’ll get $25 worth of credit in the Google Play store.
Back to that price. The Galaxy Note 10.1 retails for $500, but regularly appears for $450, so there’s a good chance the Note 8.0 will find its way into stores for $350. Even then, it’s priced higher than its direct competition – the Apple iPad Mini, the Nexus 7 and to a lesser extent, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Not just by a few dollars either, as even Apple’s over-priced 16GB Mini comes in at $329, and Amazon’s 32GB, ad-free Fire HD 8.9 $314. All that before starting to think about the savings made by purchasing a Nexus 7 instead.
The tablet has also just gone on sale in the UK, initially only through the Samsung Experience Store, where the 16GB Wi-Fi model has been given a £340 price tag. This converts over to an outrageous $520, and is £70 more expensive than the basic iPad Mini.
Samsung announced the Galaxy Note 8.0 just before Mobile World Congress at the end of February, at which time we had the chance to give the tablet the once over, before treating to a full review this week. It’s better specced than several of its competitors, hence the higher price, as it uses a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel camera, Android 4.1 and comes with the S Pen stylus. The 8-inch screen has a 1280 x 800 pixel resolution.
All the usual suspects, including Amazon, Best Buy and Staples, will be carrying the Galaxy Note 8.0 from April 11.