Capable gallery

The gallery on the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 can be sorted into albums, all photos and videos, time, location, people and favorites. You can pinch to zoom in the gallery and thus manage the size of the thumbnails (four or five on a row).
Air view works in the gallery as well. You can hover your finger above an image and you'll get a bigger thumbnail preview of the image or you can use it to peek inside folders.

The Gallery
Upon choosing an album (for instance Camera) you're taken into that album's stack of photos but a swipe to the right will reveal a bar with all the albums. This means you can change albums without going through the gallery homescreen every time.

The list of folders on the left can be hidden
Upon a press and hold on a picture, you'll be able to select multiple images, which you can then mass delete, share, copy or move.
The single photo view has several shortcuts for sharing (via an app or over DLNA) and a delete button. At the bottom is a line of small thumbnails of all other photos in the album. You can tap those small thumbnails to move to other images or you can just swipe to the side.

Viewing image • Sharing options
You can easily retouch photos right in the Gallery itself. The photo editor gives you options like crop, rotate, color and effects, plus a few fun options like stickers and custom frames. You can also make a memo on top of the picture.


Editing a photo
There are a couple of ways to create a handwritten note for each photo. One creates a Polaroid-like frame and lets you scribble the note (this is easy to share) or to write a note and store it separately (harder to share, but nondestructive).

Two ways to write a note
Another cool feature is Buddy photo share - it recognizes faces in a photo, you link those to your contacts and the tablet will learn to recognize them itself. Then the faces in the photo become handy shortcuts to that contact.

Buddy Photo Share recognizes faces
The Gallery also supports highly customizable slideshows.

Desktop-like file manager

The My Files app organizes your files into categories - Images, Videos, Music, Documents, Downloaded apps, Recent files and even Dropbox files. Those categories are always visible at the top of the screen, while the bottom part is split between folders and their content (with a complete tree view, similar to Windows Explorer).
The My Files app can move, copy, lock and rename files in bulk, even send multiple files to another phone. My files will browse the memory card and the large internal storage (it can't access the system drive). More advanced functions include handling ZIP files and connecting to FTP servers.


A desktop-like file manager

Feature rich, user-friendly music player

The TouchWiz music player on the Galaxy Pro 12.2 is jam-packed with features and supports a wide variety of file formats, including FLAC. The player uses the same split-screen interface as most other apps.
Music is sorted by the usual Artist, Album and Playlist, Folders and DLNA devices. There's also the Music square - the Note Pro 12.2 scans your music library rating each track in terms of tempo (Exciting or Calm) and emotion (Passionate or Joyful) and will load a playlist matching your chosen tempo and mood. The emotion axis in the graph can be switched to Age, which makes it easy to automatically create a playlist of classics or new tracks.


Browsing the music library • Samsung Music square
The Now playing screen gives you the usual options: a timescroll, playback controls, an AllShare shortcut. A coverflow-like list of album art lets you know what the next song will be and is an easy way to skip to it. The music player will also try to find the lyrics for the song you're listening to.

Now playing
Samsung has enabled several audio-enhancement features. The equalizer presets are cleverly organized into a square similar to the Music Square. The presets balance between Treble and Bass, Vocals and Instrumental. You can also just tap the Auto toggle and enable a Tube amp effect.
The advanced view of the equalizer gives you a proper seven band equalizer you can tune manually and enable additional effects like 3D, Bass and Clarity.

SoundAlive feature
The list of audio features doesn't end here. Smart sound will keep the sound level consistent between tracks, while Adapt sound tests the performance of your headphones and tunes the equalizer based on that.

More audio features
While listening to a song you can find music controls in the notification area and the lockscreen.

Music controls in the notification area and the lockscreen

Audio quality

Loudspeaker performance

While our Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 doesn't have telephony features, we still tested the loudspeaker performance as it will be used for music and videos. It scored a Good score and we can confirm the stereo speakers are indeed fairly loud. It helps that the speakers are one each on the sides of the wide tablet, which enhances the stereo effect.

Speakerphone test	Voice, dB	Pink noise/ Music, dB	Ringing phone, dB	Overal score
Amazon Kindle Fire	66.6	63.7	66.9	Below Average
Apple iPhone 5	66.8	66.1	67.7	Below Average
Microsoft Surface RT	61.7	60.2	64.2	Below Average
Sony Xperia Tablet Z	66.0	64.6	70.1	Below average
Google Nexus 10	68.3	66.1	67.8	Average
Asus Google Nexus 7	68.6	65.9	75.8	Good
Samsung Note II N7100	70.0	66.6	80.5	Good
Apple iPad mini	68.2	65.7	75.7	Good
Apple iPad 4	67.2	66.1	75.9	Good
Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2	73.0	66.5	75.7	Good
Samsung Galaxy Note 3	70.5	66.6	78.0	Good
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014	75.7	66.6	77.2	Very Good
LG Optimus G	74.6	71.3	82.7	Excellent

Video player lacks support for key codecs

The new video player found on the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 makes use of the Multi-window feature. When you play a video (in the video app or even in the file browser), the app gets the left half of the screen, while the video is played on the right side (and you can adjust the split).

The video player integrates with Multi-window
This is pretty neat, especially if you're just clicking through videos, wondering what to watch). Switching to fullscreen is as easy as dragging the separating dot to the edge of the screen. Pop Up play is also enabled if you want the video to play in a small, floating window.
Anyway, the video player interface has three tabs - Personal, Downloads and Nearby devices - complete with a search field. The available videos are shown as a grid of animated thumbnails, but list and folder view are also available.
If subtitles are available, the video player will automatically find and load them. You can also manually load subtitles if the video and subtitle file names don't match. You can change the zoom mode (100%, fit to screen with and without affecting the videos aspect ratio) and there's a pinch zoom too, in case you want to get close to a specific part of the action.

Video player options
Codec support is pretty dismal, however. Most videos we tried resulted in an "audio codec not supported" message and even some basic video codecs don't work (i.e. DivX). MKV, AVI (XviD) and MP4 videos do play, but anything beyond MP3 or AAC sound is no go.

The video player lacks support for key codecs
We should note that we used the Wi-Fi only version of the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2, which is based on Samsung's Exynos chipset. The Snapdragon-powered LTE version might do better in this test.
The same SoundAlive audio-enhancing technology from the music player is available here too. There are additional settings for the brightness, playback speed and feeding the audio through Bluetooth (if you have wireless speakers).
The chapter preview detects chapters in the video and shows a rectangular grid, with live thumbnails (just like the grid view above). Hovering your finger over the timescroll lets you preview part of the video in a small thumbnail - just like YouTube videos do upon mouse-hover.

Chapter preview
If the video playback controls are too big for you (and on a 12.2" tablet they're too big for most), you can enable Mini controller, which takes 1/3 of the screen width (it's available only in landscape mode) and can be pinned to the left, right or center.

Options and Mini controller

Audio quality is as clean as it gets

The Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 matched the performance of the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition in our audio quality test. It showed amazingly clean output in the first trial and even though it was about average in terms of loudness the overall impression is excellent.
The huge slate wasn't particularly bothered when we plugged in a pair of headphones either and put in another great performance. The solitary affected reading was stereo crosstalk and even that remained great.
Check out the table and see for yourself.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2	+0.04, -0.01	-95.1	90.9	0.0028	0.0085	-92.4
Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 (headphones attached)	+0.03, -0.04	-95.1	90.9	0.013	0.041	-65.1
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition	+0.01, -0.04	-95.5	90.6	0.015	0.016	-97.3
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition (headphones attached)	+0.01, -0.05	-95.2	90.5	0.0086	0.043	-70.1
Sony Xperia Tablet Z	+0.11, -0.10	-87.0	89.2	0.033	0.030	-87.8
Sony Xperia Tablet Z (headphones attached)	+0.21, -0.36	-86.6	88.8	0.114	0.233	-45.4
Apple iPad 4	+0.04, -0.00	-85.7	85.7	0.0019	0.0017	-85.2
Apple iPad 4 (headphones attached)	+0.00, -0.07	-85.7	85.6	0.0027	0.093	-81.0
Google Nexus 10	+0.03, -0.04	-82.3	82.2	0.011	0.022	-81.4
Google Nexus 10 (headphones attached)	+0.09, -0.24	-82.7	82.7	0.067	0.204	-77.9

Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 frequency response
You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

Final words

The Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 is to most Android tablets what the Galaxy Note was to phones when the term "phablet" was not even coined yet. One's first reaction is "it's huge" but then after using it for a while other devices just seem too small.
Samsung would love to have the business tablet - BlackBerry's PlayBook failed, the HP TouchPad failed, leaving the Apple iPad as the de facto business tablet. So far most Android slates were okay personal devices but turned no heads at the office.
The tide could be turning - the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 is nearly the size of an ultrabook and it has the processing power of some of the earlier models. The change in screen size seems trivial on paper but it's a nearly 50% increase in surface area and almost enough to fit an A4 page at 100%.
The difference when working with documents is tangible, but the advantages of a larger screen extend to multitasking too. The latest incarnation of Multi-window allows for a fluid workflow similar to desktop experience.
Other than that, the Note Pro 12.2 is virtually identical to the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014). It has a fast chipset (but no faster than a flagship phone), a body that finds good balance between build quality, durability and weight, and a thing or two to make it stand out against the sea of Android tablets.
The first of those things is the S Pen which, depending on the user, can be the best thing ever or a mere plug for the compartment hole. But it was really the updated multitasking on the big screen that was the standout feature for us.
That said, the Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014) is a perfectly fine alternative to the Pro 12.2, especially if you want a bit more portability. It does lack a bit of that special feel though, it's a great 10.1" Android tablet, but that doesn't tickle our buying bone. The Note Pro 12.2 is simply the first of its kind and thus a lot more desirable, but it's also way more expensive which makes the choice even tougher.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 Edition)
The Asus Transformer Pad TF701T is the latest refinement of the hybrid device and offers far better value for money, but it's just the old formula with fresher ingredients. Having a hardware QWERTY and a bigger battery is great, but if you haven't bought a Transformer already, chances are you'll skip this generation too.

Asus Transformer Pad TF701T
The Apple iPad Air is, by virtue of its predecessors, the tablet to beat. It's beautiful and light, it feels familiar to the millions who have iPhones and grants access to Apple's walled garden (full of apps, music and accessories you've bought).

Apple iPad Air
Microsoft has the Surface 2 and Lumia 2520 to offer as an extension of its own ecosystem that is the backbone of businesses worldwide. The Surface in particular is enjoying growing interest by consumers. Windows 8.x is still a sliver of what 7 and XP are to the market though, ironically Android and iOS are the OSes that push hardware in the tablet field rather than the Windows name.

Microsoft Surface 2 • Nokia Lumia 2520
Going from 10.1" to 12.2" sounds like a small difference, some might dismiss it as negligible. We found that it's anything but - in the end, the Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 might prove too big for the majority and, but using it for a while puts other tablets in perspective.
And this brings us to the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2's biggest problem. For all the good it does, its steep pricing means that few will actually give it a chance. Oh well, we guess reaching the masses was never the point of this device.
The best days of Wintel may be behind them, but tablets - Android, iOS or other - will never be the only solution if they never make it past the 10" mark. Comfort and productivity have to confront portability at some point and the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 does just that.