Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 review: The roadster

5MP camera does decently

The Samsung Note 8.0's main camera can capture stills of up to 2592 x 1944 pixels and 720p videos, while the one on the front takes 1.3MP pictures and VGA video.

The interface is typical for a Samsung droid - a right column with the essential controls (virtual shutter key surrounded by a still/video mode toggle and a gallery shortcut) and a left column with six customizable shortcuts.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 camera UI

The camera app offers a bounty of features including geotagging, touch focus, Panorama, Smile shot, face and smile detection with Best faces, low-light mode, scenes, effects and more.

The actual image quality is pretty good for a 5 megapixel camera. There's lots of fine detail and the noise levels are kept under control. Colors are decent too if slightly on the cold side. That being said the Note 8.0 is by far not the most comfortable device to take out and about and shoot a lot of photos with.

Check out these camera samples:

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 camera samples

Photo quality comparison

The Samsung Galaxy Note faces off with some of the other 5MP tablets flagships in our Photo quality compare tool. You can also pit it against the last generation of flagships using the upscale and downscale features of the tool.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 in our Photo quality compare tool

Video camera

The video camera user interface is identical to that of the still camera.

Touch focus during recording is available, with an AF button to switch back to regular continuous autofocus.

Camcorder UI

720p videos are recorded in MP4 files with bitrate of 12Mbps. The framerate is a solid 30fps and the audio is captured in stereo at 48kHz sampling rate and a bitrate of 128Kbps.

720p videos are since long nothing impressive for a premium gadget and the Galaxy Note 8.0 samples aren't all that impressive either. Clips lacks resolved detail and the colors look bland even in well-lit environments.

Check out this 720p video sample we shot with the Galaxy Note 8.0:

You can also download the untouched video sample - 720p@30fps (15s, 22.1MB).

Video quality comparison

You can also take a close look at the quality of Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 videos in our Video quality compare tool.

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 in our Video quality compare tool