Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 review: The Professional

9. Camera, image quality, video recording and quality

Very good 8MP snapper

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 features an 8 megapixel main camera and a 2 megapixel front-facing camera and you can shoot 1080p videos with both.

The user interface is based on the new generation Samsung camera UI. A single viewfinder handles both still and video capture, so you don't have to switch modes. However, this is certainly not the most convenient solution as, if you're shooting full resolution 8MP photos, you'll have to frame your videos using a 4:3 ratio viewfinder, which doesn't match the screen's wider aspect ratio.

Camera UI • dual capture

There is a wide variety of settings but they are spread out in different places. For starters, color effects (with a live preview for each) are at the bottom of the screen. You can download more effects from Samsung Apps.

Camera settings

Another place with cool options is the Mode button, which brings out a carousel of advanced features (you can switch to grid view, but we find the carousel easier to use with the thumb). The features include major shooting modes such as HDR (called Rich tone) and Panorama, along with proprietary Samsung features such as Eraser (removes objects), Drama (duplicates objects), Sound & shot (capture ambient sound to go with the photo), Best photo, Best Face and Beauty Face. Dual shot is also available - it combines the feed from both the front and back cameras on a single photo.

There are even more options, some of which are visible in the top left corner. For the rest, you'll have to go into the full settings menu. These include burst shot, face detection, manual ISO setting, Smart stabilization and so on. Voice controls are enabled if you want to take a shot hands-free (e.g. a group shot).

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 camera produces high-quality photos for the segment - the amount of detail is high, the noise is low and the photos have good color rendering. There are some issues, like the noticeable oversharpening halos, but those are minor overall.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 camera samples

The Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 HDR mode does an excellent job of adding more detail in the highlights and keeping the real-life look of the photos without going overboard with the effect.

HDR test: off and on

Photo quality comparison

The Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 has an 8MP camera and its performance is pretty much on par with some of the best 8MP cameraphones out there - kudos to Samsung for not skimping on this aspect of the tablet .

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 in our Photo Compare Tool

1080p @ 30 fps videos with plenty of detail

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 shoots 1080p videos at 30 fps. It is strange it can't capture 2160p videos (unlike the Galaxy Note 3), given that it is powered by the almighty Snapdragon 800 chipset.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 stores videos in MP4 files with 17Mbps bitrate on average. Stereo audio is recorded at 128Kbps bitrate and 48kHz sampling rate. Those are the same basic numbers as the videos taken by the Samsung Galaxy S4 for instance.

The video camera doesn't have many fancy shooting modes like the still camera, but dual shot is available and you can do time lapse videos. The time lapse videos can speed things up to 8x, with resolution and frame rate remaining at 1080p @ 30fps.

Touch focus is available before and during video recording and you can switch back to continuous autofocus if you prefer. You can capture 6MP (16:9) photos during recording as well, their image quality seems quite decent too.

A camera sample taken while shooting a video

Videos captured with the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 8.4 have a good amount of resolved detail, steady framerate and little noise. Colors and white balance are similar to those in still images. It can certainly give many cameraphones a run for their money.

Here goes a 1080p video sample from the slate that we uploaded to YouTube.