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All told, the US Note 8.0 is a solid product. In fact, it's quite nearly the Swiss Army knife of Android tablets. Or, it would've been, if Samsung had just left those damn HSPA+ radios intact.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 is a stunning tablet with a truly useful stylus, but it's not worth $400 unless you're an artist or prefer pen input.

With deep pen integration, remote control capability and superior multitasking, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is one versatile (but pricey) Android tablet ... if you're willing to pay a premium for a pen-enabled tablet, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is the slate for you.

If you want a tablet with a pressure-sensitive pen for writing or drawing, the Galaxy Note 8.0 is a top choice, but it'll cost you twice as much as other leading small-screen slates.

With the Galaxy Note 8.0’s built-in stylus and integrated apps, Samsung had a chance to set itself apart from the competition. But an expensive price limits its appeal. Unless you really want the S Pen capability, the Nexus 7 or iPad Mini is the better choice for now.

It is a well-built device and in the time we've spent with it, we've found ourselves thinking "I could really enjoy owning one of these" far more than we thought "eugh".

As it stands, the Galaxy Note 8.0 feels like a product Samsung rushed out so it would have something to directly challenge the iPad mini.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 offers stellar performance and a plethora of features, but suffers from a high price and a glut of bloatware.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 8 packs a good screen, plenty of power and that all important stylus for sketching. It's quite a lot more expensive than the iPad mini though, and its plastic construction doesn't feel anywhere near as luxurious.

Nonetheless, the latest Samsung tablet packs serious performance in a thin and light body that can still be hold with one hand.

A scaled up Samsung Galaxy Note 2 it may be, but there are a lot of positives on offer thanks to that larger screen.

Either way, the stylus/touchscreen combo on the 8.0 performs magnificently, the PLS LCD screen is entirely satisfactory and incredibly well lit, and the processor and RAM provide a fluid user experience.

t’s too big for pockets, but is otherwise a practical on-the-go Android tablet. However, starting at £340 it feels a bit too expensive when its screen in particular feels slightly dated, and will only seem more so in the coming months.

An excellent, albeit too expensive, tablet that's your only choice if you want a proper stylus on a smaller, more portable device.

In my eyes, the size is the star of the show as it’s far more manageable than a 10-inch tablet but far more versatile than a 7-inch slate. Beyond that, this tablet is just another Galaxy Note.

Unless you absolutely must have that stylus or the ability to run two apps at once in a split screen, then there's no good reason to buy the Note 8.0 over your other options.

To justify the cost, you would need to regularly take advantage of the Note 8 as a productivity device, and leverage the S Pen and other TouchWiz features unique to Samsung at this time.

With a 1.6GHz Eynos 4 Quad CPU and 2GB RAM under the hood, you'd expect the Note 8.0 to showcase nothing but brisk performance. Unfortunately, that didn't appear to be the case as there were occasional moments where the tablet seemed to slightly hesitate before executing actions.

This time, I was really impressed by the hand rejection; if you lean your hand on the screen while using the pen (in a pen-aware app) the touch screen pays attention to the pen, not your hand.

Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 could be the best Galaxy Note yet, because it provides enough screen real estate to do some serious note taking while weighing only three quarters of a pound.

The Note 8 is exceedingly comfortable to hold, though its plastic body doesn't have the solid feel of iPad Mini, Nexus 7, and Kindle Fire HD.

The 8-inch form factor is honestly a good balance between portability and productivity ... I would like to see increased emphasis on higher quality materials, a more streamlined/lightweight Touchwiz stack and aggressive adoption of new features.

The Note 8.0 improves both the screen density and the build quality, and the Note tablet's software appears to have matured since our original review—we didn't have long to try it out, but at least on the surface the software appeared to be more reliable than in our Note 10.1 review unit.

Under its glossy white exterior lies a 1.6GHz quad-core A9 processor and 2GB RAM that keeps the Note 8 ticking along nicely. In ZDNet's short hands-on testing the device showed no sign of lagging or stuttering that can ruin user experience in some devices.

Some of that sugar comes in the form of some new WACOM technology allowing your S-Pen to control not just the elements inside your display, but the Back and Menu buttons below it as well. Just like you’ve always wanted!

In summary, the 8 was familiar and new at the same time -- easy to use and pleasingly responsive. As a tablet it has some game; as a phone handset maybe not so much, and the lack of 4G LTE is a shame (the iPad mini ticks this box). Overall, a solid addition to Samsung's family.

The newest tablet in Samsung's lineup, the Galaxy Note 8 ($400) received top marks in our latest Ratings of 7- to 8-inch Wi-Fi tablets. It's largely the Galaxy's versatility that puts it at the top, with its innovative stylus and a feature lineup that includes GPS and a memory-card reader.

We've only spent a short time with it, but the Note 8.0 seems to be a promising entry from Samsung in this category

The real story with the Note 8 isn't the hardware, though, it is the software. Aside from Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and TouchWiz, Samsung has added a lot of custom features to make the Note 8 an ideal living room companion.

However, this is where the limited screen resolution comes into play a little. The Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 doesn’t make apps look dinky, but when multi-tasking, a little extra sharpness can come in handy.

It obviously lets itself down on the design – that polycarbonate shell still hasn't come close to growing on us – but it hits the marks laid down for it, so for now we'll give the Note 8.0 a cautious thumbs up.

The finish of the portable slate is very similar to that of the company's flagship smartphone, too. Now, that may not sound too bad at first, but the design is really starting to wear off at this point, so we really wish Samsung went in a different direction this time.