The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is a super-light device designed to take on
the iPad with a quality screen and innovative features - but is the
price too high?
But when it comes to tablets, the world of Android
is a funny old place.. There have been plenty of pretenders, but not
really one that stands out when it comes to market share in the way the
iPad does. And it's a wrong Sony is determined to put right with the
Xperia Tablet Z.
Sony has tried before - the Xperia Tablet S,
Sony's most recent foray, was a decent if uninspiring effort. But as
with others, it failed to stand out in a world full of challengers. Time
for the Sony Xperia Tablet Z to improve on this.
The
first thing we noticed when we took the Sony Xperia Tablet Z out of its
box was how beautiful it was. We don't want to sound gushing, but as
gadget lovers, we have unboxed a lot of devices. Yet it's on only a few
occasions that we've taken something out of its box and instantly been
smitten with it.
We're thinking of the way we felt with the first iPhone (and the iPhone 4), the Nexus One, the iPad 2
and the HTC One. Certain devices just have the power to evoke a strong
reaction that makes you feel instantly transfixed. The Sony Xperia
Tablet Z definitely comes under that category.
And
the accessories (like the official case/stand, for example, if you have
more money than sense) won't be available until-mid June.
Unsurprisingly, Sony says this is its most pre-ordered tablet yet.
But
it won't come cheap. The 16GB Wi-Fi-only model will set you back
£399/US$499.99/AU$539, the 32GB Wi-Fi version costs
£449/US$599.99/AU$649 and the 16GB LTE/4G model is priced at £499/AU$679
(US price not currently available).
That's exactly the same as the equivalent iPad 4, and roughly what you'll pay for a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1.
Make no mistake, Sony is making a statement here: "Our products are
just as good as Apple's, so don't expect them to be cheaper."
Features
There
are several reasons why we became instant fans. Firstly, looks: the
Sony Xperia Tablet Z doesn't try too hard. There are no uber fancy bells
and whistles here. To all intents, it's a simple black rectangle. But
what a rectangle it is. Highly glossy glass on the front made from
toughened, scratch-resistant glass.
It looks (intentionally) like a larger version of Sony's already stonking Xperia phone with one minor difference - the back of the tablet isn't glass
like the phone, but a more matt-style polycarbonate makeup. And aside
from the standby and power buttons on the side, there are no others. As
per Google's direction, all navigation is done via the screen's software
buttons.
Then there's the thickness. Or, rather, the lack of.
This is currently the thinnest tablet on the market - and it really
shows. If you think the iPad 4 is respectable at 9.4mm (0.37 inches),
then you'll really be blown away at the Sony Xperia Tablet Z's 6.9mm
(0.27 inches).
In
terms of overall footprint, it's slightly different, clocking in at
266mm x 172mm (10.5 x 6.8 inches) compared to the Apple offering's
241.2mm x 185.7mm (9.5 x 7.3 inches). But the other thing you'll notice
is just how light it is.
Weight is one of the tricky ones, with
frequent complaints that tablets such as the iPad become too heavy to
hold for long periods of time. The iPad 4 tips the scales at 662g
(1.46lbs) and even the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 is no feather at 600g
(1.32lbs). The Sony Xperia Tablet Z trumps them both at 495g (1.09lbs).
This really is one of those devices you have to experience to appreciate. Pictures and YouTube videos just don't do it justice.
Added to that is the fact that the Sony Xperia Tablet Z, like the Sony Xperia Z phone, is water and dust resistant.
This
is a tablet you can comfortably take into the bath and not worry about.
It's slightly disconcerting doing so, since every fibre of your being
is telling you not to dunk it in the water, but provided you make sure
the waterproof plugs are in the sockets, you'll be fine.
In fact,
the only way this doesn't work is when trying to swipe underwater. The
screen registers all kinds of movements, so you have to take it out and
dry the screen to really get it to register screen taps. Mind you, if
you're likely to be playing Fruit Ninja underwater, you probably need to
have a word with a doctor. For watching movies in the bath or at the
bus stop in the rain, you'll be fine.
If you try and run water on
the display, get ready for a panic, as it registers a million taps and
opens every app under the sun, making you worry that the tablet has a
plug open and water is getting inside. It's not, stay cool.
However,
we do wonder if waterproofing this tablet is anything more than a
gimmick. Yes, you can use it in the bath without worrying, or get egg on
it while cooking. It makes it feel more rugged, indeed.
But do
you need a tablet to do that? Without the covers it might feel like a
more slick product, and that's something we would love to see. It could
possibly do away with the angular corners too, which is a real design
problem in our eyes.
We're
not totally sold on the dust resistance either. Yes, it means that dust
won't get in beneath the screen, which used to be one of our main
bugbears on devices of old. But the Sony Xperia Tablet Z does have a
ridge all the way around the edge that seems to attract lint. You can
clear it with a blow or a blast from a vacuum but it'll just come back.
And don't get us started on fingerprints - this is a magnet for them.
And
the screen is another area you'll want to know about. We weren't bowled
over by the displays on more recent devices such as the Samsung Galaxy
Note 10.1 or Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 because of their resolutions.
The
trouble is once you've experienced a sharpness like Apple's Retina
displays, nothing else can really live up to your expectations. We used
an iPad mini
recently and it felt almost third world that we were able to spot
pixels on websites and ebooks, even if it was less of an issue with
photos and videos. The same could be said of Sony's Xperia Tablet S.
But
there are no such issues here. The Sony Xperia Tablet Z sports a Full
HD display - 1200 x 1920 pixels spread over its 10.1-inch screen, giving
a pixel density of 224ppi.
It's not the sharpest out there - that honour is held by the Google Nexus 10 and its staggering 299ppi - but with the Nexus 7's
more than respectable 216ppi at one end of the scale and the iPad 4's
264ppi at the other, you get the impression of where the Sony Xperia
Tablet Z sits.
We spot pixels for fun and can categorically say
that this is a super sharp display that we were more than impressed
with. And surprisingly in side by side comparisons, it bested the Google
Nexus 10 and was every inch the equal of the iPad 4 - beating the
latter when it comes to movie watching simply because it has a more
widescreen ratio.
On
top of that, Sony's equipped the Xperia Tablet Z with its Mobile Bravia
Engine. A lot of the time this is all smoke and mirrors, using fancy
new titles that add little to the experience. Not so much here, though.
The Sony Xperia Tablet Z looks absolutely phenomenal, with photos and
videos popping out of the screen brilliantly.
Even on just normal
tasks, like web browsing, the colour is spot-on. It's not too bland but
also not overly colourful, which is a criticism sometimes levelled at
Samsung. Whites look warm on the Sony Xperia Tablet Z, rather than
yellow.
There is little here we can criticise, other than the
fact that the screen is sometimes too bright. We had the Sony Xperia
Tablet Z set to auto-brightness, but found ourselves often having to
manually turn it right down to the lowest possible setting. Maybe Sony
thinks we're all half blind, but sometimes less is more.
One
other observation we must point out here is how much better the screen
viewing angles are on the Sony Xperia Tablet Z compared to the
smartphone equivalent. On the tablet, it's an LED-backlit LCD panel,
while the Xperia Z phone ships with a TFT display.
The phone
screen is sharp and bright, but look at it anything other than dead-on
and it looks more washed out than an old pair of jeans. You won't find
this on the Tablet Z, where the viewing angles are much better, although
the iPad does have a superior contrast ratio based on general usage.
It's
good to see, since this could have been a massive Achilles' heel,
especially because you'd be more likely to share content with friends on
a larger screen, watching movies together and so on.
If you're a
fan of movies, a microSD card slot is another big bonus here. Sony has
stuck two fingers up at Google and its move to cloud-based alternatives,
forcing people into 32GB or less of onboard storage.
It
means that you can buy a 16GB model and easily bump your storage up by
an extra 64GB without breaking the bank. It's a big issue. Google
assumes people are happy to stream from the cloud, but bearing in mind
the space an OS and bloatware can take up and the fact that you have to
install apps onto the internal memory, by the time you've added a few
big ones like the GTA games, a couple of HD movies and a few songs, your
allowance is shot.
And if you're on a plane or a train and want
to stream from your collection of 30,000 tunes, you're out of luck
unless you've previously decided which ones to download to the device.
That's why we remain fans of SD card slots, even if you disagree in some
of the comments sections.
Powering this beast - and making sure
your movies all play without lag or stutter - is a Qualcomm Snapdragon
processor with a quad-core 1.5GHz Krait CPU. Add to that 2GB RAM and
you're on fire.
Some
early reports have claimed there is a slight lag on certain tasks such
as swiping from screen to screen, though the same posters have added
that installing another launcher such as Nova or Apex fixes the issue.
We
didn't notice much lag on our unit, and we really rinsed the Sony
Xperia Tablet Z as much as we could. Occasionally it would take a couple
of taps of the home button to go back to the main screen, but it wasn't
often and it tended to be during CPU-intensive tasks. Either way, if
those reports are true for some, it's to do with Sony's launcher rather
than a hardware issue, so Sony will be able to fix this with an update.
We
did notice that the screen isn't as responsive as we'd have liked. When
browsing the web in portrait mode it bounced all over the place at
times, and we want something amazing - really amazing - in a tablet that
costs this much,
Powering the Sony Xperia Tablet Z you'll find a
6,000mAh power pack. While huge, it's not the biggest out there, bearing
in mind the iPad 4's is nearly double the size at 11,560mAh and the
Galaxy Note 10.1 offers up 7,000mAh. We'll go into how it performed in
the Battery section of our review.
Charging
is done via a micro USB connection, which means you can use any other
chargers you have lying around the house too, though you have to have a
wall socket, since it won't charge off a laptop. Hard luck.
We
won't lie, the act of charging is a pain. For one thing, you have to
take the waterproof cover out each time (this is the downside of having a
waterproof tablet) - unless you're using the pricey official dock with
charging contacts - and although high quality and secure, we can't help
but wonder how long they will last.
Add to that, this is not a
quick charging device. Where you can plug an iPad in for a 10 minute
power blast and be confident you'll gain a bit of juice for a quick
jaunt, the Sony Xperia Tablet Z takes forever to charge up. We found
it's definitely an all-night job. Slow doesn't come close to describing
it.
.jpg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment