Sony Xperia Tablet Z
With its latest
flagship Xperia devices, Sony has carved out a foothold in the premium
smartphone and tablet spaces with inspired designs and impressive performance.
The Sony Xperia Tablet Z ($499.99 direct) looks like a stretched out version of
the admirable Xperia Z smartphone. It's remarkably thin and light, packs in a
sharp display, and pumps out top-notch performance thanks to its speedy
quad-core processor. On top of that, you get a fully waterproof design, microSD
expandable memory, and a built-in IR emitter for TV remote control abilities.
The Xperia Tablet Z is among the finest Android tablets available, and is a
worthy alternative to top-end tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, Asus
Transformer Pad Infinity, and even the Apple iPad.
Design and Features
The first time I
handled an iPad mini, I marveled at its thinness and lightness. At 0.27 inches
thick and 1.09 pounds, it's remarkably thin and light for a 10-inch tablet. For
comparison, the full-sized iPad is 0.37 inches thick and 1.44 pounds, while the
Note 10.1 is 0.35 inches thick and 1.31 pounds. That nearly half-pound difference
is significant and makes the Tablet Z more comfortable to hold than other
10-inch tablets. Its slimness makes the tablet feel a bit delicate, though.
It's well built, but you can feel it flex when you twist at either end. The
back is made from rubberized plastic, a departure from the glass-clad Xperia Z,
but the curved corners and flat edges mimic Sony's smartphone design. The
Tablet Z is also fully waterproof, with flaps that cover the 3.5mm headphone
jack, micro USB port, and microSD card slot around the tablet's perimeter.
There are speaker grilles on the bottom two corners right where your palms
naturally rest, making them easy to cover up. I dunked the Tablet Z in a bucket
of water and it was completely unaffected, even playing a video while fully submerged.
The tablet's 10.1-inch 1,920-by-1,200-pixel TFT LCD is surrounded by a somewhat
large 1-inch bezel. The full HD resolution and 224 pixels per inch means
everything is incredibly crisp and detailed, on par with the Asus Transformer
Pad Infinity$456.71 at Datavision and a big improvement over the
1,280-by-800-pixel display on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. The display also features
inky blacks that give AMOLED panels a run for their money, without the blue
tint to whites. Viewing angle is excellent, but the screen doesn't get all that
bright—outdoors, in bright light, the screen is barely discernible behind the
fingerprint-magnet glass. This is a Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to
802.11b/g/n networks on both 2.4 and 5GHz frequencies. Bluetooth 4.0 and NFC
are also on board. Sony offers two models, a 16GB for $499.99 and a 32GB for
$599.99, and our 32 and 64GB SanDisk microSD cards both worked fine.
Performance and Android
The Xperia Tablet Z
is powered by a quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor with 2GB
RAM. This is the first tablet we've tested with this setup, and it didn't
disappoint—the Tablet Z scorched our benchmarks, recording some of the highest
scores we've seen across the board. High Browsermark and Sunspider JavaScript
scores confirmed anecdotally speedy Web browsing performance during day-to-day
use, while GLBenchmark frame rates were among the best we've seen. From rapidly
switching between multiple running apps to playing graphically intensive games
like Real Racing 3, the Tablet Z handled everything we threw at it easily.
Sliding between widget-loaded home screens and scrolling down media-heavy
websites was smooth, with very rare choppiness. This is one seriously fast
tablet. Sony's Android skin falls somewhere between Asus's minimal
modifications and Samsung's heavy-handed skinning. Luckily, beyond the cosmetic
adjustments, there are some genuinely useful additions here. On the home
screen, you'll notice two major differences between Sony's version and stock
Android. The first is a bar along the top that holds four customizable
shortcuts, a Google search and voice command shortcut, and an app drawer
launcher. I really like the shortcuts along the top, as they allow me to keep
my home screens a bit less cluttered, while always keeping my most important
apps on hand. The second modification is Sony's multitasking 'small apps.'
These run in little windows on top of whatever current app you're running, and
include a browser, calculator, notepad, clip manager, timer, recorder, and
remote control. You can download more Sony-compatible small apps, from Twitter
clients to camera apps, and also turn any widget into a small app. I found the
small apps pretty useful, though they fall a bit short of the split-screen
multitasking you get on the Galaxy Note 10.1.
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