Gadgetory

it's 2015 and smartphone manufacturers are still trying to find ways to implement long-awaited features and hardware changes into their phones it's no easy task however this is a whole different story when it comes to tablets with their much bigger bodies it's a lot easier to incorporate what should be industry standard features this year a soos is not playing catch-up loading their newest tablet with the latest and greatest features while still maintaining a pretty affordable price hello everybody I'm crystal and this is the asus zento there's two things you immediately notice when picking up the zenpad S 8.0 first is well it's a little tablet it's only an 8 inch screen and this definitely helps it be a little more portable and easy to bring along somewhere but still it's not too small word to fils the purpose of it being a tablet and a lot of this is due to the nice 43 aspect ratio of the screen so now the second thing you'll notice is wow this thing is really thin only six point six millimeters in thickness so this make surface comfortable 8 inch screen really keeps this thing from being too bulky and covers them but when taking a look at the back of the Zen pad we have some more nice design choices that help this tablet from being on wieldy we have a brushed metallic design throughout the back bordered by a shiny metallic edge that gives us tablet a nice elegant look but towards the bottom of the tablet when holding horizontally we have a very soft to the touch leathery material that feels really nice when holding it gives your fingers a nice place to rest when holding the tablet horizontally and helps prevent the tablet from easily slipping from your hand the entire border of the tablet is made of a soft rubbery material that also helps the tablet feel comfortable the camera can be found on the back and at the top you'll find a headphone jack the left side has a flap to allow access to a micro SD card slot that supports up to 128 gigs the right side has the volume buttons and power button and the volume buttons feel pretty good they take a decent amount of pressure to push but it keeps them from being accidentally hit the power button is very hard to press as the button seems like it even move it can be confusing to decide if you actually push the button or not without the tactile feedback but I do think this was intended as well to prevent accidentally turning off the screen if this is an issue for you you shouldn't worry because this end pad supports the tap to wake feature on the bottom of the tablet we have a USB type-c charging connector which like I was saying before it's very nice to see a soos help push USB type-c closer to becoming a norm on the same thought clipping the tablet to its front we will see two front-facing stereo speakers on either side of the eight inch screen it's no doubt the best place for speakers to go especially on a tablet where videos are regularly reviewed and they sound awesome not just because the sound is aimed right at you but the speaker's themselves are designed quite nicely they are very crisp and clear inside the Zen pad s 8.0 we have an Intel Atom quad-core processor but for power VR GPU this is also the world's first tablet with four gigs of RAM although a two gig model is available - in this review I'm using the four gig of ram version it comes in three storage options of 16 32 and 64 gigs and it's available in black and white this Zen pad is not able to connect to a cellular service so Wi-Fi is your only option here the Zen pad s 8.0 has a beautiful 8 inch 2k IPS display at a resolution of 1536 by 2048 viewing angles are fantastic colours look very nice and by default are very accurate if you want more saturation or even more true to life colors you can easily adjust them by using the preinstalled asus app splendid you can choose between balanced blue light filter vivid and even make your own customized setting text is very clear and sharp there does appear to be a very small amount of sharpening going on throughout the display which can make text appear a bit fuzzy but this is only really noticeable in certain scenarios like when black text is on a colored background but this could always be fixed on the road with a software update the Zen pad s AIT's beautiful screen makes viewing pictures of joy and you would think this would be the same case of videos too but for me I was a little disappointed this kind of subjective but when watching videos the software tries to smoothen the video so if a movie you're watching is attended to be shot at a cinematic 24 frames per second the tablet will try to smoothen the video to make it look like it was shot at 60 frames per second making it seem very I don't know just very strange but like I said this is all subjective so you might actually love this feature but if you're like me and don't there's a setting called blur motion free well you can either set this to high medium low or totally disable it the problem is even when I click disable the effect is still clearly there I'm not sure what's happening here but once again this could easily be fixed in an upcoming software update what it comes down to is the screen itself is gorgeous there are just some questionable software implications that damper it but thankfully those can always be changed the Zen pad s 8.0 is running Android lollipop with a CC skin called Zen UI and I gotta say this is probably one of the best stock you eyes I've used it does kind of have its own take of material design to it but I think it looks pretty good in some areas like the notification jar but in other areas like navigation buttons it can look a little bit dated a Seuss's Zen UI is preloaded with a ton of uninstall apps which isn't so great but the UI does come with a lot of cool features which is great Zen UI is close to a third-party custom launcher you would download on Google Play which is nice to see by holding down or swiping up on your home screen you get this cool little animation that brings up a bunch of customizable options it's similar to something you'd find in popular launchers like nova launcher like icon packs scroll effects and launcher fonts it doesn't just stop there though with touch gesture you can draw letters while the screen is off to launch certain apps in motion gesture you can do things like shaking the tablet to take a screenshot there's even a kid mode where you can turn your tablet into a protected environment for a youngster set with parent controls and a timer there really isn't enough time to talk about all the features a Zen pad s 8.0 has to offer but it's just really cool to see a stock you I being so customisable I know I had a lot of fun playing around with this tablet and making it the way that I wanted before I even hit the Play Store it's a little disappointing that something like dual window or having small versions of apps running side-by-side is not available but that might not be a big deal for some people on the lockscreen you can set up to three shortcuts to launch your most use apps which is very handy by default these are a camera mail and browser but you can change them to whatever apps you'd like or just disable them all not only is the software of the Zen pad great for customizing but it creates a very smooth and lag free experience animations are incredibly smooth switching from app to app is quite fast and there are really no complaints here you can expect a stutter and lag free environment on this tablet when you move on to games you may notice a few stutters or hiccups and these will happen too often so it isn't something to worry much about but like I said before since this tablet has a smoothing mode on it that you can't seem to take off it can be a mystery if games are actually dropping frames or not gaming is also the only time you'll experience a tablet getting warm it never gets hot though overall this tablet handles games very well so when it comes to the camera does the Zen pad S 8.0 break the tradition of tablets coming with meteor cameras well maybe just a little it definitely helps get closer the front-facing 8 megapixel camera is capable of taking good pictures but only in very specific situations it does tend to overexpose a lot like here no matter how many shots I tried to take focusing on different areas of the picture the tablet just refused to expose correctly other times it takes some pretty gorgeous photos you never know what you're gonna get but more often than not you end up with a good picture details can be pretty lacking and sometimes I have some trouble processing some bright colors but it is a horrible well no we always say good cameras and tablets are not a necessity as they are in smartphones but it's always nice to have a decent camera for a quick snap of something and I think this tablet does a great job of that it's definitely one of the better cameras around in the tablet there's no optical image stabilization or anything like that on here not even a flash but on the software side of this thing is loaded with camera facts for example pictures in low light can be very dark and noisy there's a low light mode which bumps up the brightness and tones the noise it's not very clear but this feature does a great job at taking a bad photo and turning it into an all right one the front-facing camera is 5 megapixels but with enough light this thing can take some pretty good detailed shots for a front-facing camera in normal lighting conditions selfie shots can start to get grainy but when you're shooting with the front-facing camera you get even more crazy camera effects which can always be fun on a tablet and at the end of the day this tablet is a big step in the right direction when it comes to cameras and tablets it has his faults but I was pleasantly surprised this Zen pad s 8.0 has a four thousand milliamp battery so it's a bit smaller than most high-end tablets out there but then again this is a little smaller and thinner than most - and that 4000 milliamp battery makes with this tablet software makes for some pretty decent battery life I could easily get 5 to 6 hours of screen on time by spending my whole day watching YouTube videos and bouncing the Internet if you know somebody who's going to be watching videos all day long then this tablet should easily last you all day overall the Zen pad s 8.0 is everything a tablet in 2015 should be with dual front-facing stereo speakers 4 gigs of RAM 2k display extremely customizable UI and it's USB type-c connector Asus really did an amazing job here the tablet has the latest and greatest features we should come to expect in this day and age right out of the box this tablet exceeds expectations and doesn't need any help from third-party apps to create a great tablet experience even for the bigger tech enthusiasts thankfully the only flaws in the Zen pad s 8.0 are software related so they can easily be fixed on time down the road for $299 the Zen pad s 8.0 of course is well worth picking up thank you very much for watching and make sure you hit that like button because that really helps us out also leave a comment below letting me know what you think about this tablet and make sure you subscribe for more videos not only for me but for my brothers here at Android authority also don't forget to listen to our podcast every single week and lastly don't forget to check out our website Android Authority comm because we are your source for all things Android