Gadgetory

we've seen Soni come out with a couple of great flagship devices and the Xperia Z and ZL and then they didn't forget about the mid-range market when they came out with the Xperia SP well they're still not done yet because their new tablet offering has just been released and it just might be the best one of the bunch hey Joshua Garth I'm Andrew Authority what's going on everybody and this is the sony xperia tablet z it's no secret that sony is pretty good at designing their many devices but it's hard not to be impressed by the Sony Xperia tablet Z or Zed because you've never seen a tablet quite like this the fully rectangular shape of the Xperia Z smartphone makes a return in a much larger 10-inch design it's got angular corners and is flat all over 10-inch tablets are like interactive slates so it's great to see a slate design taken quite literally in this sony tablets what is probably most impressive is how thin and light the tablet Z is 0.27 inches thick and only 495 grams the result of this feat in design is quite possibly the easiest handling tablet ever it is really nimble and easy to grip due to the flat sides and thinness you may find yourself tossing this bad boy around with one hand the way you would a spiral notebook it's easy to feel comfortable with the tablet that is as in light and nimble as this aside from the camera optics on the back you get a completely black textured back that doesn't slip about when in the hand the front of this Xperia Tablet is also completely black with only the sony logo and front facing camera up top on the left are all of the buttons including the volume rockers and the iconic Xperia metal silver power button the speaker is comprised of two slits on the bottom of both sides while the microUSB and microSD slots are on the bottom covered by small bits of plastic as you may infer from the Xperia Z smartphone these plastic covers only mean one thing water resistance yes this entire 10-inch tablet can be submerged in water and still remain operational we've seen this on smart phones already but for a tablet it's pretty damn cool a great display makes or breaks a 10-inch tablet thankfully Sony put a pretty massive 1920 by 1200 resolution on the Xperia tablet Z being rated at 224 PPI is very good considering this device will typically be far enough away from your face to make pixelation much less of an issue though text and all media still look wonderful nonetheless the viewing angle issues from sony smartphones seems to have disappeared in this tablet which may or may not make that much sense due to the larger screen the Bravia Engine 2 makes a return and it does its job to bring more contrast and vibrancy though the color temperature does tend to the warmer side make no mistake though this high-resolution display will bring loads of fun to your Android tablet experience with all of these Snapdragon 600 devices hitting the market these days it might be a bit of a disappointment to find that the Sony Xperia Z sports only the 1.5 gigahertz Snapdragon s4 pro that powered last year's best smartphones thankfully this combination with the Adreno 320 and 2 gigabytes of RAM still holds up and is far from slow and to to benchmark puts this tablet right around where its smartphone counterpart stands on the ladder pretty squarely around the 20,000 mark as you can see here Epic Citadel looks really great and smooth going through all its elements ending with a very high performance rating in practice the s4 pro definitely shows that tried-and-true speed as the Xperia Tablet flies through its UI admittedly there are some intermittent moments of lag though they are not only rare but they do nothing to truly hinder what is otherwise a speedy experience multitasking what the small absent even going at by app was as easy as ever further proving that the Xperia tablet Z is a great performer for everything from media to work coupled with that great screen it is certainly a wonderful platform for Android gaming as well work or play you'll get everything done in a timely manner with this tablet not to mention you'll do so in style Hardware on the Xperia tablet Z is largely standard though of course the big advantage it has over most all other tablets is that water resistance we already mentioned the microSD card slot that can help bolster the 16 or 32 gigabytes of onboard memory you've got the typical accelerometer Bluetooth and Wi-Fi though an LTE version is available overseas a nice addition of a IR blaster allows for control of TVs and related devices see is available here too actually so if you take advantage of it to data transfer capabilities or even just utilize smart tags from time to time then the Xperia tablet Z has you covered the stereo speakers are side mounted which is better than being on the rear but the sound from this tablet is really decent at best perhaps to help with the water resistance the speaker's sound decidedly held back the sound is not particularly rich but I will say that the volume level is quite impressive the real gravy of the hardware department lies in the battery it's great to use a tablet like the Xperia until it runs out of juice fortunately Sony put a massive six thousand milliamp power battery in the tablet Z and it goes for a great deal of time running a whole season of community ran down the battery to half life in just over four hours making full media usage probably last up to eight full hours on a complete charge with less rigorous usage you're likely to get up to two whole days of work and play done with no real issues especially with the power saving features that's really impressive and definitely is one of the tablet Z's best selling points compared to its smartphone counterpart the Xperia tablet Z does not come with a 13 megapixel camera and instead gets eight the app does get the same elements of superior auto and the many different scene settings for getting that perfect shot otherwise there are the typical abilities like touch to focus touch to capture and burst shots the extras do include HDR and a sweeping panorama mode the quality from the resulting pictures in this camera is decent at best it definitely does not perform as well as the Xperia Z nzl smartphone cameras as photos have a level of grain even in full daylight shots and definitely more in lower light shots the lack of a flash diode is an obvious giveaway that the optics on the Xperia tablet Z are much like the cameras for pretty much any other tablet it's there because it has to be not because it will really blow anyone away with its performance and finally we have the software if you are already familiar with the Xperia UI from Sonia smartphones the experience here is largely the same the darker motif of this jellybean 4.1.2 powered UI is complemented by colors in darker tones a general look reminiscent of Ice Cream Sandwich the notification drop-down is kept on the bottom right this time and it has some quick settings available in the shade navigation buttons are on the bottom left while the small apps and remote control shortcuts are centred you access apps via button at the top right this time and many apps are obviously given a split screen motif to take advantage of the tablet screen leaving menus on the left for content to be displayed on the right other than these location changes however the experience is very much what you'd expect home screens app drawer apps and settings pages all customizable by a few themes that simply changed the color schemes the additions include jellybean to Google now and so new small apps much like in the Xperia smartphones the small apps are small overlays that go over your current workspace and help support quick multitasking one addition here is the clip manager which takes an editable screenshot Sony stables like the Walkman are here too so even after all these years the Walkman name still manages to be synonymous with good music players social life is an app that combines the feeds of Facebook Twitter and other social networks so you can use that if you're into that sort of thing all in all you get a great suite of software in the Xperia tablet Z productivity and media are both simple to do on such a stylish device as a premium tablet the Sony Xperia Z unsurprisingly comes with a pretty hefty price tag $4.99 for the 16 gigabyte version and $5.99 for 32 gigabytes while this might be a little steep it's simply my opinion that having one of the more unique looking and performing tablets in the market does help the price make some sense and so there you have it sony just might have hit another home run with this foray into the 10-inch tablet market bringing out the best of the Sony Xperia Z smartphone into a much larger form factor has resulted in one of the best-looking and best handling tablets that are available today one that is more than capable of work and play when the looks alone can turn heads and bring out the oohs and ahhs it's really great to see that the rest of the tablet can corner the same response for all of the best coverage stay tuned to the Android Authority YouTube channel drop us a like down below and don't forget to subscribe and then head over to android authority comm because we're your source for all things Android