Gadgetory

tablets for a long time the division has been between big and beefy at the 10 inch size and small and portable down at 7 & 8 inches with the Xperia tablet Z Sony looks to bridge the gulf with a thin and light 10 inch tablet that's also waterproof does it succeed let's find out I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow and this is our video review of the sony xperia tablet z when we first caught sight of the tablet Z at MWC 2013 we were immediately smitten sony had pierced our veil of disinterest in 10-inch android tablets developing a product that looked and felt beautiful on the trade floor we wondered though how much Hardware fit and finish was required to overcome the 10 inch Android stigma well we've spent over a week with our own tablet z figuring that out so let's dive in it's pretty tough to properly showcase the Z on film as viewed from the front it seems kind of unremarkable a 10.1 inch 1920 by 1200 display dominates the frontside topped by a 2 point 2 megapixel front-facing camera and the sony logo some might find the tablets ample bezel a little excessive but it's a godsend for one-handed usability more on that in a second the back is even more Spartan offering just the Xperia branding and an NFC logo at the tap to share area with the 8.1 megapixel primary camera hanging out in the upper right corner the tablet sees real story is found on its sides the unit measures only 6.9 millimeters thick that's a full two millimeters thinner than Google's Nexus 10 yet sony has still managed to cram a few necessities along that slim stretch of reflective material the left side plays host to most of the action with a pronounced power standby button sharing space with a volume rocker headphone jack and a notification LED nice touch but speaker and micro USB ports a microSD slot and an IR transmitter make their homes on edges elsewhere these are all covered by protective flaps to preserve the device's IP 55 and 57 water and dust resistance rating as long as those covers are closed the tablet Z won't mind sitting in fresh water up to a meter deep for up to 30 minutes or being sprayed with water jets from most any direction the screen won't work while submerged but the device won't be hurt that means users can take the tablet Z on the boat or to the lake without much worry and for such a thin and light tablet that's quite an accomplishment speaking of light the tablet C weighs in at just 495 grams compared to the Nexus 10 iPad 4 and the surface RT all of which sit north of 600 grams on the scale combined with that generous bezel the reassuring rigidity and the comfortable soft touch back the light weight makes using the tablet Z one-handed not just possible but a pleasure it's only calls the aesthetic vision behind the tablet Z the Omni balanced design but whatever its name it succeeds brilliantly at providing the portability of a 7-inch tablet with the screen size of a 10-inch one and what about that screen well the use of TFT LCD over AMOLED would normally mean we found colors less saturated on this panel and blacks less deep now while the latter is true the former isn't colors really pop on this quote-unquote Reality Display and probably thanks to Sony's Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2 along with a very colorful selection of pre-loaded wallpapers nice move Sony visibility does drop off quite a bit when viewing the panel from the side especially considering how glossy and susceptible to fingerprints the tempered glass is but it's still plenty watchable it's just dimmer also in a very nice touch the screen is unlockable via a DoubleTap when turned off finally under the hood powering the experience is a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 pro at 1.5 gigahertz backed up by 2 gigs of RAM and either 16 or 32 gigs of storage expandable via microSD our unit is a Wi-Fi only version though an LTE variant is also available providing the juice to keep the lights on a non-removable 6,000 milliamp hour battery that takes up most of the space inside the unit powering the tablet zeon reveals right away that this isn't a stock google experience the lockscreen disappears with a window blind like effect and were dropped into sony's special build of Android 4 - it looks similar to stock but with some definite aesthetic and functional differences chief among them the location of the home back and multitasking key is on the lower left and the system status settings toggles and Notification Center on the lower right this makes them handy for one thumb access and it makes a lot more sense than stock androids top-up screen positioning there are also two persistent shortcut keys at the midpoint of the bottom row one calls up the remote app so you can use the tablet Z to control your TV cable box DVR or what have you the other brings up a list of utilities Sony calls small apps which are you guessed at small-scale windowed apps ranging in complexity from a calculator all the way up to a bare-bones browser it's a bit like the pop up apps on Samsung tablets but on the tablet Z only one title can be open at a time that feels a little confining but not nearly as bad as having no multitasking option in the first place if you don't like the existing selection you can buy more small apps from the Play Store or you can convert existing app widgets into small apps the sony has also included a suite of custom titles it puts front and center on first power on the album is fun to scroll through and it includes the ability to sync with Facebook Picasa and other photo repositories movies not only hosts your local video files but allows you to throw them to other compatible devices and it can also fetch details about downloaded movies from the Internet the Walkman app has a brand name that still manages to inspire nostalgia but it's a modern player for locally stored music with large easy-to-use controls and everything from a visualizer to a shortcut option that lets you search for lyrics music videos and artist info across the web there's also social life an aggregator a bit like a mash-up of Flipboard and HTC blinkfeed that displays news stories tweets and status updates from your social streams it's a fun novelty for a second but performance issues plagued social life it's always bogging down and jumping around and not in the fun way that's a problem that can be seen throughout the tablet C's interface actually even simple actions like scrolling between home screens sometimes results in lag and stutter behavior like this is something we shouldn't be seeing on a device of this class and it can get pretty frustrating when a swipe is interpreted as a tap or a homepage takes forever to scroll by now it's entirely possible Sony's own widgets are the lag causing issue and removing them does speed up the tablet since AOSP is now available for the tablet Z we can see why people would be excited to load stock Android on this thing but we're hesitant to recommend throwing the baby out with the bathwater here it's true that you might get more responsiveness with stock jellybean on this hardware but Sony's UI layer brings a lot to the table ranging from fun aesthetic touches to genuinely useful additions like the repositioned buttons small apps and the remote-control utility the Sony's software also includes some battery optimizations which are very handy on a tablet this thin with the battery only two-thirds the size of the one on the Nexus 10 there's stamina mode which disables data background actions and other activities when the screen is off in the more conventional low battery mode which includes options to disable or hobble certain features once total charge reaches a certain low-power threshold with our tablet Z polling to email and three social media accounts plus a variety of other services like Google Voice we found that the unit usually drained about 10% per 8 hour overnight period with stamina mode turned on that power drain fell to less than 5% drain over night this isn't a tablet that you'd bring with you into the forest for a week with no charger but it packs enough juice to last a few days with moderate to heavy use and much longer with more conservative habits the tablet sees 8 megapixel primary camera defaults to 5 megapixels out of the box presumably to maintain a widescreen aspect ratio and its field of view is quite narrow forcing you to get far away from a subject before you can capture it all in the frame the results are about what you'd expect for a tablet camera no matter what lighting situation we come away with fuzzy edges colors just a bit off and a general sense of man ramping up the resolution to 8 megapixels gives us a bit more detail and toggling HDR on brings out the mid-tones but it also brings out a gray pallor video is similarly middle-of-the-road it's nice to be able to shoot in 1080p but there's nothing outstanding here on the bright side unless you're a fan of ridicule you're probably going to be using the tablet ZZZ camera less for scenic photos and more for document scanning barcode reading and the like and at these tasks the camera will do just fine there are a bevy of options for adjusting the optics and the front-facing camera actually does quite nicely in good lighting conditions ensuring your Skype calls will go well that's assuming you can hear one another the tablet sees microphone might be a bit too sensitive and it caused some echo on the other end of video calls during our testing the speakers on the Z are also a little on the small side despite their multiple corner ports in media playback they're fine with s force fronts around 3d producing a cool effect but in Skype calls they're pretty quiet you'll want to keep some Bluetooth or wired headphones handy for communication purposes unfortunately the tablet Z plays nice with those to be clear the Xperia tablet Z is still a 10-inch Android tablet with all the failings of that platform in that form-factor the app situation is still mediocre with most popular titles built for smartphones and awkwardly stretched out on the Z and some even forcing you into the awkward portrait orientation the Android tablet app problem is still a very real handicap but as we've speculated before it may take truly beautiful Android tablet hardware to motivate developers to code great software to run on it and in that department the tablet Z more than fits the bill it's a thin lightweight beautifully crafted piece of technology that makes us want to overlook its failings rather than dwell on them and don't forget it's waterproof while we wish its stock software were a bit more responsive its battery a bit bigger and its price a bit more competitive this is still one of the most beautiful tablets we've ever handled and one of the only Android ones we'd consider buying at the 10 inch form factor if you run your life on Google and you're looking for a large but portable tablet to extend your computing needs on the go the Xperia tablet Z deserves a long look we give it a solid eight out of ten we'll have more in depth thoughts on the tablet Z in our written review available at pocketnow.com starting June 3rd and in the pocket now a weekly podcast and the pocket now you review both available that same week at pocket now so like this video if you did enjoy it leave us a comment if you have something to say subscribe to our various social feeds so you don't miss any posts about the tablet Z or other devices that we are reviewing and thank you for watching we'll see you next time