 "Sony Xperia Tablet Z (SGP321) Review")
While Android smartphones are coming out of the woodworks this year, we haven’t seen many Android tablets this year. Everyone seems to be focusing on smaller, 7-inch form factor tablets and seem to have abandoned the 10-inch space. The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is the only new 10.1-inch Android tablet to launch this year. And with no one to contend against, it is commanding a substantial premium in the market. This is not any run-of-the-mill tablet, though. The care and polish delivered by Sony is simply brilliant as we’ll see in a bit.
Design and build
The Xperia Tablet Z creates a new mould for what large-screen tablets should be like. It’s thinner than its pocketable cousin, the Xperia Z, at just 6.9 mm. The Z is also super light at just 496 g, which makes single-handed use a breeze. There’s sufficient amount of bezel on either side of the screen, so you can use it in any orientation comfortably.
Stunning design and stellar build
The power button and the ports are taken from the Xperia Z and we have flaps for every port due to the IP55/IP57 certification. There are two stereo speakers at the bottom for better sound; there’s another one on the side, which kicks in when you enable the “S-Force Front Surround 3D” feature. The audio quality of the speakers isn’t very good, but it’s loud. The flap-covered ports include the microUSB, microSD and SIM and the headphone jack. The sides house the volume rocker, power/sleep button and two contacts points for using it with a dock. While the glossy front does attract fingerprints, the rear has a very nice matte finish that’s available in both white and black trims. This texture extends along the sides as well to offer better grip.
Ergonomically designed and placed ports
The tablet fared pretty well when we took it out for a dip in the rain, which is evident from the video below. The screen is quite unusable, though, since the water droplets cause the capacitance to go crazy. Still, a pretty handy feature to have if you’re the clumsy type.
Features
The LED-backlit LCD display on the Tablet Z is a lot better as compared to the one on the Xperia Z. The full HD resolution (1920 x 1200) at that size offers a decent pixel count of 224 ppi. This is not too far off from Apple’s 264 ppi on the new iPad, which means you won’t notice a huge difference between them in everyday use. The display is bright and text is sharp and crisp; perfect for web browsing or catching up on your TV shows. The display also has a screen guard protecting it, just like the Xperia Z, but we left it alone this time.
The UI is highly customised
The Tablet Z is powered by 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm SoC (APQ8064) along with 2GB of RAM. Jelly Bean runs relatively smooth, but we did notice some lag when swiping through the homescreens. This glitch is possibly due to Sony’s heavy skinning of Android and we really hope they fix it soon. The tablet has 16GB of internal memory with the option of adding up to a 64GB microSD card.
In order to make better use of the larger screen real estate, Sony has added a taskbar-esque feature on the top, which remains static across homescreens. At the bottom, we have a selection of floating apps for things like browser, calculator etc. These apps open in movable windows and can be opened above your current app. There’s even an IR blaster in the front; Sony’s Remote Control app lets you set it up to any popular brand of television. You can even set up a remote for a set-top box, DVD, Blu-ray, CD player and lots more.
Media
The music player is similar to the current like of Xperia phones, just supersized. Sound enhancements are present in the form of ClearAudio+, which automatically amplifies the sound, or a 5-band graphic equaliser along with features like Clear stereo, Clear phase, xLOUD and Dynamic normaliser – all of which are designed to boost frequencies and make your audio experience more pleasurable.
Music player on the Tablet Z
The video player breaks down your videos into movies, TV and those that can be streamed. The player won’t read FLV files, but everything else, including MKV files, works just fine. HD video doesn’t heat up the tablet as much as it did the Xperia Z, which is good. We didn’t find the Sony Music or Sony LIV app bundled with the tablet.
Connectivity
The Xperia Tablet Z is a quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G handset. There’s even support for LTE, which is a very good addition. Along with this, you also get dual-band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth v4.0, NFC, GLONASS—the works, basically. There isn’t any calling functionality, so you’ll have to stick to apps like Viber for voice calls.
Very good connectivity options
Other custom apps from Sony include Sony Select, which is essentially a mini app store with the recommended apps. The new Socialife app is neatly done and lets you view all your social feeds in one place. This is also accompanied by an equally useful widget. Smart Connect lets you automate tasks at certain time intervals; you can make your Z switch to silent mode, turn off Wi-Fi or data from 12AM to 8AM while you sleep and so on. Other noteworthy apps include Update Center, Xperia Link, Backup and Restore, NeoReader, Wisepilot, OfficeSuite and TrackID.
Camera
The Tablet Z packs in a rear 8.1MP shooter and a 2.2MP sensor in the front. Both cameras are capable of full HD video recording. The camera features are exactly the same as the Xperia Z, except for HDR Video, which is missing. The different modes can be selected with the tap of the first icon. There’s also a new Superior Auto mode, which automatically picks the right scene mode depending on where you point the camera. The image quality is average at best, for both indoors and out. The image doesn’t look very good on the display itself and zooming in reveals very strong JPEG compression with lots of artifacting.
Camera is pretty mediocre
Videos have a smooth frame rate, but there’s plenty of noise in the videos. We realise that the camera is not the main reason why you would buy a tablet, but we expect it to be passable given the premium it begs.
Battery life
The 6000 mAh battery is not the largest we’ve seen on a 10.1-inch tablet but is certainly huge considering the dimensions of the Tablet Z. We ran our loop test with a 2G SIM, Wi-Fi connected and the brightness set to medium. Other than the call test, we ran through 2 hours of video, audio and YouTube streaming, which left us with 33 percent battery remaining. All the power-saver modes were off. This was pretty mediocre considering we couldn’t do the call test. STAMINA mode should help prolong the standby time, but we are not sure if it would help much otherwise.
Verdict and price in India
With a price tag of Rs 46,990, the Xperia Tablet Z is very pricey when you consider its overall performance. It has some neat tricks up its sleeve, like the IP55/57 certification and the IR blaster, but the comparatively low onboard storage, mediocre camera and battery life and the intermittent lag in the UI takes away from an otherwise pleasant experience. You can get a 32GB 4th Gen iPad with 3G for this money and that’s the route we’d recommend if you have this budget, as you’ll be getting a better display, camera and battery performance for a little less.
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