Sony Xperia Tablet Z: The Thinnest and the Lightest, but Not the Fastest

Sony Xperia Tablet Z

The iPhone 5 is the thinnest, lightest, and fastest iPhone ever. Can the Sony XperiaTablet Z say the same for their new flagship tablet?

Let us find out:

Design

Well, the Xperia Tablet Z is definitely the thinnest and the lightest 10-inch tablet in the market. It is just 1.06 lbs and just 0.27 inches thick. It has three ports; the MicroSD port, MHL connection, and the headphone jack. What makes this tablet different is that all these ports can be shut closed with its covers effectively making it waterproof; at least up to three feet of water. That quality, though, is the signature of the Xperia series so the water and dust proof designs were expected.

Software

The IR blaster feature is back on the Xperia Tablet Z. With this, you can turn your tablet as a universal remote for your cable or satellite TV, even your music and entertainment system. Software-wise, there is nothing really new with the Sony Xperia Tablet Z. It includes Sony’s own media multimedia marketplaces, which are Video and Music Unlimited. With Music Unlimited, you can purchase different songs and play it on Walkman, Sony’s music-playing app. The same goes for Video Unlimited, more or less, only with movies and TV shows. You can connect your tablet to your TV through DLNA but this also emphasized one of its weaknesses, which is poor Wi-Fi connection. Streaming results to a lot of buffering, this takes away from the whole experience. Using the MHL port would be much more convenient.

Performance

While the Xperia Tablet Z is a fine looking and durable piece of gadgetry, its performance has a lot of room for improvement. As said above, its Wi-Fi connection is not up to par so do not expect seamless VoIP or video streaming through this gadget.  Apps also take forever to load (okay, not really “forever” but a few seconds longer than what you would expect from a flagship phone). The NFC feature is also lackluster. Transferring of files to another device through the NFC logo at the back of the tablet has lead to a lot of awkward tablet-to-tablet touching because a simple short bump will not suffice. It just takes a while for the tablet to send information through its NFC feature.

It does, however, perform well with 3D games especially with its 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset and Andreno 320 GPU. The games also look good at 1920×1200 resolution screen which is just a few pixels lower than the Nexus 10’s 2560×1600.

Camera

Sony outfitted the Xperia Tablet Z 8-MP camera with what they call Exmor R Technology. This innovation is supposed to allow users to capture good images even in low light environments. The tablet did produce good images because it was able to absorb more information. The quality of the pictures, however, is still below what you would expect from an 8MP camera.

Price

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z has a price tag of $499. It would have been fine if all the components of the tablet worked perfectly. But with poor Wi-Fi connection, slow-loading apps, and just an average camera, all it got going for it is its thin and light design. It is difficult to endorse a tablet this expensive when the smaller tablets can do what the Xperia tablet Z can do at a more affordable price.

  1. nice post and i agree with you that Sony Xperia Tablet Z is not performing well in terms with speed but let’s hope Sony will announce a better version of it.

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