Sony Xperia Tablet Z Pro Reviews

We can call the exterior design a draw with two incredibly well-made tablets like the iPad Air and the Xperia Tablet Z, both of which are at the top amongst the thinnest, lightest 10-inchers out there. The chassis materials are a matter of personal preference between a beautifully crafted but somewhat slippery aluminum on the iPad Air, and the rubbery but waterproof body of the Tablet Z. The advantages of Sony's Xperia Tablet Z over the iPad Air, besides the watertight chassis, are the expandable memory, IR blaster and the tad lower price. Currently hovering close to the $400 mark for the basic Wi-Fi version with 16 GB, Sony's tablet storage can be expanded with a 64 GB memory card for $50 extra, whereas a 64 GB iPad will run you $699, but the difference between the basic versions is only $100. When it comes to screen quality and speed, however, iPad Air has the upper hand with brighter, more resolute display that flaunts very accurate color representation, and blazing fast 64-bit processor. When we couple those two main tablet selling points with the close to half a million apps written specifically to be viewed on an iPad, then the Tablet Z would be chosen before the iPad mainly for the price, or if you are certain you'll need some of its extra features. Despite the relatively weak processor, the Xperia Tablet Z is holding up very well to the formidable iPad Air, mostly thanks to Sony's industrial design mojo. Thus you can't really go wrong with either tablet in terms of design and features, but we can only hope Google's recent push for developing more tablet-oriented apps will give results quick, so as Android slates can stand up to the iPad in the software department, too.

Sony's made its best tablet yet. It's a stylish relaunch of the company's Android tablet series, but we can't shake the feeling that the Xperia Tablet Z's benefits are harder to sell than, say, the crisp display resolution of the Nexus 10 or the app strength of the iPad. Features like NFC and the infrared blaster ensure it lives up to its promise as a TV companion, while the screen is capable enough to share among friends or prop up for an impromptu TV-watching session. Once installed, Sony's SideView TV app and remote control mini-app offer up one of the easiest second-screen combinations we've ever used. However, while the unlikely combination of the Xperia Tablet Z's unassuming design and water protection is impressive, there simply aren't that many water hazards in the living room and coffee shops. It's the kind of feature that a smartphone needs far more than a tablet. All that said, this remains a premium Android tablet with a lightweight, but solid build. It's just that it also has a premium price -- one we're not sure it can command.

There’s very little to criticise the Xperia Tablet Z over. It’s thin, light, powerful, well-made, waterproof and it has a memory card slot. The battery life could be better but the cameras are both excellent by tablet standards, and the media playback apps and hardware are superb. In fact, I’d say the Tablet Z is the most convincing 10-inch tablet on the market at the moment and certainly the best that Sony has ever produced. If I was thinking about splashing out on a new smartphone and a new tablet, I’d spend the money on an Xperia SP and an Xperia Tablet Z, respectively. Never before would Sony have topped either my phone or tablet want-list, let alone both, so it’s clearly doing something right.

Ultimately, the Tablet Z's raison d'être is two-fold: it can be a universal remote, and it can go (but not function) underwater. I don't know if that's worth $500, or even the $100 over some other great Android tablets. I used the Tablet Z a lot more than I've used most Android tablets — it's just so amenable to so many situations. It's thin, light, and rugged enough that I carried it everywhere with me, and from cooking to bathing I really like having a waterproof tablet. If you're looking to spend $500 on an Android tablet, the Xperia Tablet Z is the one to get — I like its gimmicks much better than the Galaxy Note 10.1's. Ultimately, though, gimmicks are all any $500 Android tablet has going for it.

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z features the most impressive design we have seen to date. its most significant benefit is the thin and light form factor, packaged in an elegant -but tough- body. The battery life is excellent and the performance is really good for such a super slim chassis; as a matter of fact, the entertainment experience is highly enjoyable. The water resistant feature offers extended possibilities in terms of usage, for example, you will be able to read your digital magazine while taking a bath or on a pool floats in your swimming pool. We have always known that “specs” and synthetic benchmarks don’t tell the whole story and the Sony Xperia Tablet Z is probably the embodiment of that principle. In absolute terms, it performs very well, but when you look at it from the prism of design, aesthetics and overall user experience, it performs brilliantly. The Xperia tablet Z is everything that tablets were meant to be: fast, thin, light, with a good battery life — and you get some water and dust resistance as a bonus. What’s not to like?

The Xperia Tablet Z is still very much a ten-inch Android tablet, with all the failings of that platform in that form factor. Most egregiously: the app situation is still mediocre, with popular titles like Twitter and Facebook built for smartphones and appearing awkwardly stretched-out on the Z. Some, like Instagram, even force you into the awkward portrait orientation – a position that 16:9 16:10 tablets like this look and feel ridiculous in, lightweight or not. 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.

Sony has made a very desirable tablet in the Xperia Tablet Z. We particularly like its striking svelte design and features that you don't get with rivals such as NFC, its waterproof casing and infrared. However, its slightly lacking performance means the Nexus 10 will save you some money or the iPad 4 will give you a smooth experience for the same price.

Sony has one of the best Android tablets on its hands, one with a unique feature mix that competing tablets have no answer to. While the company has some way to go in the hotly-disputed smartphone market, the Sony Xperia Tablet Z has a good chance of actually making a difference in the high-end segment of the tablet warfare.

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is among the finest Android tablets available, combining an incredibly thin and light design with top-notch performance.

A super-thin tablet, but too expensive to replace the Nexus 10 in our affections

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z offers plenty of features, a sharp screen, and good gaming performance. It's also the thinnest, lightest large tablet I've yet held, but its slow network performance, disappointing large apps loading speed, and high price prevent it from being recommended over the Nexus 10 as Android tablets go. However, with impressively effective waterproofing, an expandable storage option, and useful Sony software features, most will be satisfied by its offerings. That is, as long as the high price works for you.

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is a great Android tablet. The design and specification is impressive, offering a thin and light tablet that's a pleasure to hold, with the reassurance of protection from water for those inevitable accidents. Some might take issue with the need to open flaps, although with the right accessories you'll be able to bypass that minor irritation. The display isn't the best out there, bettered by the Samsung-built Nexus 10, which offers a more natural colour palette as well as a high resolution for sharper details. Overall the Sony Xperia Tablet Z is a great choice. A software update to Android 4.2 would lift the user experience to be one of the best out there. If you're looking for an Android tablet at 10.1 inches, it comes recommended.

Sony succeeded in making the thinnest and lightest 10” Android tablet waterproof, and added four virtual surround speakers to all the prerequisites for a modern flagship tablet like high-resolution display and a quad-core processor. We'd wish the processor was a bit faster, but that's about the only gripe we have with the Xperia Tablet Z, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better Android tablet in the $500 range. Actually the only alternative to the Tablet Z's value-for-money proposition is Google's Nexus 10, which is not sold everywhere and, despite the advantage of a record pixel density, has less sophisticated design, no expandable storage, no IR blaster and is not waterproof, so even at $100 less it might not cut it for you, compared to the Tablet Z. Sony's best and brightest tablet, however, has to face the formidable iPad franchise competition when it ventures outside of the Android world, with the hundreds of thousands of tablet-specific apps available for it. Thankfully, the Xperia Tablet Z is positioned quite differently, as it sports a thin and light watertight chassis against the more premium, but thicker and heavier aluminum build of the iPad 4, and offers more features like expandable storage, IR blaster and quad-speaker system, so the likely buyers of both tablets would have minimum overlap.

Easily one of the best Android tablets around, and a genuine alternative to the Nexus 10

The Sony Xperia SP is a good mid-range phone. There's power and flexibility on board and there's the performance to back it up, aside from a few minor quirks. The design of the handset is good too with the metal frame giving the SP a nice solid feel. We're not sold on the flashing bar however, it just seems a little too much at times, especially when you're lying awake at night, watching it illuminate your bedroom. The camera performance isn't great. Although there's a lot on offer, it just doesn't seem to all come together and give you the good shots you'd sometimes expect, with focusing being the thing that frustrated us the most. However, the Sony Xperia SP is reasonably priced and for that you get a good display and a device that will showcase the fun of Android nicely, with a battery that will get you through the day.

"Post" pre-sample and "pre" final series device: The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is a good tablet, even if the software is still in beta and the display is not yet in its final state. Sony is clearly going in the right direction, and perhaps they'll still improve a few things here and there. There's certainly nothing to improve when it comes to the tablet's inner components. The device's equipment meets the current upper-class requirements and afforded the tablet very good results in the first round of performance measurements. The case is very flat and light but should still endure "wind and weather". It could still be more stable in our opinion. The display also already does its job well, though we don't want to anticipate too much before the release of the final series device. We see room for improvement in terms of the cameras and speakers. But the tablet manufacturers seem to think otherwise. Either they're uninterested in improving those features or they can't improve them. The battery life is not yet worthy of the top class either. We're anxious to see what kind of abilities the series device can demonstrate in the end. The test device Sony lent us from the pre-series certainly whets our appetite.