Is Tablet Z afraid of the deep end?

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is a sleek, lightweight, 10.1-inch tablet computer that’s a lot of fun to use. A mere 6.9mm in width, it’s the skinniest tablet I’ve seen so far. The weight is less than half a kilo.

You can feel safe using Tablet Z around – and in – the swimming pool because it’s designed to submerge a dunking one metre deep for 30 minutes. So you can enjoy browsing the Web while treading water, and (supposedly) even take pictures underwater. All the ports have covers to keep the wet out.

You get a 10.1-inch full-HD Reality Display powered by the Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2. That means enhanced colour reproduction and a brilliant, HD TV-like viewing experience. The OptiContrast panel reduces sunlight glare as well.

This is a powerful tablet thanks to the 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro and two gigabytes of active memory (RAM). It won’t slow down even for memory-hog applications. You have 16GB of internal storage and can boost that to 32GB with a microSD card. The operating system is Google Android 4.1.2.

There are plenty of nice functions and features. Sony’s One-Touch, based on NFC (Near Field Communication) technology, lets you seamlessly transfer photos and video to an NFC-ready TV and play music on an NFC speaker system. You can swap files to an NFC smart phone easily as well.

Tablet Z becomes a universal remote control with its infrared port on top and a remote-control app that will add any device you introduce – it has a “learning” function on top of its many pre-loaded codes for popular brands and devices.

As far as taking photos, you have an 8MP rear camera and a 2MP front camera, both with Exmor R mobile sensors. The main camera has a bright f/2.4 lens for good-quality photos in most lighting conditions and a lot of exposure modes. 

You can choose the scene mode – Superior auto, burst, picture-effect or scene selection. The last one offers soft skin, soft snap, backlight correction HDR, handheld twilight, gourmet, pet and high sensitivity.

Picture effects include nostalgic, miniature, vivid, fisheye, sketch and partial colour. (Sketch mode makes a photo look like it was drawn by hand.)

Then there’s a Walkman app to – the tablet turns into a high-quality portable MP3 player. Clear Audio+ delivers rich, deep, life-like quality, not just for songs but aural effects too. S-Force Surround 3D technology immerses you in movie sound.

Sony Thailand has two versions of the Xperia Tablet Z available in Thailand. One connects only with HSPA+ 3G. The other also reaches LTE 4G but is only available from TrueMove H.

I tested the first version on TrueMove H’s HSPA+ network. The connection was fast and so was my downloading and installation of applications. It was a breeze checking email and Facebook.

The performance was great, with menus and touch-screen quite responsive, swiping and scrolling onscreen smooth. I could watch videos with no faltering. The interface is admirably intuitive. 

Apart from Home, Back and Option soft buttons, there’s a button to call up a panel of seven shortcuts to apps and widgets. All of this can be customised.

And, of course, I went for a swim. Here the Z is not all it’s cracked up to be. I could take photos on the surface of the water, but not underwater. Apparently the water pressure a little deeper is too much for the soft “home” button, so the camera app gets shut off. Sony needs to find a way to lock all the buttons – except of course the shutter.

The Xperia Tablet Z has a suggested retail price of Bt22,990.

 

Key specs

_ Operating System: Android 4.1

_ Network: HSPA+ (1, 5, 8), GSM/GPRS/EDGE (850/ 900/ 1800/ 1900 MHz) 

_ Processor: 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 + MDM9215M Quad Core

_ Display: 10.1-inch wide (WUXGA: 1920 x 1200) TFT Colour LCD

_ Memory: 2GB

_ Storage: 16GB, expandable with microSD

_ Interface: Micro-USB2.0, Headphone Jack Stereo mini jack

_ Connectivity: Wireless LAN: IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n, GPS, NFC, Bluetooth standard Ver. 4.0

(WEP/WPA/WPA2 Supported)

Technology LTE (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 20), 

_ Sensor: Accelerometer (three-axis accelerometer), Gyro, Digital Compass, Ambient Light Sensor 

_ IR Remote Control: Supports Multi Function, Learning Function, Pre-loaded remote control code

_ Front Camera: HD camera (Exmor R for mobile, Resolution: 1920x1080, Effective Pixels: 2.2megapixels) 

_ Rear Camera: HD camera (Exmor R for mobile, 

_ Resolution: 3288x2472

_ Effective Pixels: 8.1megapixels)

_ Battery: Built-in rechargeable battery with 6.5-hour charging time, eight-hour Web browsing with Wi-Fi

_ Dimensions: 266x6.9x172mm

_ Weight 495g