Sony Tablet S review

Apple dominates the tablet market, and most competitors seem happy to go along with its ultra-skinny look – with Samsung even coming to legal blows with Apple over alleged design similarities. Sony, refreshingly, isn’t following anyone’s lead, and Apple’s lawyers certainly won’t have anything to say about the company’s first tablet – the unique-looking Sony Tablet S.

We first saw it at the IFA trade show back in September and you can read our immediate impressions in this Hands on: Sony Tablet S. It impressed us then, and still does today.

Apple’s lawyers can have no complaint with the Tablet S

The unusual wedge-like shape is reminiscent of a magazine that has had the front cover folded back on itself. Holding it upright, the thicker edge sits in the palm of your hand far more comfortably than the razor-like edges of most modern tablets. It also has a textured back to give your fingertips extra grip. Turn it horizontally and the rear is tapered inwards slightly, with recesses down either edge for the buttons and ports. Place it on a desktop and the screen sits up at a slight angle, making it easier to type on.

The screen itself measures 9.4in across, slightly smaller than most Android tablets, but has the same 1,280×800 resolution. Despite a slightly higher pixel count per inch, we couldn’t say it looks any more detailed than the iPad 2’s 1,024×768 screen; and Apple’s tablet is certainly a little brighter, with more vibrant colours.

Its unique shape makes it a little chunkier than its competitors, ranging from 10mm to 20mm in depth. We can’t say that we found it any harder to carry around day-to-day than the Apple iPad 2, though it may upset the aesthetic sensibilities of some. It weighs 598g, around the same as the iPad 2, which is a little disappointing given it has a smaller battery.

Battery life is respectable with just under 10 hours of continuous H264 video playback from its 4,400mAh battery. The iPad 2 managed a stunning 17 hours, though, thanks both to better power efficiency and a larger 6,930mAh battery. For use around the home, the shorter battery life isn’t a huge deal, though less charging is always good. If your heart’s set on an Android device, the Tablet S compares well to our current favourite the Asus Transformer, which lasted for 8h 37min in the same test.

There are two cameras, and while the front-mounted VGA camera was up to the job of video chat, the main 5-megapixel camera was a little disappointing. Images indoors exhibited all the usual noise and colour cast problems we’re used to seeing from tablet and phone cameras. The key exception being Sony’s own back-lit EXMOR R sensors, so it’s a shame that one isn’t used here. Things were better outdoors, but shots still weren’t crisp enough to live up to the 5-megapixel rating.

We’ve seen far better pictures from Sony Ericsson’s smartphones, click to zoom to pixel-to-pixel scale

If you are a keen photographer then the full-sized SDHC slot will be of far more use, letting you quickly transfer pictures from camera to tablet in the field. There’s even a rather neat app for such file transfers, with thumbnails of your images provided.

Inside is the same Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset used in the majority of premium Android tablets. Running at 1GHz it completed the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 2,160ms – a typical score given the specification.

LOUNGIN’ WITH MY ‘DROID

It’s worth noting that this is a Sony-branded device, not a Sony Ericsson one, which makes it the company’s first Android device, and means you don’t get the usual range of additional apps shipped on Xperia handsets. That’s no great loss really, and personally we prefer our Android devices to be as Google intended them, still there are a few extras here that might pique your interest.

The for-the-home nature of the Tablet S is made clear with the inclusion of a built-in infrared emitter – with which you can control all your home entertainment kit. We often find ourselves using a tablet while sat on the sofa in front of the TV, so having virtual remotes for all your kit built into the Tablet S is really handy.

It’s not the prettiest interface, but it’s highly configurable and easy to understand

There’s a wide range of supported devices, and we got our TV and AV amplifier set up quickly. For our PVR, though, we did have to use the app’s ability to learn from existing remotes in order to fix a few misbehaving buttons, plus rename some others and add a couple of missing ones. You can also set touchscreen gestures to control common functions, including volume and channel changes. It may be a bit fiddly to get everything set up perfectly, but the tools are there, and once done you could tidy all your remotes away for good – except, frustratingly, for the Sony’s own PlayStation 3 remote, which uses Bluetooth and so isn’t supported.

The Tablet S comes with a handy DLNA server, so you can stream media files from other devices to enjoy on the tablet – no big news there. More impressive is that the media player apps (Gallery, Music player and Video player) can act as media servers themselves. You simply touch an icon at the top of the screen and the Tablet S searches for compatible media players, once found you can use a flicking action to send the file to the media player – where it plays back automatically. We’ve seen this demoed, but couldn’t get it to work with any of our hardware or media players. Sony’s website states it only works with compatible hardware, which we read as current Sony Bravia TVs, but at the time of going to press, Sony hadn’t confirmed exactly what hardware was compatible.

Surprisingly, the Tablet S doesn’t have an HDMI output – which seems a big oversight given the rest of the design seems set for living room use. Maybe Sony was confident enough of its tablet’s network capabilities to think it unnecessary – but the simplicity of plug-and-play shouldn’t be underestimated.

Fans of retro games may be excited to find that the Tablet S can play original PlayStation games. There are two games provided, Pinball Heroes and Crash Bandicoot, which you actually have to download before playing. Neither of these particularly impressed us, games have moved on a lot since Crash’s launch in 1996 and the touchscreen controls don’t help much either, the game is also a whopping 524MB in size. There are some classic PlayStation One games we’d like to play, but to date the online store hasn’t opened.

The other icons on the first home page are links to Sony’s music and video stores, plus a link that downloads its Reader app – all of which you can access from any Android device. There’s a social networking feed aggregator, which does what you’d expect but only works with Twitter and Facebook – better examples, or at least ones with wider compatibility, can be found in the Android Market – such as my6sense.

One small addition to the usual Android layout is a quick-launch toolbar in the top-left-hand corner. This can hold up to four app shortcuts, which you can switch in and out. The menu stays in place on all five home screens, so you’ll always have access to your favourites. The main app tray has also been redesigned, you can now separate your apps up into groups using a drag and drop separator line. Once sectioned off, you can name each group with an appropriate title – such as games or media players.

CONCLUSION

There’s a lot to like about the Tablet S. The shape is great, making the tablet more comfortable to hold and use than the usual super-slim examples. If you are buying it for living room use, then the built-in IR control is a truly useful addition, and the main reason to buy a Tablet S over its competitors. Battery life, the display and the camera are all fairly typical for an Android tablet, though, which is disappointing given the expectation that comes with a Sony logo. Most people shopping for an Android tablet should buy the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 – though the Apple iPad 2 remains the gold standard for such devices.