Sony Xperia Tablet S review

Every app looks great on the 9.4in, 1,280×800 IPS display, which produces clean images with plenty of contrast and balanced colours. The overly glossy screen can make light reflections somewhat troublesome, but text and icons still appeared sharp and perfectly legible. We were able to play 720p videos smoothly, even though audio quality was distinctly average. The dual speakers are pointed downwards and produce a slightly tinny sound, which is never particularly loud even at full volume. Sony has also applied a low-friction coating to the screen, which doesn’t do anything to prevent fingerprint smears and feels surprisingly slippery. This meant we experienced a few more typing errors than usual.

The 8-megapixel rear camera is surprisingly capable, but we still think tablets shouldn’t be used for anything more than the occasional portrait. Still pictures appear clear from a distance, but as soon as you zoom in or get close to a subject the limited detail becomes easier to spot. Colours also look a little dull compared to the average smartphone. You can record 1080p video, but the constant refocusing isn’t ideally suited to recording precious memories.

During our time with the Xperia Tablet S, we felt it performed admirably thanks to its quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor running at 1.3Ghz and its 1GB of memory. It scored 4070 in the Quadrant benchmark, putting it on par with the Asus Transformer Prime, and it completed the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 1602.8ms. It’s not the fastest Android tablet around, but it’s easily fast enough to play games and multitask without any visible slowdown. It also produced a very respectable twelve and a half hours in our battery test, so you’ll easily get through a whole day on a single charge.

It’s a shame that Sony had to pull the Xperia Tablet S for so long in order to fix its splash-proof seal, as in the meantime its been surpassed in many ways by the Google Nexus 10, which has a significantly better screen for the same money. The Xperia Tablet S’s splash-proof design and family-friendly guest mode are genuinely useful features that should appeal to parents of young children, but given its high price, it’s difficult to recommend when the Nexus is such good value.