Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet review

It’s hard to believe, but Sony has managed to make a tablet that is both thinner and lighter than the iPad Air. Apple’s tablet amazed us when it launched, at just 7.5mm thick and weighing only 469g, but Sony’s new Xperia Z2 tablet trumps it; it’s just over a millimetre thinner than Apple’s tablet, and, at 439g, even lighter still.

You notice the weight difference as soon as you pick the tablet up. The Z2 Tablet feels significantly lighter to hold than the iPad Air and Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1, both of which are 30g heavier.

It’s also a lovely object. The Z2 Tablet feels much more like a high-quality product than the plastic-fantastic Galaxy Tab Pro, and approaches the iPad Air for sheer desirability. You may not like the plastic rear as much as the iPad Air’s all-metal finish, but this helps contribute to the tablet’s light weight, and at least the plastic feels durable. You may also miss the glass rear of the Tablet Z, but the Z2 Tablet is more comfortable to hold than its rather hard-edged predecessor. It’s still waterproof, too, and Sony has usefully managed to waterproof the headphone socket without needing a fiddly plastic flap.

Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet Performance

The Z2 Tablet is powered by one of the most powerful mobile chips currently available; the Qualcomm Snapdragon 801. This has four cores running at 2.3GHz, and the tablet runs Android 4.4 better than any Android tablet we have ever seen. It feels far quicker than the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro, which despite its up-to-the-minute Exynos 5 Octa processor, suffers from some stutter and lag. You notice the Z2’s power when opening and closing applications and flicking through homescreens, but even an Android tablet this powerful can’t match the iPad Air for sheer uninterrupted smoothness; we still noticed an occasional hesitation here and there.

In our benchmarks, the tablet wasn’t quite as quick as we were expecting. The Z2 Tablet completed the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark, which is a reasonable indicator of web browsing performance, in 1034ms. This is a strong score, but it’s slower than both the iPad (402ms) and Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro (972ms). It’s also significantly slower than the Snapdragon 801-equipped Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphone, which completed the test in 731ms using the Google Chrome browser.

Despite this, the tablet still has excellent web browsing performance. It renders pages quickly, and there’s almost no lag at all when scrolling around. The Z2 Tablet certainly copes better with complicated web pages than the Galaxy Tab Pro, which was disappointingly hesitant. The Z2 Tablet also has huge 3D performance. In the 3DMark benchmark, we saw 18,883 in the Unlimited test, which is comfortably the highest score we’ve seen from a tablet. As we expected, 3D driving game Real Racing 3 ran beautifully smoothly at maximum detail levels.

Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet Android 4.4

The Z2 Tablet runs a customised version of Android, and we think it’s a winner. A stock version of Android 4.4 can look dark and staid, but Sony’s customisations are generally subtle and classy – it’s a great-looking operating system. It’s simple to customise your homescreens; long-pressing brings up a carousel view showing all your homescreens, with a sidebar showing apps and widgets for you to drag where you want. The main app tray makes it easy to navigate your app collection, too. Swiping in from the left edge brings up a menu which lets you sort your apps alphabetically, by the most used apps and according to an order of your own devising.

We were sent the 32GB model, which has around 25GB of storage left for your apps and files. The 16GB model is £50 cheaper, but looking at how much space the operating system takes up on the 32GB model, we’d take a guess at no more than 10GB being left on the 16GB Z2 Tablet out of the box. There’s a microSD card slot to help you add more space cheaply, however.

Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet Display

Apple and Samsung may have pushed their tablet resolutions to huge heights, with the 2,048×1,536 resolution of the iPad Air and the massive 2,560×1,600 of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 and Galaxy Note 10.1, but Sony has stuck with a relatively standard 1,920×1,200 for the Z2 Tablet. This means it has a pixel density of 224ppi compared to the iPad’s 264ppi and Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1’s huge 311ppi, but we’re not convinced it matters. Text on the Z2 Tablet’s screen is still incredibly sharp and clear and web pages couldn’t be easier to read.

The Z2 Tablet is also helped by the sheer quality of its IPS panel. Our calibration tests showed the Z2 Tablet’s screen to be objectively the best of any tablet we’ve reviewed. We saw the best results when we turned off Sony’s X-Reality feature, which is meant to improve photo and video image quality. The tablet could display 98.9% of the sRGB colour gamut, which is better than the 96.8% we measured from the iPad Air’s screen and the 93.3% from the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro. Sony’s tablet also showed a superior contrast ratio, with a huge 1069:1, compared to 805:1 and 812:1 for Apple and Samsung’s tablets.

These figures were backed up by our own eyes; this tablet has some of the most vibrant colours and purest whites we have seen. It’s very slightly better than the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro’s display, which has a very mild blue colour cast, but there’s little to choose between this and the iPad Air’s screen. Once we turned X-Reality back on, the contrast ratio dropped to 942:1 and we lost some shadow detail in our test photos, but standard-definition videos looked sharper.

Sony Xperia Z2 Tablet Conclusion

The Z2 Tablet may not be hugely different from its predecessor, but it’s an improvement in all the ways that really count. It’s slimmer, lighter and faster with an absolutely beautiful screen, and even has impressive battery life, lasting 15 hours in our video playback test. It’s the best Android tablet by far, and there’s little to choose between this and the iPad in terms of speed, ease of use and screen quality. If you want a 10in Android tablet, buy this one.