Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2014/05/28/review_sony_xperia_z2_android_tablet/
Sony Xperia Z2: What we REALLY thought of this Android fondleslab
Faster, thinner, lighter – yet how much has the price changed?
Posted in Personal Tech, 28th May 2014 09:01 GMT
Review While Sony seems wedded to a six monthly update cycle for its flagship smartphones – we’ve had the Xperia Z, Z1 and Z2 in the last twelve months – its tablet release schedule is a tad more leisurely. The impressive Xperia Z tablet rocked up in June 2013 and now, just shy of a year later, we have an update: the Z2 tablet.
Light touch: Sony's Xperia Z2 tablet
Er, so what happened to the Z1 Tablet? Nothing, there is no such thing. The Z2 moniker is being used here simply to make the marketing pitch tie up more neatly with the Z2 phone. If Sony had used the more obvious Z1 name punters would suspect that Sony’s new tablet was a generation behind its new smartphone.
The big deal with the original Xperia Tablet was how thin and light it was and the Z2 improves upon this by even thinner and lighter still. At 6.9mm the Z Tablet was the thinnest fondleslab around but the Z2 is half a millimetre thinner and at 426g a rather remarkable 69g lighter. Unless you’ve handled a Z2 Tablet, it’s nigh on impossible to get an idea of how almost supernaturally thin and light it feels. It makes the iPad Air, let alone the Samsung competition, feel both leaden and lumpen.
Albeit thinner, the Z2 sticks with the Omni-Balance aluminium frame
The essential design of the Z2 is much the same as the original Z but that’s no bad thing. The Omni-Balance aluminium frame is still in evidence, which makes it a handsome device and, more importantly, a very solid one. Actually it feels rather more solid than the Z Tablet, with less flex in evidence when you really twist it. There is perhaps a wee bit too much bezel in evidence, especially at the sides, but I presume that’s a side-effect of being so slim – the innards still have to go somewhere. And at least it gives you someplace to put your thumbs that isn’t screen.
A small change, but for the good, is to be found at the back. Out goes the toughened glass rear to be replaced by a soft, matte-effect plastic panel. This is more pleasant to the touch, less prone to smudging and I suspect less likely to crack if dropped. Sony has also moved the micro USB and memory card/SIM slots from the bottom to the top of the device, a change I heartily approve of.
Repositioned to the top of this Xperia are the micro USB and Sim card slots
Things are still not perfect though. While the 3.5mm audio jack is no longer hidden away beneath a waterproof cover, it has been moved from the left hand side to the bottom. That’s where the pogo pins are so you can’t plug in your headphones if the Z2 is sitting in its optional dock unless they have a right-angle or short jack. My Sony cans have the former, my Sennheisers, however, do not.
Sticking to matters audio, Xperia devices, be they phone or tablet, have traditionally had weak loudspeakers but the Z2 Tablet attempts to remedy this by moving the stereo monitors from the bottom edge to the front, where they are considerately positioned low enough down to avoid being covered by your hands.
3.5mm jack and dock pins both a the bottom... hmmm
This change represents a useful step forward but there is still an overall lack of volume, even if Sony’s S-Force surround sound system makes what there is impressively expansive. The lack of volume is more than likely a side effect of the dust and waterproofing, bumped from IP57 on the Z Tablet to IP58 on the Z2.
New gear's resolution
Inside the Z2 is the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 chip which packs a quad-core 2.3 GHz Krait 400 processor, Adreno 330 GPU and 3GB of RAM. It makes the Z2 go like brown stuff off a digging implement. Make no mistake, this is a seriously quick and powerful tablet, especially when it comes to 3D graphics.
Android launcher, Xperia style
The benchmark numbers speak for themselves: AnTuTu returned over 32,000, 3DMark’s Ice Storm Unlimited over 18,900. For hardcore gaming enthusiasts the Z2 has Dualshock 3 wireless controller support out of the box.
Two ingredients that Sony hasn’t fiddled with to any great extent are the screen and battery. The 10.1-inch LCD still has a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution which pans out to a pixel density of 224ppi. That’s lower than the 264ppi of the iPad Air, the 299ppi of the Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 or the 247ppi of its bigger brother, the Galaxy Note Pro 12.2.
The Gracenote-connected movies app is excellent
Of course, this rush for higher ppi ratings may be wholly specious – I certainly couldn’t make out individual pixels without the help of a magnifying glass. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with the Z2’s display - it’s bright and colourful and thanks to it now using IPS technology viewing angles are more robust. Video and pictures looks tip-top thanks to Sony’s various image processing systems with exciting names like Triluminos and X-Reality Engine.
Also unchanged is the 6,000mAh Li-Po battery. Considering the reduction in weight and thickness, expecting a higher capacity battery would have been highly optimistic. There’s no need to panic though because the Z2 Tablet did much, much better in my 1080p video loop-of-death test than the original Xperia Z, lasting for only a little shy of nine hours. The Z Tablet coughed and died before it crossed the six hour mark. Such are the benefits of a more efficient chipset and operating system.
The back is thankfully no longer made of glass and you get a decent 8Mp camera there too
In everyday, and intense use involving a lot of gaming and web browsing, I was easily able to get two full days and then some from a charge. The only fly in the ointment is that the bundled USB charger is still a 1.5A, rather than 2A affair.
All the remaining hardware is well up to snuff. The cameras are very good for a tablet with an 8.1Mp snapper at the back and a 2.2Mp webcam at the front. You get v4.0 Bluetooth, dual-band Wi-Fi but now supporting 802.11ac, an NFC chip, an IR transmitter and an FM radio. Basic storage is 16GB supported by a microSD expansion slot good for cards up to 64GB. The micro USB port supports USB On-the-Go hosting and MHL to facilitate HDMI connections to external monitors or your telly. New to the Z2 is ANT+ support.
A respectable refresh with a lot to like
Overlaying Android 4.4.2 is Sony’s familiar Xperia launcher, which I’m not going to pick apart because I’ve done it before and because there are dozens of good, free launchers in the Play Store if you don’t like it. Sony’s various media apps like the Walkman music player and Movies video app remain best in class though. Finally, and usefully, the price has stayed the same - £399 for the basic Wi-Fi version and £499 for the 4G model.
The Reg Verdict
Compared to the original Z Tablet the Z2 is thinner, lighter and more powerful but the price has stayed the same. I’m not sure you can ask for more. A larger battery wouldn’t have gone amiss but would likely as not have had an impact on the size so I can understand why Sony forwent it. Is the Xperia Z2 tablet our fave ‘droid 10-incher here at El Reg? Yup. ®
Thanks to O2 for the loan of the review sample.