Enter the Challenger

Sonys stab at the premium tablet market began in 2011,with the Tablet S,followed by Tablet P and Xperia Tablet S. The first three iterations fell slightly short of the high expectations. It seems that Sony learned from that experience. The Xperia Tablet Z is water and dust-resistant,just like the smartphone Xperia Z.

Design

The Xperia Tablet Z is sleek and breaks the stereotypical Android tablet design. The back panel offers good grip,although it is smudgy and often retains fingerprints. At 495 gram,this 10.1-inch tablet is very light and only 6.9 mm broad. Making it water-and dust-resistant means putting flaps on all ports. Sony has done a good job integrating the flaps on the tablet. Though tough to spot in low light,once you find them,they are easy to open and seem sturdy. With all flaps closed,the tablet is indeed immune to dust and immersion in up to 1 m of water for up to 30 minutes. On the flipside,the tablet becomes dirty very soon and requires regular cleaning.

The power button on the side is easy to access but some users might press it accidentally while using the tablet.

Display,camera and sound

The 10.1-inch widescreen display with a resolution of 1920215;1200 pixels complements the excellent design of the Tablet Z. HD videos are a joy to watch on the gorgeous screen. The audio quality is good,but users should plug in a good pair of headphones for best results. The speakers are on the sides,so if youre watching videos,you might have to flip the tablet to make sure that your hands are not on the speakers.

The tablet has two cameras,one on the front 2.2 megapixels and the other at the back 8.1 megapixels. Picture quality is good with the rear camera in bright outdoor environments,but at night,the quality suffers. The front camera is good for video calls.

Performance

Tablet Zs powerful hardware mostly performed flawlessly. During tests,an app called X4 video,which plays four videos at once to highlight the quad-core capabilities of the tablet,was able to play two videos smoothly. When four videos were played together,only one played without lags. There were no other performance issues. Apps and games ran without freezing.

The battery life is pretty good. The tablet managed to last around eight hours on a single charge on medium use browsing,video calls,Twitter,Facebook,chat,music,video and light gaming. On heavy use,which was playing Real Racing 3 continuously,the battery ran out in around three-and-a-half hours. Since it has a 6,000 mAh battery,it takes around six hours to charge the Xperia Tablet Z,which is too long.

The tablet comes with an infrared blaster,which means it can be used as a remote for TVs,home theatres and set-top boxes. It worked flawlessly with a 13-year-old Samsung CRT TV. If the manufacturer of your TV is not listed in the remote app,you can point the remote at the tablet and manually make it learn each button. This process is cumbersome and did not work when tested with a DEN set-top box.

One major problem is the lack of tablet-optimised apps on Android. Basic apps such as Facebook and Twitter have bad user interfaces for tablets and as this is a problem with Android,Sony cant do much about it.

Xperia Tablet Z is the best Android one available,but it fails to beat the iPad because Android isnt a mature platform for tablets yet. It is also expensive at Rs 46,990.

SPOTLIGHT

Instafeed,iOS

Instafeed is a service for Instagram users who want advanced filtering options for pictures from other users. Instafeed lets users create lists or use pre-curated lists. Users can make separate feeds for friends,family,acquaintances,etc and filter out unwanted content from their feeds.