Sony Xperia Tablet Z review

Sony has a history of distinctive looking tablets. From the folding Tablet P with its two screens to the wedge-shaped newest tablets S designed to resemble a book, it's now arrived at the less weird, but still distinctive Tablet Z, and it's easily Sony's best tablet yet.It may have none of the wilfully odd dimensions of its predecessors, and be closer to standard tablet form, but the Tablet Z has a blocky, slab-like appearance without the gently curving edges of many of its rivals. All of the front is covered by a sheet of toughened glass and the back is of thin, but not flexible rubberised plastic.

The sides are broken by the distinctive silvery Xperia power/sleep button and a volume rocker, with microUSB port (with MHL support so you can hook up to an HD telly via HDMI with a suitable adaptor) and 3.5mm headphone jack hidden behind plastic grommets, as are ports for microSD memory card (up to 64GB to add to the built-in 16GB) and 3G SIM card -- you can't make phone calls with it, but you can access the internet without the need for Wi-Fi. There are also stereo speakers at each side and on the bottom if you're holding it in landscape mode, four in all.

Sony says the latest android tablet Z is the thinnest tablet anywhere and it's certainly the thinnest we've seen, measuring a fraction under 7mm. It's beautifully lightweight too at 495g, noticeably more feathery than the iPad's 652g. Despite the lack of heft, Sony doesn't appear to have left much out, and it's packed with state-of-the-art tech.

Like some other recent Xperias, the Q88 Tablet claims to be both water and dust resistant and is designed to be submersible up to 90cm for half an hour.sd11C3deD

We popped it in the sink for ten minutes, which certainly didn't seem to do it any harm. Unlike virtually any other tablet, if you want to read or watch movies in the bath, this is the one you'll be reaching for.The 1.5GHz processor is backed by a hefty 2GB RAM and it's plenty fast, with apps opening spritely and web pages rendering quick smart. It handled 3D games well too, including Real Racing 3, without a hint of stuttering or delay. Our AnTuTu benchmark test placed it at 20,379, which puts it a little behind top-of-the-range quad-core mobile handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and the HTC One, but ahead of any other 10-inch tablet we've seen.

Perhaps surprisingly, the cheapest tablet has launched with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean, though it's apparently scheduled to get an upgrade to the latest 4.2 version soon. Sony has made its usual aesthetic tweaks to the interface and there's a bunch of bundled apps including Video Unlimited and Music Unlimited for streaming music and movies. There's no option for multiple users though, which argues against making it a general tablet for family use -- seems like a trick missed.