This morning Sony announced their latest 10″ tablet, announcing the Sony Xperia Z4 tablet. I`m here at Mobile World Congress and thought we’d check it out.
The Xperia Z4 Tablet is a really, really light tablet, weighing in at a miniscule 389 grams for a 10″ tablet. The low weight is due in part to the plastic construction on the rear which is feels warm and inviting to touch, and I seeing it being quite comfortable to hold in your hand when watching videos for hours on end – and you will watch them for hours with Sony promising up to 17 hours of video playback from the 6,000mAh battery.
The tablet comes in two colours the White and Black, although the keyboard case only comes in black. The White is quite a stylish looking device with a beautiful silver trim around the edge in a design that should be very familiar to Sony Xperia owners. The Black has its own charms, with a matched black trim on a black body which hides almost everything from sight and should help to get into an immersive frame of mind when watching videos in the dark.
The ports are all hidden away in the trim allowing for that IP65/68 water and dust proof rating. The cover comes away relatively easily but takes a little effort to get it closed again.
The tablet itself is quite zippy, due to the inclusion of the Snapdragon 810 processor and 3GB of RAM. It’s got quite a few Sony apps installed, but it’s not what you’d call over-saturated with bloatware. It’s a Sony device so there’s very little skinning of the Android 5.0.2 base OS save for a few minor touches.
The camera, if you’re going to use it has a decently fast response time, though there was a slight lag to it at times just opening the camera app. The 8.1MP sensor appears to capture a pretty decent shot, but at booths there’s very little to actually capture and it’s fairly brightly lit so there shouldn’t be any issues and getting it into the real world is where the fun will begin for both the front and rear cameras.
The other piece of the Xperia Z4 Tablet launch is the release of the Bluetooth Keyboard dock for the tablet. The keyboard attachment has a rather nice soft touch keyboard attached, as well as a fairly responsive trackpad beneath it. The keyboard case pairs to the tablet with NFC with a simple touch and you’re off and racing, it’s a really simple process.
The actual attachment of the tablet to the dock is really simple with a basic rubber grip securing the tablet into the case quite firmly. It’s so firm that you will require two hands just to get it out, but you can insert it in fairly easily one-handed. The hinge is pretty good though allowing you to tilt the tablet in a full 110° arc.
The Xperia Z4 Tablet has a super-nice feel to it and I can see it selling extremely well if Sony can get it into peoples hands in a timely manner. The other factor is of course pricing, and as Sony hasn’t mentioned any local pricing as yet we’ll go off the European pricing of €550 for the Wifi and €660 for the LTE model. The Xperia Z4 Tablet should be appearing in Australia in June and we’re still following up about the keyboard case.
If it’s going to be a straight exchange of 550 euro… Then it ain’t going to sell that well at all.
We’re looking at $800 just for the wifi version and $950 for the LTE version. Plus a keyboard! For that price I think most people will just get a surface pro 3.
EU prices are always inflated when compared to rest of the world. They usually pay in euros what americans pay in $$$.
Sony and the rest of android OEMS seriously need to sort out their lead times between announcement and actual release of their products. These products have such limited lifespans and at ATM feels like they are hardly making the most of it.
my next tablet perhaps? not liking the flaps though. my son has broken on both Xperia Z and tablet z flaps already…
Please, Menes them about the Z4 compact phone. I’m hanging.
And keep up the good work!