Sony Xperia Z4 Tablet Review

Design and build Its predecessor was and still is an impressive tablet and we didn’t think Sony could do much to the 6.4mm, 426g chassis. However, it has managed to slim it down further to 6.1mm which isn’t much but the weight has dropped to just 392g. In comparison with the market-leading iPad Air 2, it’s the same thickness and a decent 45g lighter so tops marks to Sony. The Xperia Z4 Tablet feels great in the hand with the weight particularly making it easy to handle. The fi rm calls it the ‘World’s lightest 10in tablet with brightest 2K display’. Sony continues to off er dust- and waterproofi ng, this time to an IP68 rating which is the highest available. We’ve got used to the headphone port not needing a cover or fl ap to keep the moisture out but now the Micro-USB port doesn’t either, which is a great addition. Aside from the above changes, the design remains essentially the same. A reasonable bezel runs around the display which doesn’t look great but means you can hold any side without needing to touch the screen. The Xperia Z4 Tablet will be available in black and white options. An optional Bluetooth keyboard dock will be available that supports tilt and a trackpad for what Sony calls a ‘premium laptop experience’. We weren’t massively impressed with it.

The screen size remains at 10.1 in but Sony has improved the resolution to 2560x1600 and boosted the brightness to 500cd/m2. That’s plenty of brightness on off er and the pixel density of 299ppi is impressive outpacing the iPad Air 2 which is 264ppi. The ‘Triluminos’ screen looks great and the IPS panel means great viewing angles. We really can’t fault it. Other hardware upgrades include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor which is both octa-core and 64-bit. There’s 3GB of RAM to accompany it, 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot for adding up to 128GB more.

Additional hardware consists of 11ac Wi-Fi, NFC, Bluetooth 4.1 and MHL 3.0, but Sony has dropped the IR blaster. There’s a Wi-Fi only model but you can also opt for 3G/4G LTE connectivity, and Sony tells us this model can also make phone calls. On the audio side is added support for High-Res audio like the Z3 range with front facing stereo speakers, digital noise cancelling support, automatic headphone compensation and a new LDAC codec which supposedly transmits data three times more effi ciently than Bluetooth. For photo and video there are reasonable 8.1- and 5.1Mp cameras back and front. The main camera uses Sony’s Exmor RS sensor and the front has a wide angle lens to get more people in the frame. An impressive claim and one we couldn’t test during our hands-on is a whopping 17 hours of video playback from the 6000mAh battery. For comparison Apple touts 10 hours from the iPad Air 2.

Software For software, the Xperia Z4 Tablet runs Android 5.0 Lollipop and Sony adds its own user interface which doesn’t really have a name. Sony has kept things quite vanilla meaning the experience is close to that of a Nexus device running stock Android. There’s the Lollipop twostage notifi cation bar and card-style recent apps menu. The software was slick and responsive during our time with the tablet. The fi rm preloads its own apps including Walkman, Album, PlayStation and Lifelog. Our sample also had Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint in pride of place on the home screen. Xperia Lounge off ers silver- and gold tiers with the top level reserved for Z devices. Sony promises content including music, video, cloud storage, stickers, themes and software upgrades. The Z4 Tablet includes PS4 Remote Play, enabling you to play PlayStation 4 games on the device from the console over the same Wi-Fi network.