Sony Xperia Tablet S

Sony has done a nice job distinguishing its products from the sea of monotonous slate tablets. Its two previous efforts, the Tablet S ?and Tablet P, both featured unique designs that set them apart. Unfortunately, that didn't make them usable. The Sony Xperia Tablet S ($399/16GB list) builds on the original Tablet S's magazine-like form factor, but updates the internal components to better compete with current high-end tablets. The end result is a great combination of solid design and fast performance, although it's expensive for a tablet without a high-res screen.

Design and Features
The Xperia Tablet S looks and feels like a classier and more subdued take on Sony's first tablet. It still has the rolled-over edge, but the tapered wedge shape is gone. Instead, the tablet has a flat, brushed-aluminum back that resembles an Apple iPad??with black plastic wrapped around one end. The Xperia Tablet S measures 9.45 by 6.87 by 0.35 inches (at its thinnest point) and weighs 1.26 pounds. It's lighter than the Tablet S but not as well-balanced, making it slightly less comfortable to hold. Still, the unique design keeps the Xperia Tablet S better-balanced in the hand than most Android tablets.?

The rolled edge leaves two slightly recessed areas on the left and right sides. In the left recess is a 3.5mm headphone jack and a removable flap that covers a full-sized SD card slot, a boon for photographers. The right recess is home to Power and Volume buttons. Along the bottom edge is a removable flap for the proprietary docking port connector, flanked by two metal speaker grilles. Sony claims the tablet's enclosure can withstand some water, but this is not waterproof, so do not dunk the tablet in water. The splashproofing?explains why there are removable flaps on the ports, but the docking port flap is not attached like the SD card flap, meaning it'll be easy to misplace.?The speakers get loud by tablet standards, and while they aren't quite as harsh at top volume as many other tablets, they still lack any serious bass response, making music sound thin and tinny. An included dongle converts the docking port into a full-sized HDMI port. I would have preferred a dedicated HDMI out, even if only a micro.

Front and center is a 9.4-inch 1,280-by-800-pixel LCD, which is well below the 1,920-by-1,080-pixel displays we've been seeing on some high-end Android tablets like the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 . We wouldn't be complaining if this wasn't a premium-priced tablet. Still, the screen on the Xperia Tablet S is perfectly sharp for most uses, with deep blacks, good contrast, and vibrant colors. It's about on par with the IPS display on the less expensive Asus Transformer Pad TF300.

This is a Wi-Fi only tablet that connects to 802.11b/g/n networks on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. On a number of occasions I noticed the Xperia Tablet S had trouble reacquiring a previous connection after resuming from sleep. Sometimes this would resolve itself after a slight delay, but other times I had to reset the tablet to fully fix the issue. There's also Bluetooth 3.0 on board, but while it was easy to pair with headphones and speakers, I noticed a bit of audio delay during video playback. There is no GPS.

The 8-megapixel camera on the back of the Xperia Tablet S does a good job at keeping image noise to a minimum, but details appear waxy and lack the sharpness you'd find with any decent point-and-shoot or even most high-end smartphones. Video, even at 1080p resolution and a steady 30 frames per second indoors and out, looks pretty awful, with slow autofocus and frequently fluctuating auto-exposure. The front-facing 1-megapixel camera is even worse, but is at least serviceable for Skype calls.

Sony also sells a docking stand and a keyboard cover for the Xperia Tablet S. The docking stand ($99.99 direct) looks like the base of a desk lamp, similar to older iMacs, and charges, syncs, and provides HDMI out for the tablet when docked. The keyboard cover ($99.99) looks like a simple leather folio case, but inside is a flat touch keyboard built into the case. Unfortunately, the keys have no give to them. You might as well be using the on-screen keyboard.

Performance, Software, and Apps
Powering the Xperia Tablet S is the nearly ubiquitous quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, here clocked at 1.4GHz and paired with 1GB RAM. The base model comes with 16GB of storage for $399.99, but you can upgrade to 32 or 64GB for $499.99 and $599.99 respectively. Performance matches up well with Tegra 3 devices like the Transformer Pad TF300. Apps run smoothly and launch without delay, and high-end games play great on the Xperia Tablet S.

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