Sony made it very clear a few years ago that they would not jump into the tablet game unless they were able to distinguish themselves from the competition. Many took this as a nod design wise while others speculated it could be a merger of tablet and PlayStation.
Turns out that the rumors were right, Sony has released a tablet that not only looks different on the outside but packs a PlayStation Suite on board. Although Sony has stopped short of declaring this a gaming tablet, it’s clear that Sony envisions this to be used for more than just browsing the web and listening to tunes, and its versatility has drawn many consumers to seek out where to buy the Sony S Tablet at the best possible value.
As expected, this is an Android 3.1 Honeycomb based tablet and like the Sony PlayStation Phone, it carries exclusive PlayStation content not available on other Android tablets or phones.
Design and Features
Starting with the design, the Tablet S looks like nothing we have seen before. The tablet would look like the design team literally wrapped the unused material from the upper bevel and wrapped it over the back. Although the design is unique, the tablet is only 0.40 inches thick. Overall dimensions are 9.50 x 6.86 inches. The weight is only 21.09oz which is not extremely light but definitely not on the scale tipping side.
Moving along to the display, we are greeted by a 9.40-inch display packing TFT technology, capacitive, multitouch, light sensor and 1280 x 800 pixels. Sony has chosen the NVIDiA Tegra 2 processor for the internals and said processor is a 1GHz dual-core chip with a dedicated GPU. Internal storage is 32GB with a microSD slot that supports cards up to 32GB.
The 5-megapixel camera is capable of 720p @30fps shooting while the front facing camera is a 0.3 megapixel VGA camera. Connectivity issues include Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi 802.11n, USB 2.0, DLNA, OTA Sync and Infrared. Sensors include accelerometer, gyroscope and compass.
The 3G version of the Tablet S comes with GPS, UMTS and EDGE data via GSM network.
Performance
Sony has given us a reason to want this tablet to perform well and thankfully the device did live up to expectations. Overall we had no issues with the hardware performance. NVIDIA has proven itself in the past and the Tablet S no is no exception. Navigating the tablet was silky smooth and web browsing was fast even when viewing heavy Flash content.
Moving along to the screen, there isn’t anything much to talk about here except that the screen performed well. While not as bright as the Galaxy S Tab 10.1, overall the color reproduction is solid and the images and graphics are rendered beautifully.
The cameras, unfortunately, like every other tablet we have seen, were disappointing. You can get by with video conferencing thanks to the front facing camera, but if you plan to do anything other than record armature videos from the tablets backside camera, you will be in trouble.
Thankfully, the smiles returned to our faces when we ran our battery tests. Suffice to say, if you have watch videos all day you can get at least 7 hours out of this baby. Sticking to more moderate tasks such as music listening, web browsing and other things and your time will be about 8:30.
Lastly, Sony has included the PlayStation Suite on here which means that you get access to games not available on other Android tablets. We tried a few titles and overall enjoyability was good, and the performance was more than satisfying for casual gaming. Hard core intense gaming may suffer slightly on this device, especially if you are used to the high quality gaming on your PS3.
Conclusion
Sony has recently dropped $100 off the asking price of the Tablet S which makes it a very compelling option in light of its competition. While we won’t go as far as to say that this is our favorite Android tablet, it ranks up there with the rest. That little girth at the top may be a little annoying for some but should not be a deal breaker for the vast majority. Find out where to buy the Sony S Tablet for the best possible prices in our store information.