| The Sony S Android tablet has a clamshell design with dual 9.4in display. This could be iPad beater or alternative to iPad 2 Price from: £399 |
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Review
Sony S is like a folded bewspaper and it feels good in the hand, compare to the other tablet which is difficult to grip sensibly with one hand.
The display & Power Engine
Sony S packs a 9.4-inch display, 1280 x 800 screen is powered by an 1GHz Dual Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and Android 3.1 installed as standard, and works as a universal remote control for your television so you can stream content to TVs and music to wireless speakers via DLNA.
With 1280 x 800 pixel 9.4-inch LCD, resulting in nice sharp and colourful visuals. It isn't the brightest display out there, and once you get into the glare of the great outdoors or next to a big bright window.
The Design
The Tablet is weigh 598g, feels far lighter than that when hold it and is lighter than iPad 2 by three grams. it’s the physical design that delivers the real departure from the exisiting crop of Android tablets. With a novel wedge-shaped design, the Tablet S tapers across its back from a thin edge to a thicker rounded profile. The design tapers from a beefy 0.75 inches all the way down to 0.3 inches on the right side. We like how Sony distributed the weight to the thicker edge so that the Tablet S feels even lighter than its official 1.3-pound weight.
It's light becaudr it use of plastics, means it doesn't have a "premium" aluminium shell or anything else and it does feel a little cheap. There is some flex in the centre of this folded section which we imagine is largely empty inside - it certainly sounds hollow when you give it a knock. This has to be set in the context of weight however so that's the trade-off: it's lighter but has a plasticky feel to it.
Keyboard
The keyboard on the VAIO Tablet S reminds us of the HP TouchPad--in a good way. If you select "Show number keys" under Settings, the layout will show a number pad to the right of the letters in landscape mode, and in portrait mode they sit above the keyboard.
If you looking for more laptop-like Tablet then the Sony docking cradle and bluetooth keybord is perfect for you.
Tablet S can function as a (very expensive) universal remote control. Hundreds of predetermined TV brands and models are stored as standard, so most people will be able to just select their telly from the list and get channel-hopping right off the bat. Should your TV be one of the exceptions to that list, fear not: an infra-red sender/receiver in the thick edge of the tablet allows you to program it using your old remote.
The screen is impressive, amazing colour although its hard to tell under show lights. Sony has made some customisations to the Honeycomb interface and provided plenty of its own apps. Here are the Favorites and Apps menus. The tablet S isnt too different to other Android states.
One of the most unfortunate element of the Tablet S design is this nasty rubberised flap for USB and SD card access. It's really takes away from the overall design, which Sony calls asymmetric. The idea is that the screen gently slopes towards you when the tablet is flat.
Other external controls are classically Sony, the front of the slate is attractive and There's the familiar black bezel that Apple likes to claim as its own, with a front-facing camera.
In right handed portrait orientation (i.e. holding upright with your left hand) these sockets sit on the bottom while up top are buttons for volume and power and a pinhole reset button. You've also got cameras on the front and back.
Its PlayStation-certified game looks like, this means Sony will be throwing old-school PlayStation titles at it for you do download and play, using on-screen touch controls that mimic the PlayStation controller. Although this sounds good on paper, but we were deeply unimpressed by the games offered on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, the first PlayStation Certified bit of kit, so we're wary of another disappointment.
Storage
The Sony Tablet S-16GB and 32GB has been designed to fulfill your entire acceptance
Connectivity
It is reported that the Tablet S consistently refused to connect to the BT HomeHub 3 but would connect to a second Wi-Fi point on the same network, even if the range seemed limited. This is the first time we've seen this in any Android device, so it's certainly something to look out for.
The price
The Price os the Sony Tablet S is very expensive, Sony has priced the Tablet S at £399 for the 16GB Wi-Fi version, £479 for the 32GB and £499 for 16GB with 3G, hence the Tablet isnt cheaper tha iPad 2. If Sony wants to compete with Apple they should drop the price.
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