SONY S TABLET: “THE true iPad NEMESIS??”
The Tablet S is also particularly well-suited to sitting on a desk in landscape, like a little keyboard. Sony thoughtfully attached a pair of rubber nubs on the top and, thanks to the gentle incline of the screen when placed on something flat, it makes for a decent typing surface — much more so than other tablets that are less inclined to your touch.
But, try to use this slate in any other position and the design becomes something of a hindrance. Sitting on a lap in landscape, for example, we found the incline a bit too steep. Meanwhile, in portrait orientation you’ll never manage to get the screen flat — it’s always angled one way or another.
But, the result is a tablet that’s considerably thicker than the current king of the Android hill, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 (not to mention the iPad 2), a chunky design that isn’t always as hand-friendly as it looks. Is this the glossy, perfectly-paginated future of tablet design, or is it just a misshapen slate with a broken crease and shattered dreams? Read on to find out.
Hold it in both hands and you’ll also be struggling. We found the 9.4-inch screen to be a little too wide to comfortably type on with our thumbs. Turn it 90 degrees and it’s much easier to opposably tap at the thing, but then the somewhat sharp edges on the skinny side start cutting into your palms. Unless we were sitting with this on a desk, we had a hard time getting comfortable typing on the Tablet S, and while that’s a problem that can be assigned to any tablet these days, the asymmetrical styling isn’t much help.
Again, all this results in a bit of a chunky girl. At its thinnest, Sony claims it’s 0.3 inches (7.62mm) thick, but it of course swells out from there, growing to about 0.8-inches (20.23mm). That means it’s even plumper than the Motorola Xoom on one side, but even its thinner end is no more slender than the Tab 10.1 — unless you count the beveled edge, which we don’t.
Its footprint on the other two dimensions is almost identical to the 10.1, measuring 9.5 x 6.8-inches (241 x 173mm). That means it’s only a fraction of an inch narrower, despite giving up 0.7 inches on the diagonal of the screen size. Sure, you probably won’t miss that extra space, but why settle for less?
Look between the black bars of the bezel and you’ll be greeted with a 1,280 x 800 display that Sony says uses the company’s TruBlack technology — already a staple in its Bravia televisions. While such trademarked tech is usually fluff, we must say the results here are quite good. You’ll get contrast ratios that hold up from any angle and very accurate color reproduction that surpasses the Tab 10.1. And, yes, the blacks are indeed about as good as you’re going to get on an LCD these days — no concerns about light leakage here.
Deano
