Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact LTE: An 8-inch tablet better than the iPad Mini and Tab S? We think so

Overview

Sony has three products in its Xperia Z3 range, two phones: the 5.2-inch Z3 and the 4.6-inch Z3 Compact, and one tablet, the 8-inch Z3 Tablet Compact. While Sony's earlier tablets were all 10-inch affairs, the new Z3 Tablet Compact is the company's first foray into the 8-inch category, putting it in the same bracket as the Apple iPad Mini 3, LG G Pad 8.3, and Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4.

Like older Xperia Z tablets, the Z3 tablet compact has a razer-thin design and is completely dust and waterproof, thanks to an IP 65/68 rating. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 2.5GHz quad-core processor with 3GB RAM, and runs on Android 4.4.4 KitKat.

To set it apart from other Android tablets, it also has the unique ability to act as a remote display for your Sony Playstation 4 console. Your console still does all the leg work, but it streams the feed directly to your tablet via Wi-Fi, letting you continue your game while your TV is off (of if you want to play games while you're in the toilet).  

Before we start, here's a closer look at the Z3 Tablet Compact's specs:-

Design

Sony has clearly found a look it likes and it's sticking to it, as the 'OmniBalance' design of the Xperia Z range has remained mostly unchanged since its inception. Fortunately, it's a pretty good look, and the Z3 Tablet Compact looks sleek and smart with its minimalist, rectangular slab design and rounded corners.

At just 6.4mm, the Z3 Tablet Compact is remarkably skinny - in fact, it's more than 1mm thinner than the iPad Mini 3, and 0.2mm thinner than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4. While its slender size does make it look and feel very premium, it does feel slightly fragile, and you definitely don't want to accidentally sit on it.

The tablet is light too, and can easily be held one-handed for an extended period of time, as it weighs just 270g, making it 61g lighter than the iPad Mini 3 and 28g lighter than the Galaxy Tab S 8.4. Sony has been able to keep the weight down by reducing the amount of metal in the build - unlike the Z3 smartphones, only the corners of the frame have metal edges,  with the rest of the frame constructed out of a metallic-painted plastic material. The Z3 tablet also loses the glass rear of its smaller smartphone siblings, in favor of a matte, textured plastic back.

Like all of Sony's Xperia Z range, the Z3 tablet is completely dust and waterproof, and is rated IP 65/68. That means you can safely use it at the pool - or even in the pool if you really want.

At the right side of the tablet, you'll find Sony's signature round silver power button, with the volume rocker located beneath it, and the headphone jack in the top right-hand corner.

The micro-USB port is hidden beneath a waterproof flap at the bottom edge, and a microSD card slot and micro-SIM card tray are hidden under a flap at the lower left edge. Both of these panels must be carefully re-sealed after use to ensure the device maintains its waterproofing. If you're worried about water getting in after repeatedly opening and closing the micro-USB flap, you can buy the optional DK39 charging dock for $68, which charges the tablet via two pins on the left-hand side. Incidentally, the charging dock is compatible with Sony's 10-inch Z2 tablet, so you can share it if you have both devices.

Display & Audio

The Z3 Tablet Compact's 8-inch display has a 16:10 aspect ratio (the same as the Tab S 8.4), making it quite a bit longer than it is wide. By comparison, the iPad Mini has a 4:3 ratio, which makes it a bit more boxy. The 16:10 ratio makes the Z3 perfect for watching movies in landscape orientation, but content can look slightly stretched in portrait mode.

The display itself has a Full HD 1,920 x 1,200 pixels resolution, which gives it 283ppi, lower than both the iPad Mini 3's Retina display (326ppi) and Samsung's Galaxy Tab S 8.4 (359ppi). Actually there are even smartphones that outclass it - LG's 5.5-inch G3 has a 2,560 x 1,440 pixel resolution (534ppi). Nevertheless, while disappointing on paper, in reality the Z3 tablet's screen is very crisp and sharp for its size, and honestly it's hard to tell the difference between it and the iPad Mini 3's Retina display.

The display also boasts great viewing angles and vivid colors that rival that of Samsung's Super AMOLED display. While contrast isn't quite as good, and blacks aren't as deep as on the Tab S, they're still excellent, and the display also boasts a very bright maximum brightness level.

According to Sony, the glass screen is shatter-proof (although Sony is notably one of the few manufacturers who does not use Corning Gorilla Glass on its products) and comes equipped with an oleophobic coating to prevent unsightly fingerprints. While we weren't able to test the authenticity of Sony's shatter-proof claim, the latter claim is, to put it mildly, a big fat lie. The Z3 tablet display is one of the worst fingerprint magnets we've ever laid our hands on (literally) and needs frequent wiping down. It's also quite reflective and, while its high brightness does mean that you can use it under direct sunlight, you'll often catch annoying reflections when you're trying to watch a movie with dark scenes in it.

Like the Z3 phones, the Z3 tablet Compact boasts front-facing stereo speakers, located at the top and bottom of the tablet (left and right when held in landscape orientation). Sound quality is decent, and definitely better than most other tablets, with plenty of volume and even some mildly impressive bass. It's more than good enough for YouTube videos and personal movie watching but, of course, you'll still get more satisfaction out of plugging in a decent pair of headphones.

Features

The Z3 tablet runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat and includes Sony's usual enhancements and add-ons - an update for Android 5.0 Lollipop is due in early 2015. One of our favorite Sony enhancements is the tap to wake function, which for some reason is turned off by default. You'll find the option for it buried in the Settings menu, under the Display sub-menu.

Sony's stand-out feature is Remote Play, which lets you use the tablet as a display for your Playstation 4. The PS4 console still does all the processing, but it streams the content to your tablet display, letting you continue your game while your TV is off or being used for something else - or when you don't feel like getting out of bed or, of course, when you're on the toilet. Actually, since the Z3 tablet is waterproof, if you can find a waterproof PS4 controller (or you want to put yours in a ziploc bag), you could play Destiny or Titanfall while you're taking a shower. What a time to be alive.

Here's a video showing how Remote Play works:

Play

Benchmark Performance

The Z3 tablet is powered by the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor found in the Z3 phones. It also has 3GB RAM like the larger Z3 smartphone (the Z3 Compact only has 2GB RAM). We'll be comparing it against other 8-inch flagship tablets, including the Apple iPad Mini 3, Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and LG G Tablet 8.3.

Sunspider Javascript

SunSpider Javascript helps measure the browsing performance of a device when processing Javascript. It not only takes into consideration the underlying hardware performance, but also assesses how optimized a particular platform is at delivering a high-speed web browsing experience. The Z3 Tablet scored reasonably well here, beating our other two Android tablet by a slight margin, but wasn't able to match the iPad Mini 3. As we've seen from our recent phone reviews, Apple boasts great optimization between its hardware and Safari that is hard to beat. Having said that, there was no noticeable difference in browsing performance between the two tablets and both provided a smooth and lag-free browsing experience.

Quadrant

Quadrant is an Android benchmark that evaluates a device's CPU, memory, I/O and 3D graphics performance. The Z3 tablet scored quite well here, although it wasn't quite as good as the Tab S 8.4. Interestingly, it was also not as good as either of the Z3 phones, with the Z3 scoring 20337, and the Z3 Compact scoring 19894.

 

3DMark (2013)

Originally developed as a PC gaming benchmarking tool, 3DMark now supports multiple platforms including Android. The Ice Storm benchmark is designed for smartphones, mobile devices and ARM architecture computers.

For an in-depth understanding of 3DMark for Android, do head over to our article, "3DMark - Android Device GPU Performance Review." In a nutshell, it is an OpenGL ES 2.0 benchmark test that uses fixed off-screen rendering to run two graphics tests designed to stress the GPU performance of your device and a physics test to stress its CPU performance. The benchmark consists of three test portfolios:- Standard (720p resolution rendering), Extreme (1080p resolution rendering with higher quality textures and post-processing effects) and Unlimited (disables v-sync, display scaling and other OS factors that make it ideal for chipset comparison).

Since all the recent flagship tablets all max out the scores for the Standard and Extreme tests, we will only be looking at the scores for Ice Storm Unlimited run. The Z3 tablet scored well in this test, and easily beat all three of its competitors. Compared to the Z3 phones, it was very close to the Z3 (17680) and slightly behind the Z3 Compact (18788).

Camera Performance

The 8-megapixel camera found on the Z3 Tablet is a big step down from the 20.7-megapixel shooters you'll find on the Z3 phones. Additionally, like the iPad Mini, there's no LED flash here, so you won't be able to take pictures of your food in dimly lit restaurants. The 2-megapixel front-facing camera isn't great either; it's just about acceptable for video calling, but that's probably the limit of its photography prowess.

Battery Life

Our standard battery test for tablets includes the following parameters:

• Looping a 720p video with screen brightness and volume at 100%
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity turned on
• Constant data streaming through email and Twitter

The Z3 tablet has a 4,500mAh capacity battery, which is actually pretty small compared to the iPad Mini's 6,470mAh battery, or the Galaxy Tab S 8.5's 4,900mAh battery. Despite this, the Z3 performed surprisingly well, lasting ten and a half hours in our video looping test, falling just short of the Tab S 8.5. It's possible that the Z3's slightly smaller screen and lower resolution display helped its battery last longer, so in this respect, a lower resolution display might be considered a worthwhile tradeoff. 

Conclusion

If you're in the market for a high-end 8-inch Android tablet, right now, you should only be considering two choices, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact. Between the two, the Tab S 8.4 has a slightly larger, higher resolution screen (although unless you compare the two side-by-side, you'll be hard pressed to notice the difference in size or resolution) and marginally (15 minutes) longer battery life. In all other areas, the Z3 Tablet Compact beats it, hands down. It has a slimmer, sleeker and lighter build that makes it more portable than the Tab S, and more importantly, it's also fully waterproof so you don't have to worry about it when you're using it at the beach or pool. If you've got a Playstation 4, it has great synergy with the Remote Play feature and its 8-inch screen is just the right size for some portable gaming - Remote Play is also available on the Z3 phones, but honestly their displays are just too small for any extended usage.

As for the iPad Mini, while choosing between the two is probably more dependent on which app ecosystem you're invested in, the Z3 tablet is actually lighter, thinner, waterproof and boasts much better battery life and benchmark performance. If you're on the fence about picking up an Android tablet, it's worth remembering that for the past year or two, there has been steady increase in the number of tablet-optimized Android apps, so iOS no longer holds an advantage there. 

Could the Z3 tablet have benefited from a higher resolution display? It would certainly help it compete specs-wise with the likes of the iPad Mini and Tab S 8.4, but realistically you won't notice any difference unless you really scrutinize the screen. Hypothetically, if there was an option for a Z3 tablet with a higher resolution display, say 2,560 x 1,400, but with ten percent less battery life (higher resolution displays drain battery life faster - just look at the LG G3 for proof), which one would I pick? Without a doubt, give me the Full HD display with more battery life.

Price-wise, you're looking at $698 for the 16GB LTE version of the Z3 Tablet - exactly the same as the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 LTE. If you can live without LTE, the 16GB Wi-Fi only version is $598, which is also the same price as the 16GB Wi-Fi Tab S. Alternatively, you can opt for a 32GB Wi-Fi version for $698. Do note that both the LTE and WiFi versions have expandable memory up to 128GB via a MicroSD card slot.

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