It has taken two years for Sony to enter the tablet market, and in that time every manufacturer and their budget Taiwanese spin-off have colluded to fill the tablet market with dross.
This presents both and opportunity and a threat to Sony, and while there are many sub-standard tablets on the market, some great work has been done by a few companies, and there's now a handful of successful, great value Android tablets to choose from.
Aside from the obvious iPad 2, which is the gold standard of design and usability, Samsung has unleashed a flurry of tablets, from the excellent Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, to the imminent Galaxy Tab 7.7 which boasts a vibrant AMOLED display.
Other notable competitors also include the Motorola Xoom, which is now aggressively priced at £349, and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, and soon-to-be-released Eee Pad Slider, which both boast full, physical QWERTY keyboards.
To launch into this crowded marketplace, Sony had to release something different, and with the Sony Tablet S and the forthcoming Tablet P, that's exactly what its done.
The Sony Tablet S is a curvaceous, wedge-shaped tablet, which looks as if it has been folded out of a single piece of textured black plastic. It's thicker at one side, with a rounded edge, as if you'd taken a thin paper back, and folded the cover back on itself to really get stuck into the story.
Aside from making it look different to every other tablet on the market, the Sony Tablet S's unique appearance isn't purely aesthetic. The design means that typing is comfortable when laid flat on a table or desk, which is a flaw in most flat tablets.
The book-like design makes it easy to grip with one hand, making it perfect for browsing the web or reading ebooks.
The Tablet S weighs just 600g, which makes it identical in weight to the iPad 2. There's a plastic finish, which doesn't feel cheap, and it has a textured back which offers grip for your hand.
While Sony has done well to make the form stand out from its peers, the specs are a standard affair emulating their rivals closely. There's a dual-core Tegra 2 processor clocked at 1GHz, 1GB of memory, capacitive touchscreen, and an SD expansion slot.
The Sony Tablet S also comes with a range of other features, which make it really stand out from the crowd. There are front and rear cameras, 1080p video capture and playback, PlayStation certification, which enables users to access a range of exclusive titles, and a host of Sony created apps, including a universal remote for controlling other Sony products.
The tablet comes in two iterations, with 16GB and 32GB options available, and it has set pricing at £399 for the 16GB version. This in itself is an admission by Sony to the ferocity and difficulty of the tablet market.
Sony tends to market itself as a premium manufacturer, and set its pricing accordingly, but at £399, it has decided to compete directly with companies it would look down upon in other markets.
Your comments (11) Click to add a new comment
tech89
Saturday at 11:19 BST
11. Your review mentions the lack of a native app for video calling such as 'Facetime' is a disadvantage. Surely the downloading of the Skype app is of more use than 'Facetime' that is only compatible with apple only products something which is surely a disadvantage in such a varied world of technology manufacturers with friends and family using a multitude of different devices, not all Apple.
A little more in depth review of browsing, email, video and music would be nice.
Apps not an issue. Most apps including 'Apple Quality Apps' a good deal are rarely of any use in the long run.
Find us a device that can browse, email play video and music and is at a price where we don't feel blatantly ripped off.
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fight4truth.org
Friday at 18:26 BST
10. TECHRADAR IS APPLE TROLL... :) ITS A FACT. THEY BEVER SAID ANYTHING GOOD BOUT OTHER PRODUCTS OTHER DAN THEIR ALL TIME FAVE IPAD. UTS TRUE IPAD IS POLISHED BUT FUNCTIONALITY??? ANDROID IS KICKING IPADS ***.
ITS D FACT FOLKS. APPLE IS PAST, TIME TO MOVE ON.
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dkxii
Friday at 17:20 BST
9. @nicolasmerritt
but isn't the whole point of apps expanding functionality? at the end of the day apps are only add ons to the os - they share and suffer its limitations. and don't get me started on the hardware (think usb, hdmi and so on).
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eddycarr
Friday at 16:28 BST
8. Doesn't MoboPlayer work on 3.1? Why would people have to recode their video files?
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nicolasmerritt
Friday at 16:19 BST
7. > i simply love how techradar puts apples polish over androids functionality
Tablets aren't fundamentally about the OS's functionality. They are about Apps and App integration.
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yello
Friday at 15:56 BST
6. i'm never one to register to a website only to comment, in fact I will most likely delete this account after posting this. But I do frequent tech sites and this happens to be one of them and am very disappointed in finding yet another article about how bad everything that isn't apple is and will be. This is probably not the writer's intention, but it certainly felt that way. I own the tablet s and bought it because i didn't want an ipad which i found restrictive and bland. I know this puts me in the minority these days but everything about the tablet s has been nothing but superb from the day i got it, which happens to be launch day. I found the addition of a remote control app to control my tv exciting and useful (regardless of which brand the tv is, the app works- something that this review didn't seem to pick up on). The browsing is fantastic, screen is clear, crisp and bright enough for my needs anyway, don't like overly bright screens especially since i don't read in the sun all the time. I anticipated the storage problem, so I bought the 32gb version even though I wanted 3G but having a smartphone these days means that a portable hotspot is only a few clicks away. But having a full size sd card reader means i can, and have, slipped in a 32gb card which means i have 64gb to play with now and this is more than enough for the many videos and files i have. Like someone pointed out, if you have a slight knowledge of android, you will know that there are many video players to download, Mobo player being another one and this means I don't have to convert videos to .mp4 or .mov format and at least i don't have to go thru itunes just to get video/music i already own. Last time i checked, the all powerful ipad2 doesn't play mkv files either. This is a genuinely great tablet to use on a daily basis, great feeling in the hand, comfortable and versatile with just as much functions (if not more) than other tablets including the ipad2. All of my friends have agreed that this tablet just feels much better than the ipad2 and a 'regular' square slate and I am just so proud to own this that I feel I must share it with this site, if only just to let people know that there are other companies out there that can make great functioning tablets, not just ipads.
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dkxii
Friday at 14:15 BST
5. i simply love how techradar puts apples polish over androids functionality... i would be suprised if the ipad, being able to do less than android did it's stuff worse or on par with googles os.
i understand it's a matter of personal tastes but i thought this was a tech website, not a TABloid...
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bradavon
Friday at 13:47 BST
4. Cany any tablets play MKV without additional software?
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blackbetty
Friday at 11:13 BST
3. confused, as Honeycomb has far better media codec support than the iPad2 (which only does Apple Quicktime).
So reality is, your own videos are FAR more likely to work on a honeycomb tablet than an iPad.
It seems to be a review written by someone that has alot of propritery Apple Quicktime content and wonders why it doesn't play on a non-Apple product.
Thats why there are open and ISO approved standards like H.264/AVC, so you are no locked into locked down devices like the iPad that only play propritery formats like Apple Quicktime.
In other words, the problem is YOU, not the tablet.
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balanko
Friday at 10:52 BST
2. If you've had little knowledge of android, you'd told you readers that installing a third party media player is easy.
Hundred of media players exist on Market, Dice player is one them, playing all king of video files.
And what makes this tablet great IS it's browser, chrome is lightning fast, tabs are great. Browsing is a joy, unlike on ipad's Safari.
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unlixes
Friday at 10:40 BST
1. "When it comes to performance, the Sony Tablet S really comes into its own."
"rendering was an issue on certain websites, which caused strange half page displays and juddery scrolling."
"extremely frustrating and slow to use."
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"The iPad is pretty light on media and connectivity, but this is another area where the Sony Tablet S excels."
"We had high hopes for the Sony as a media tablet, but unfortunately, the Tablet S fell short of our expectations."
This really was a great review of a great product. In saying that, the sweeping generalisations and immediate contradictions were annoying and confusing.
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