Sony Xperia Z4 4G Android tablet – gift of sound and vision Time to recap the history of Sony’s Xperia tablet range to put this new model into context. In the beginning was the Xperia Tablet, the first Sony 10-inch slab. Then came the Z2 Tablet, launched just over a year ago and reviewed here. The Z3 Tablet never existed, only the clumsily named Z3 Tablet Compact, an 8-inch affair. …
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I have had the Z2 tablet since just after it was released. It's a robust, well-performing gadget, which I can highly recommend. Would I buy the Z4 with docking station? Most certainly not. A tablet does not need a keyboard, IMHO, so I'm not going to pay the extra fee. Plus, the Z2 will easily serve me another year or two.
I've got the Z3 Tablet Compact, it's a great tablet; bought it on the basis of a good review here on El Reg as it goes. But as for the Z4, yeah, if I was going to spend that much money on a tablet with a removable keyboard so I could run Office apps, I'd by a Surface 3. Except I'd never trade my Yoga 11s for a Surface, I don't buy into the whole removable keyboard lark. I much prefer having a dedicated small tablet plus a dedicated ultrabook (that can masquerade as a big tablet on occasion), rather than one device that does neither job anywhere near as well.
I'm liking the look of this - tablet for mindless surfing around in front of the telly, but the keyboard means I can do proper work on the train with it - replacing my ageing Acer netbook.
Is it safe to assume Sony will support this properly? (wife has an xperia SP phone which has never had a firmware update in it's life, even though it was "promised")
I've got an Xperia SP - great phone and it had plenty of updates, but mine's close to two years old. They stopped updates after Jellybean, so if your wife bought her phone more recently then that may explain her lack of updates, but it's not really fair or accurate to say there were no updates.
Like all recent Xperia phones and tablets, hardware active noise cancelling that actively cancels out aircon, plane and train drones. Awesome hardware 24/96 DAC for really good audio (stick some good cans on it and some HD FLAC and look et it blow your socks off)
The Z3 compact destroys the ipad mini, the z4 destroys the full size ipad...
I bought a S3 (outright) when it was launched. Updates stopped coming 2 years later. Makers release successive generations of phones but we all know the only real advantage of the new, almost unchanged model is that the older one isn't supported. A bit of a swizz.
A bit like Ford refusing to make spare parts for any model more than 2 years old.
"...I do wonder quite how long Sony can continue with this conservative design language before customers become bored with it and stop being able to recognise new models when they see them..."
Because product design is all about allowing people to show off that they've got the 'latest version'.
If only those unimaginative designers at Volkswagen, Fiat and BMC++ had thought to completely change the designs of their cars every few months, we might remember marques like the Beetle, the Mini and the Cinquecento today, instead of having had their boring sameness, year after year, condemn them to obscurity.
Oh wait...
[In other opinion pieces on El Reg this week: "Why Oh Why Did Microsoft Change Things in Windows 10 –Instead of Leaving the Design the Same?"]
I have one of these and it's really rather good. The keyboard actually makes it more than usable for content creation, it's light enough to hold in one hand (without the keyboard) for general web browsing.
The speakers are louder than the Z2, and the waterproofing doesn't require you to mess around with port covers (for the micro usb).
I have two slight issues:
1. The bezel is slightly smaller than the Z2, which makes it slightly easier to accidentally touch something at the edge of the screen. Not a major problem, just an observation really
2. I'm not sure if the battery life is all that good. It seems to vary, and eat up the battery faster than the older z2. It seems to use up battery on standby, but lasts a good while when in use. I used the device with wifi and the bluetooth keyboard almost all the way to London on a flight from LAX recently. It does seem to get a bit hot at times, even when running apps that don't appear to be CPU or GPU intensive, but that could just be a badly written app.
Oh and another plus point, it uses quick-charge technology which allows the charger to boost the voltage up to 12V at 1.8A (I think) so it charges a lot quicker than the Z2 did.
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