Asus 97 Zenpad 3s 10 64gb Tablet Review

Midrange Android tablets are for media. That seems to be what nosotros've settled on—the moment for Android tablets to be used extensively for productivity has passed, and they're past and big existence used for reading and watching. If that'southward what y'all want a tablet for, and so good news: The $299 Asus ZenPad 3S 10 has a not bad screen and some beefy speakers in a slim torso, making it a good option for watching movies and reading comics. It has 1 annoying flaw, though: relatively short battery life means information technology may not be ready when yous are.

Design

Asus tablets this yr have a good, solid, all-metal feel to them. The ZenPad 3S 10 is slim and light, very similar in size to the Apple tree iPad Air 2 at 9.47 past 6.44 past 0.28 inches (HWD) and 15.2 ounces. There are powerful dual speakers at the bottom, forth with a USB-C port; they blast out sound significantly louder than both the ZenPad Z10 and the Samsung Milky way Tab S2. The power and book buttons are on the right, and on the left, at that place'due south a microSD card slot that can handle a 256GB card. The habitation button is a fingerprint sensor.

I wouldn't call the tablet durable, though. Like on many other super-slim tablets, the glass on the screen has no protective rim around it, so I imagine information technology tin crack pretty easily. The tablet also isn't waterproof, just none of the leading tablets out there other than Sony'due south are right now.

The ii,048-by-1,536, nine.seven-inch screen is reflective, but brilliant, with very practiced viewing angles. The reflectivity will create some problem in sunlight, or indoors if you take a light straight backside you. But colors await rich, and the 264ppi screen is noticeably sharper than the screens of lower-cost, lower-resolution tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A.

Android and Performance

The ZenPad 3S 10 is powered by a Mediatek 8176 processor running at 2.1GHz and has 4GB of RAM. Together, they provide thoroughly midrange performance, similar to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 in the ZenPad Z10 for Verizon. The nearly advanced OpenGL iii.one gaming benchmarks neglect, simply most games and multimedia software chug along, and the 4GB of RAM helps enable multitasking.

The 3S 10 runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with a very heavy ZenUI skin. There is no dual-window multitasking. Asus says an Android vii.0 Nougat update will come, simply don't concord your breath. ZenUI really adds a whole agglomeration of useful features and settings to Android, like a blue light filter for nighttime use, a restricted kids' way (missing by default on many Samsung devices), and a decent-looking system cleaner. There are also many features y'all'll probably never use, similar gesture controls.

Falling in the middle is Asus' Z Stylus support. The Z Stylus is a $29.99 wireless, pressure-sensitive stylus that works with the company's Super Notation and several other drawing programs. We didn't get i with our review model, but I'd be hesitant to recommend this tablet to serious illustrators simply because its graphics performance isn't leading, which might create lag. Folks wanting to draw should look at the Lenovo Yoga Book instead.

Encounter How Nosotros Test Tablets

Without LTE on board, the 3S 10 relies on Wi-Fi, and its dual-band Wi-Fi support is just fine. I establish information technology to be on par with other tablets like the ZenPad Z10 and the Galaxy Tab S2. The tablet also has GPS and Bluetooth iv.ii, and supports Qualcomm's Miracast video streaming protocol. Information technology'll work with Chromecast devices to stream video to TVs.

The 5,900mAh bombardment can accuse quickly over USB-C with Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0, except that the tablet doesn't include a Quick Charge 3.0 adapter. (They cost $15-twenty.) You'll want to get one, considering you're going to exist charging this tablet frequently. Considering of the big, hullo-res screen, we got only 4 hours, 3 minutes of video streaming time at maximum brightness, which is an 60 minutes shorter than most of the other x-inch tablets we exam. Halve the brightness and y'all're looking at vii-8 hours, which is still 2-3 hours shorter than the competition. That's my biggest complaint with this tablet.

Media playback is a big forcefulness, but let's exist realistic here: You lot're non going to get the advertised "7.1 environment audio" with two speakers facing in the same direction. Just as mentioned earlier, those speakers withal dial above their weight, and they tin fill a room. The headphone amp had no problem driving my Bowers & Wilkins P7 headphones, and one of the more than useful aspects of ZenUI is a color-tuning setting that lets you tweak the screen colors to piece of work all-time with your videos.

The 64GB tablet has 52.7GB gratuitous, and it works but fine with 256GB microSD cards, including using Android'south Adoptable Storage mode to brand the microSD await like internal memory. You besides become two years of a 100GB Google Bulldoze for free.

The tablet's cameras are only so-so, though. The primary 8MP camera is fine outdoors, but takes irksome, noisy photos in depression light. A special low-lite way pumps up brightness, but images still look pretty rough. The front-facing 5-megapixel photographic camera has the same characteristics: fine in practiced calorie-free, and actually don't employ it very much in low calorie-free. Video recording quality varied oddly. The cameras managed to get 30 frames per second at 1080p indoors, but the primary camera dropped to 22 fps on ane cloudy outdoor day; that could be a software error.

Comparisons and Conclusions

Asus is delivering solid value for the money at $299 for a 2048-past-1536, 10-inch, 64GB tablet. Yes, in that location are better tablets out at that place—but not for this price. The ZenPad 3S 10 gives you the multimedia chops you'd expect from a tablet costing $100-200 more. But it's important to know where the ZenPad's limits are. Android doesn't take the range of tablet-oriented games y'all'll find on the iOS platform, or the quality of productivity apps you'll discover on Windows. And the Mediatek processor here isn't going to stone the globe with its gaming performance. Merely, once again, you accept to spend around $500 to become a improve processor, or an iOS or Windows tablet with this kind of screen. Just make sure to keep it near a charger.

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Source: https://uk.pcmag.com/tablets/86222/asus-zenpad-3s-10

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