PC_Advisor_Issue_264_July_2017

Reviews
£299 inc VAT
Buy from
• tinyurl.com/kco5bL2
Specifications
9.7in (2048x1536, 264ppi)
IPS display; Android 6.0
Marshmallow; Mediatek
MT8176 processor; Hexacore
(2x 2.1GHz and 4x
1.7GHz) CPU; 4GB RAM;
32/64GB storage; microSD
up to 256GB; Wi-Fi 802.11
a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi
Direct, hotspot; Bluetooth
4.2; GPS; USB Type-C 1.0;
3.5mm headphone jack;
8Mp rear camera,
autofocus, geotagging,
touch focus, face
detection, HDR; 5Mp front
camera; panorama nonremovable
Lithiumpolymer
5900mAh battery;
240.5x163.7x7.2mm; 430g
TABLET
Asus ZenPad 3S 10 Z500M
Even if sales don’t tell the same
story, Android tablets struggle to
keep up with the marketing clout
of Apple’s iPad. The latter are
excellent tablets, some of the best
out there, and benefit from their
closed combination of hardware
and software. Android tablets,
on the other hand, are an oftenponderous
product.
They remain more segmented
and confused in their form and
function than their smartphone
counterparts. The combination
of Google-based software and
manufacturer-specific hardware
means they are a varied market.
For every excellent iPad contender,
there is a genuine stinker. Asus is
hoping it’s made the former.
The ZenPad 3S 10 is similar to
an iPad in name and looks, but is
quite different in use. On the face
of things, it is a stunningly thin,
well-built 9.7in tablet that borrows a
lot of design language from Apple’s
iPad Air 2. Much Like Samsung’s
Galaxy Tab S series, it’s trying to
present Android tablets as a viable
high-end option. Does it succeed?
Build:
Features:
Value:
Performance:
Geekbench 4
Design
Asus has done well in the design
department. As an object, the 3S
is one of the most ridiculously thin
9.7in tablets we’ve ever come across,
thinner even than Apple’s iPad Air 2.
Much like that tablet, it has a glass
front and aluminium body, weighs
little and means the bold, vivid
display is the main attraction.
The black and grey model we
tested is even debatably too plain on
the back; an Asus logo and camera
are the only things that break the
grey. There is an oblong fingerprint
sensor at the bottom of the screen
as it’s held portrait, with back and
recent app capacitive buttons either
side of it on the bezel. This is often
preferable to on-screen buttons in
Android that inevitably take up some
of the precious display space.
Other than that, the left edge
is clean save for the Micro-SIM
slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack on
the top, volume rocker and power/
lock buttons on the right and a
central USB-C port on the bottom in
between the twin stereo speakers.
We can’t shake the uniformity
of it though, despite the thinness.
This is tablet design 101, done well,
admittedly, but with nothing out of
the ordinary. Sure, it’s hard to truly
stand out with tablet design, but
slates such as the Huawei MediaPad
M3 and Sony Xperia Z4 are bolder.
Then again, those two tablets are
very hard to find in the UK.
The ZenPad 3S is pleasingly
premium build for something in its
price bracket, but despite all that it’s
not going to turn heads when you
take it out on the bus.
Features
Processor
The ZenPad is powered by the
Mediatek MT8176 chip, a hexa-core,
64-bit tablet specific processor. It’s
pretty efficient, though curiously
refused to run the GFX Bench
benchmarking app; it completely
crashed the tablet. Not every user
will be benchmarking, but it’s odd
and worth noting. It ran Geekbench
4 without any problems though,
and we benched it next to the iPad
Air 2 (see left). Remember Apple’s
tablet came out in 2014.
Storage and RAM
You have the option of 32- or 64GB
storage with microSD expansion up
to 256GB. That should be more than
54 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews July 2017