PC_Advisor_Issue_264_July_2017

Reviews
enough to load up with films, TV
programmes and music.
Display and dimensions
Back to the thinness, then. It
measures 240.5x163.7x7.2mm, and
is 5.8mm at its thinnest point, where
the frame is rounded. There’s no
doubt it’s great looking. It houses a
crisp, clear IPS LCD display with a
resolution of 2048x1536 and 264ppi.
Asus calls it Tru2Life technology,
but it’s just generally very good
at reproducing images and video.
Streaming content on the ZenPad
3S Z500M is very enjoyable.
Cameras
The cameras are nothing to write
home about, but then again they
are hardly the marquee feature of
a tablet (and it should remain that
way). With a rear-facing 8Mp lens
and a 5Mp front-facing camera,
the latter is capable of shooting at
1080p – good news for video calling.
Battery
The Asus ZenPad 3S 10 has a
generous 5900mAh battery
that keeps it going for around
three- or four days with light use,
but obviously drops down if you
hammer it with gaming, streaming
and a few apps for work.
One thing we did notice was that
it’s very bad at charging from dead.
On the few occasions it ran the
whole way down, the included Quick
Charge 3.0 charger took an absolute
age to wake it up. This isn’t rare for
tablets, but here it was absolutely
infuriating; blank screens, random
battery icons and not turning on
for at least 15 minutes.
Connectivity and extras
The ZenPad has all the extras you’d
expect, even without the 4G SIM
card tray that ours did include.
Opt for the Wi-Fi version and you’ll
still get 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.2,
the fingerprint sensor, but
not NFC. Not that
you should ever try to use a tablet
for contactless payments.
Software
Frankly, the software lets this tablet
down. For all the hardware effort,
Asus’s Android skin is ugly and not
fun to use. And don’t get us started
on the bloatware.
If you are adept with operating
systems it’s possible, if a slog, to get
this tablet running plain Android
Marshmallow 6.0. Google’s apps and
services are far superior to Asus’s
and will make it usable. It’s not
that its own software or apps are
completely unusable, they just make
extremely well designed hardware
feel cheap, buggy and downright
boring to use. The joy of tablets,
debatably even more important
here than for smartphones, lies
in the way they draw you into the
operating system and make it as
easy to use and intuitive as possible.
When you first boot it up,
the ZenPad is a muddle of badly
designed widgets, needless
bloatware and an Android skin that
twists Google’s stock option to
breaking point with neon greens,
blues and oranges. It’s not well
thought out at all. That said, if all
you need a tablet for is Netflix, email
and web browsing you probably
won’t mind, at this price. But for
Asus to put so much effort into
the beauty of the product when
it’s switched off, it’s a real shame
that we felt all that magic dissipate
when we turned it on. We couldn’t
shake the disappointment.
Verdict
The Asus ZenPad 3S 10 Z500M is
one of the best-designed pieces of
tablet hardware we’ve yet seen. But
the software made my time with it
a chore, and we actively sought to
not use it. That isn’t good.
If you take the time to change
the theme, delete a lot of apps and
remember to keep it charged, then
it could work for you. But you’ll be
put off by intrusive bloatware and an
ugly operating system. Spend a bit
more and get something
better. J Henry
Burrell
July 2017 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews 55