Asus ZenPad Z10 Review
The Asus ZenPad Z10 for Verizon Wireless ($329.99) takes the advantages of the smaller ZenPad Z8 and bumps them up to a larger size. It’s an extremely similar tablet to the Z8, but it’s a better deal if you’re looking for a larger screen, simply because there aren’t a lot of affordable, high-quality 10-inch alternatives right now. The Z10 also cures some of our complaints with the ZenPad Z8, such as its limited internal storage, making it an all-around appealing choice for a cellular-enabled Android tablet.
Mục Lục
Design
This year’s high-end Asus tablets offer quality builds. You mostly see the difference between this and a $500 tablet in thinness, lightness, and screen reflectivity. The Z10 is 9.54 by 6.46 by 0.28 inches (HWD) and 17.3 ounces, which is about two ounces heavier than the Apple iPad Air 2. It’s a mostly metal build with a glass strip across the top of the back where the LTE antenna goes. If you’re worried about cracking that, put it in a case. It charges via USB-C, but don’t worry, it also has a headphone jack. The power and volume buttons are on the right, and the SIM card slot doubles as a microSD slot for cards up to 64GB.
I really like the 2,048-by-1,536, 9.7-inch IPS LCD. In terms of color, it’s actually closer to the saturation I expect from AMOLED. It’s bright, rich, and easy to look at. The only down side is that, like the ZenPad Z8, it’s pretty reflective, which makes it less pleasant to use in sunlight than more expensive tablets are.
Android and Performance
The ZenPad Z10 has the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 650 processor as the Z8, but RAM has been upped to 3GB. That leads to higher scores on the AnTuTu benchmark: at 77,700, it outpaces both the Z8 and the Nvidia Shield K1, our Editors’ Choice for smaller-screen tablets. The tablet’s pure processor Geekbench score was about the same as the Z8, showing that the additional RAM improves real-life performance all around. That means games like Asphalt 8, the Web browser, Kindle, and Microsoft Office all ran promptly.
Like the Z8, the tablet runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Asus’ ZenUI skin, which changes pretty much all of Android’s icons and adds a slew of settings. Using the Google Now launcher can bring that back to the Android you’re used to. Nothing will eliminate Verizon’s vast lake of undeletable bloatware, though, which includes Amazon, Audible, Cloud, IMDb, Kindle, Message+, My Verizon Mobile, and Quick Memo apps.
The tablet also lacks any kind of split-screen multitasking, which is now available on Samsung, LG, Google, and Apple tablets. I’m not hopeful for an Android 7.0 Nougat upgrade here. Asus hasn’t promised one, and even if it did, Verizon would likely gum up the works.
See How We Test Tablets
Fortunately, the Z10 has double the raw storage the Z8 does, which results in more than double the usable storage. This 32GB tablet has 23.1 GB free, which is enough to work with. You can also add a microSD memory card to use Android’s Adoptable Storage feature, which treats the card like internal memory.
The tablet supports LTE bands 2, 4, 5, and 13 with two-carrier aggregation. Coverage was fine in testing, but speeds fell short of the Samsung Galaxy S7 phone, which is our benchmark for high-quality connectivity. In several tests, we often got about half the speed on the ZenPad as we did on the S7, with speeds topping out around 10Mbps where the S7 could get 20Mbps.
Multimedia and Battery Life
The two cameras, 8 megapixels on the back and 5 megapixels on the front, aren’t bad for a tablet. Low-light photos in the standard mode are surprisingly colorful and viewable, and a special low-light mode really boosts the brightness in very dim conditions. Outdoor shots aren’t as heartening; they look a little like there’s a haze over the camera. That’s not the case with the front camera, which was sharp once I turned off a whole bunch of annoying default “beautification” and smoothing settings.
The cameras record 1080p video. In good light, that’s at 30 frames per second; in low light, I saw them drop to 23 frames per second.
The bottom-ported speakers don’t deliver the kind of surround sound you get from the Apple iPad Pro 9.7, but hey, this is a much less expensive tablet. They’re also about 4db quieter than the ZenPad 3S 10. They’re not noticeably quiet, but this isn’t room-filling sound.
Battery life is good for a 10-inch tablet. I got 6 hours, 44 minutes of LTE video streaming on the big 7,800mAh battery. That compares well with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and the iPad Air 2, which both fall in the 5 hour range.
Comparisons and Conclusions
The Asus ZenPad Z10 benefits from a lack of good competition at this size and screen quality. The Editors’ Choice Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and Apple iPad Air 2 are both slimmer and faster, but they’re also both $500, and at that price, they lack Verizon’s cellular connectivity. Most of the other lower-cost tablets kicking around, such as the Verizon Ellipsis 10 and the Amazon Fire HD 10, don’t have the crystal clear sharpness of the 2,048-by-1,536 display here—and once you’ve looked at a screen like this, it’s hard to go back if you can afford it.
Android still isn’t our overall pick for a tablet operating system. It has fewer tablet-optimized app experiences than iOS, and it has less capable productivity apps than Windows. But Android tablets are just fine for Web browsing, video playback, ereading, and plenty of games, and their prices often can’t be beat. The Z10 gets you a lot for your money, making it a solid buy.
Asus ZenPad Z10
3.5
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See It
$329.99
at Verizon
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MSRP $329.99
Pros
Cons
The Bottom Line
The Verizon Wireless-connected Asus Zenpad Z10 tablet offers solid value for the price.
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