Asus Zenpad 3S 10 Review – Borrowed ideas well developed
The Asus Zenpad 3S 10 is a neat 9.7″ tablet that resembles other models of this size, such as the Apple iPad and the Tab S2 from Samsung. It is pleasant to use and has no negatives that strongly influence the user experience. Compared to the competitors, however, it does not bring anything new to the table and is a bit on the expensive side for what it offers.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Excellent housing
- 64GB and micro sd
Cons
- Lots of unnecessary apps and options
- Color reproduction could be better
- On the expensive side for what it offers
We all know that Apple controls the majority of tablet sales, so it is not surprising that manufacturers are ‘inspired’ by the iPad in terms of design and size. Where large Android tablets used to often have a 10.1″ screen, nowadays we increasingly see the familiar 9.7″ format that we know from the iPad. We are only okay with that; the 9.7″ format has proven itself for varied, everyday use and the more models you can choose from as a consumer, the better. Samsung already released the 9.7″ Galaxy Tab S2 last year and now Asus is joining this club with the Asus Zenpad 3S 10.
How many ways can you go when designing a 9.7″ tablet? Not very many and Asus has kept the design of the Zenpad 3S 10 simple. A black border around the screen at the front, a home button with fingerprint scanner and two capacitive buttons at the bottom, and a slanted aluminum edge all around.As if the iPad and Galaxy Tab S2 have had a baby.The fingerprint scanner works very well, setting it up is a breeze and recognition goes smoothly.
More important than an original design, we think its elaboration, and that is a must. The tablet weighs only 430 grams, is about 7mm thick and feels sturdy. The matte metal back provides sufficient grip. Finally, at the bottom we find a USB-C port and the stereo speakers. The USB-C port supports fast charging, so that the Zenpad 3S 10 is completely full again in three hours, which is faster than many competitors.
The speakers can be quite loud, but due to the positioning you hear the sound coming from one side when watching videos. In addition, you quickly block one of the speakers with your hand when you hold it. That is no different with the iPad and Tab S2, but here Asus had the chance to distinguish itself by adding a speaker on the other side of the screen. However, the quality is decent.
Image quality
Asus proves with the panel in the Zenpad 3S 10 that there can be quite a difference between screens. At first glance, Asus seems to have used the panels wherever Apple does, but a closer inspection shows that Asus has made some savings. Just like the iPad, it is an IPS panel, so the viewing angles are certainly good and the resolution is also the same at 2048×1536 pixels. The contrast ratio of 900:1 is nothing to write home about, but we wouldn’t call it bad either. The maximum brightness is a bit disappointing; this isn’t the 9.7″ tablet you need if you want to use it outdoors a lot.
If we look at the color reproduction, the Zenpad 3S 10 falls quite short. The screen is a bit too blue, the display of primary and secondary colors is not what it should be and the gamma is too low. In practice, this is not so bad, as long as you do not work critically with images. Most people will not notice the deviations, but if you want to look back at photos and play movies and series, then you have to accept that you don’t see the images exactly as they were intended. The competitors do a lot better in this area.
It is only partially possible to adjust this mediocre display. You can change the color temperature via the included Splendid app, which allows you to turn back the blue slightly. However, you can do little about the relatively low brightness.
Speed and hardware
For a long time, Asus tablets and phones equated with Intel hardware. However, that love seems to be over and Asus has got into bed with the Taiwanese MediaTek. The Zenpad 3S 10 is the first tablet to use MediaTek ‘s MT8176 soc, a model with six cores, two of which are for performance (Cortex A72) and four for lighter tasks (Cortex A53). Those six cores are connected to a GX6250 GPU and 4GB of lpddr3 memory.
Although the chip on paper is not as fast as that of some competitors, the Zenpad 3S 10 proves to perform well in practice. Browsing, running apps, multitasking: we never had the idea that the Zenpad had a hard time. If we then look at the benchmark results, we see that it lacks some computing power compared to competitors. This is especially true in the gpu area and you can sometimes notice that when you run games that are graphically heavy. They still want to stutter briefly from time to time. Fortunately, this does not bother you with other uses and with lighter games.
Where other manufacturers have only just made the switch to 32GB storage, Asus equips the Zenpad 3S 10 with 64GB as standard and then there is also a micro-slot to expand the memory. So there is no shortage of storage.
When Asus used Intel chips, we saw that the tablets were slow when installing large apps and games. When installing apps, they are converted via Android ‘s aot compiler. That system was clearly not optimized for Intel’s chips, resulting in long installation times. Fortunately, because the Zenpad 3S 10 uses a Mediatek soc, that problem is a thing of the past.
Battery life
How long the Zenpad S3 10 lasts depends largely on what you do with it, but about six hours of active use is doable. Gaming is a notorious way to drain your tablet quickly, while web browsing is less demanding on the battery. In the end, it performs pretty much as we expected based on the 22Wh battery in various scenarios, except when watching video; he performs a little less. Perhaps MediaTek can still optimize the video decoding hardware on its chip.
Software and battery life
Asus has also built its own ZenUI skin on top of Android with the Zenpad 3S 10. That means large fonts, large icons, brighter colors, many extra settings and many included apps. Like almost all other hardware manufacturers, Asus is apparently convinced that there is plenty to improve on stock Android, a sentiment that we do not directly share. Of course it also has to do with marketing; by installing your own skin you make a unique product instead of ‘another android device’.
For the end user, it means that you get a lot of apps that you’ll probably never open, such as apps for photo collages, to-do lists, notes, sound recordings and much more. Fortunately, because of the large amount of available storage memory, you will not be bothered by this. The settings menu is a lot busier than on a device running stock Android, again with options that you wonder add much to.
The version of Android that hides under ZenUI is 6.0 and during the review period we neatly received an update that delivered all August security patches. At the moment, Asus ensures that the tablet is provided with the most important updates. However, the company is not known for updating its devices to new Android versions very quickly, so it will be some time before an update to Android 7 appears.
Conclusion
The Asus Zenpad 3S 10 is a tablet that doesn’t really drop any big punches. The design and build quality are excellent, and it has a well-functioning fingerprint scanner, powerful speakers, a decent screen for everyday use, good performance and a lot of storage memory. Asus has clearly borrowed and then worked out the ideas well. In practice, the Zenpad 3S 10 is therefore a nice tablet to use.
On the other hand, the tablet hardly excels or surprises in any area. Everything we’ve seen before on other models and Asus hasn’t tried to do things differently or better. The Zenpad is also in many ways just below competitors such as the iPad Air 2 and Galaxy Tab S2. There is nothing wrong with that, as long as you see that difference in the price and that hardly ever happens.
With a price difference of only 19 euros compared to its direct competition, we find the Zenpad 3S 10 on the expensive side. However, if it drops in price in the near future, Asus will not only have a tablet that looks nice and works fine, but that also offers value for money.