It has taken two years for Sony to enter the tablet market, and in that time every manufacturer and their budget Taiwanese spin-off have colluded to fill the tablet market with dross.
This presents both and opportunity and a threat to Sony, and while there are many sub-standard tablets on the market, some great work has been done by a few companies, and there's now a handful of successful, great value Android tablets to choose from.
Aside from the obvious iPad 2, which is the gold standard of design and usability, Samsung has unleashed a flurry of tablets, from the excellent Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, to the imminent Galaxy Tab 7.7 which boasts a vibrant AMOLED display.
Other notable competitors also include the Motorola Xoom, which is now aggressively priced at £349, and the Asus Eee Pad Transformer, and soon-to-be-released Eee Pad Slider, which both boast full, physical QWERTY keyboards.
To launch into this crowded marketplace, Sony had to release something different, and with the Sony Tablet S and the forthcoming Tablet P, that's exactly what its done.
The Sony Tablet S is a curvaceous, wedge-shaped tablet, which looks as if it has been folded out of a single piece of textured black plastic. It's thicker at one side, with a rounded edge, as if you'd taken a thin paper back, and folded the cover back on itself to really get stuck into the story.
Aside from making it look different to every other tablet on the market, the Sony Tablet S's unique appearance isn't purely aesthetic. The design means that typing is comfortable when laid flat on a table or desk, which is a flaw in most flat tablets.
sony tablet s
The book-like design makes it easy to grip with one hand, making it perfect for browsing the web or reading ebooks.
The Tablet S weighs just 600g, which makes it identical in weight to the iPad 2. There's a plastic finish, which doesn't feel cheap, and it has a textured back which offers grip for your hand.
While Sony has done well to make the form stand out from its peers, the specs are a standard affair emulating their rivals closely. There's a dual-core Tegra 2 processor clocked at 1GHz, 1GB of memory, capacitive touchscreen, and an SD expansion slot.

The Sony Tablet S also comes with a range of other features, which make it really stand out from the crowd. There are front and rear cameras, 1080p video capture and playback, PlayStation certification, which enables users to access a range of exclusive titles, and a host of Sony created apps, including a universal remote for controlling other Sony products.
The tablet comes in two iterations, with 16GB and 32GB options available, and it has set pricing at £399 for the 16GB version. This in itself is an admission by Sony to the ferocity and difficulty of the tablet market.
Sony tends to market itself as a premium manufacturer, and set its pricing accordingly, but at £399, it has decided to compete directly with companies it would look down upon in other markets.

Sony Tablet S : Performance and gaming

When it comes to performance, the Sony Tablet S really comes into its own.
Using the operating system is fast, and every swipe is rewarded with smooth dragging of screens and apps, and there was no slowdown whatsoever.
Despite the great specs, rendering was an issue on certain websites, which caused strange half page displays and juddery scrolling.

One of the worst offenders was Sony's own app store called Select App, which is where you find the PlayStation titles, and this was extremely frustrating and slow to use.
We also found issues when rotating the screen, and it often stuck, before jerking into place- and while it didn't ruin the experience, it's touches like this that show why the iPad 2 is so good.
Battery life was a standard affair, and the boost in performance seems to have had a knock-on effect in longevity. We found the Sony lasted around 4 hours when playing demanding video, around 9 hours of web browsing and game playing, and around 30 hours of occasional coffee table web browsing.
settings
The iPad is pretty light on media and connectivity, but this is another area where the Sony Tablet S excels.
You can add an SD card to the 16/32GB of built in memory, and there's also a MicroUSB connection for added files to your tablet. However, storage is an issue with the Sony.
The first bugbear is that a MicroUSB cable isn't sold with the tablet, which will be an annoyance for anyone who takes the Sony Tablet S home, to start transferring media, music and video.
The second is that an exploration of the file manager reveals that on the 16GB model, only 9GB is available to use. What's more, with everything that comes installed as standard, you only have 7GB to play with.
file transfer
This is partly due to a partition that the Sony makes, to keep the operating system and file system separate. When we received the tablet, only 3.7GB was available for apps and system files.
With a total of 9GB for the file system, and 4GB for the system files, a whopping 3GB is M.I.A, presumably lost when formatting the system, which makes that SD expansion slot look all the more necessary.
We had high hopes for the Sony as a media tablet, but unfortunately, the Tablet S fell short of our expectations.
movie player
We loaded the Tablet S with three movies, but neither of our .MKV movies were recognised. The third, which was a standard definition .mp4 movie played fine, but the lack of support for this popular format left us disappointed.
The screen is also a bug-bear on the Sony Tablet S, and again we felt let down. It's sharp and clear, but it's just not very bright, and this really hit home while watching our movie. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 screen is much more vibrant, and a real media lover's tablet.
Gaming
As we mentioned, the Sony Tablet S is PlayStation certified, which means there are a host of PlayStation titles to enjoy.
sony tablet s
These games use a mix of touchscreen controls on the newer games such as Pinball, and an on-screen PS1 pad on ported titles such as Crash Bandicoot.
Using an onscreen joypad takes some getting used to, and with no tactile buttons to guide you, we were forever pressing the wrong button, and it did feel imprecise.
sony tablet s
It doesn't take long to get into it, and with a bit of trial and error, the controls were soon mastered, and we ended up loving the gaming experience.
The size and shape of the Sony Tablet S really helps you play for extended periods, with the buttons well positioned near the left and right hand sides of the screen.
sony tablet s
If you're a fan of old PS1 titles, this tablet is for you, let's just hope Sony honour their commitment, and keep bringing out good retro games.