SINGAPORE – Just months after launching the highly-acclaimed Xperia Z smartphone, Sony has wowed the tech world once again with the tablet version of its stylish flagship phone.

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z, in our opinion, stands almost unchallenged when it comes to design. Matching the Xperia Z smartphone’s good looks, it features a square-edged finish that is only 6.9mm thick. It is incredibly thin and despite housing that Full HD 10.1-inch display, weighs only 495g, making it lighter than the competition by some margin.

The neat design is complemented by its minimalism. Because this tablet is water resistant, all the ports are covered, giving the device a nice clean finish on all sides. Unfortunately, that means you have to pick at the flaps every time you want to charge the tablet or plug in headphones, which can be a painful unless you do not have the habit of clipping your fingernails.

The screen is a 10.1-inch HD Reality Display powered by Sony’s very own Mobile Bravia Engine 2. As impressive as it sounds, the image and video resolution as well as text rendering is not as sharp as those the iPad retina display or the Super AMOLED HD screens on Samsung tablets.

The device ships with Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2, which isn’t the very latest but there are reports that suggest that a bump up to Android 4.2 to bring the tablet in line with Nexus devices running the very latest software is just around the corner.

It is the first tablet to use Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, and with 2GB of RAM to support it, we found it moved around fast and smoothly, with no sense of delay or lag when flicking through menus and apps.

Games were handled well on it too, and browsing on the Tablet Z’s widescreen proved an enjoyable experience, with no stutters when zooming in on text and pictures. However, I did experience occasional delays when scrolling quickly through graphics-heavy Web pages.

Battery life was pretty good, with the 6000mAh battery managing around eight or nine hours of fairly regular use on around 50 per cent brightness. The handy Stamina mode can also help to stretch this by just a little, locking down the tablet’s data connections when the screen is off.

The tablet packs a ton of features and excellent battery life into an impossibly thin and light design, making it one of the most compelling Android tablets yet. If you are looking for a 10-inch Android tablet, this one comes highly recommended.

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z will be available in Singapore from tomorrow (June 6). The LTE version will cost S$988 and the WiFi versions will cost S$688 for the 16GB model and S$788 for the 32GB.