Asus ZenPad 3S 10

£299 inc VAT • asus.com/uk

Even if sales don’t tell the same story, Android tablets struggle to keep up with the marketing clout of Apple’s iPad. The latter are excellent tablets, some of the best out there, and benefit from their closed combination of hardware and software. Android tablets, on the other hand, are an often-ponderous product.

They remain more segmented and confused in their form and function than their smartphone counterparts. The combination of Google-based software and manufacturer specific hardware means they are a varied market. For every excellent iPad contender, there is a genuine stinker. Asus is hoping it’s made the former.

The ZenPad 3S 10 is similar to an iPad in name and looks, but is quite different in use. On the face of things, it is a stunningly thin, well-built 9.7in tablet that borrows a lot of design language from Apple’s iPad Air 2. Much Like Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S series, it’s trying to present Android tablets as a viable high-end option. Does it succeed?

Design

Asus has done well in the design department. As an object, the ZenPad 3S is one of the most ridiculously thin 9.7in tablets I’ve ever come across, thinner even than, yes, Apple’s iPad Air 2. Much like that tablet, it has a glass front and aluminium body, weighs little and means the bold, vivid display is the main attraction.

The black and grey model I tested is actually even debatably too plain on the back; an Asus logo and camera are the only things that break the grey.

There is an oblong fingerprint sensor at the bottom of the screen as it’s held portrait, with back and recent app capacitive buttons either of it on the bezel. This is often preferable to on-screen buttons in Android that inevitably take up some of the precious display space.

Other than that, the left edge is clean save for the Micro-SIM slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top, volume rocker and power/lock buttons on the right and a central USB-C port on the bottom in between the twin stereo speakers.

I can’t quite shake the uniformity of it though, despite the thinness. This is tablet design 101, done well, admittedly, but with nothing out of the ordinary. Sure, it’s hard to truly standout with tablet design, but slates such as the Huawei MediaPad M3 and Sony Xperia Z4 are bolder. Then again, those two tablets are very hard to find in the UK.

The ZenPad 3S is pleasingly premium build for something in its price bracket, but despite all that it’s not going to turn heads when you take it out on the bus.

Features

It’s powered by the Mediatek MT8176 chip, a hexa-core, 64-bit tablet specific processor. You have the option of 32- or 64GB storage with microSD expansion up to 256GB. That should be more than enough to load up with films and music.

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.