Once the darling of the consumer electronics industry, tablets have hit hard times if you look at sales. Put it down to most folks holding onto their tablets for far longer than smartphones, a lack of genuine new innovations in the space, or phones growing larger to take their place. Clearly all is not well in tablet-land. Can the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 and the Asus ZenPad 7.0 do anything to turn the tide?

Samsung Galaxy Tab S2
Pick up the Tab S2, and right from the chamfered metal borders to the soft touch rear cover, everything screams quality, albeit with the restraint we’ve seen Samsung show across its portfolio this year. At 5.6mm and under 400g, the S2 is comfortable to hold up even one-handed over longish periods of time, and you’ll forget it’s there in your bag when you travel.

In everyday use, there’s much to like about the S2 — a quad-HD-resolution crisp, punchy display that shows off movies better than its peers, a snappy fingerprint reader, expandable storage, great side-by-side multitasking capabilities and the Exynos 5433 octa-core processor with 3GB of memory. All of these come together really well to make the S2 an easy pick over the iPad. If anything, its Achilles heel is the drop in battery life (sub-eight hour) Samsung had to make in its pursuit of building the thinnest, lightest tablet ever. 

Asus ZenPad 7.0
With its competitive pricing, you pretty much expect its bog standard Android tablet looks. Flip it over, and boy, does the ZenPad look better, in fact, almost luxurious, courtesy the leather-effect finish on the back that gives the 272g, 8.7mm tablet a satisfying grip.

The removable back can be swapped out for an optional clutch-style case for the ladies, or another which adds more battery life. But what impressed me the most was the 5.1 Surround Sound audio cover for an additional three grand. The audio cover not only props up the ZenPad on your table for the ideal movie watching angle, but also supplies the tablet with 5.1 channel speakers for pretty impressive volume.

Save for the innovative optional cases, the rest of the ZenPad is in line with its price — a 1,280 x 800 pixel screen, a 64-bit quad-core Intel Atom processor aided by 2GB of RAM, 16GB of sto-rage expandable to 128GB and a microSIM for 3G connectivity. Asus’ customisation to Android 5.0 Lollipop isn’t half bad, but there’s a lot of bloatware to contend with right out of the box. In all, unless you’re willing to spend extra on the cases, the ZenPad gets the job done in a rather unremarkable fashion, and you would do well to consider the now-much-cheaper Xiaomi Mi Pad, which offers better specs and experience at Rs 9,999 instead.

Verdict
Much as I liked the Tab S2, tablets are due to turn over a new leaf with the new breed of Windows 10 tablet-convertibles just around the corner and if you’re looking to pick up a tablet, save your cash and hold off for now.

Tab S2
♦ Rating: 8/10
♦ Price: Rs 39,400 (32GB)
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-TabS2

ZenPad 7.0
♦ Rating: 7/10
♦ Price: Rs 11,999 (16GB)
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-ZenPad7

Making room for music

Bose’s WiFi streaming SoundTouch speakers, launched two years ago, delivered multi-room audio simplified for the masses, but for its latest compact SoundTouch 10 speaker, the audio major has added a familiar technology: Bluetooth. Sure, it’s not a breakthrough feature, but what I really like about the Bose solution is that you can start a song over Bluetooth in one room and broadcast it to another connected SoundTouch speaker via WiFi.

Like its SoundTouch siblings, the SoundTouch 10 has the familiar six preset buttons that you can assign to different playlists, Internet streaming services or songs for instant access without even needing to launch the tablet/smartphone app. Setup is painless, whether you’re using Bluetooth or WiFi, and once you get it going, the speaker is pretty darn good for its size. It’s suitably loud for smaller rooms and the music is balanced without an excessive bias for the highs or the lows. One feature that’s noticeably absent is the ability to combine two speakers into a cohesive stereo unit, something you can do with a lot of Bluetooth and WiFi speakers.

At its sub-Rs 20,000 pricing, the SoundTouch 10 is the cheapest SoundTouch speaker yet, but it’s still pricey if all you need is a Bluetooth speaker, and I’d much sooner recommend Bose’s own SoundLink Mini 2 instead. Buy this only if you’re looking to start your multi-room audio system on a small scale, only to build it out later.

♦ Rating: 7/10
♦ Price: Rs 19,013
♦ URL: bit.ly/TT-SoundTouch10

technocool@kanwar.net; follow me on twitter @2shar