On tablets and the Sony Tablet S

Tablets have seen a huge rise in popularity lately. Actually, pretty much since Apple released the iPad back in early 2010 and Steve Jobs convinced everyone that they needed one, tablets have started to receive a lot more attention from consumers. Other than the iPad, however, tablet offerings have been largely disappointing... until now.

Sony Tablet S
$499 / $599
16GB / 32GB

Device summary
The design of the Sony Tablet S centers around the fold design. It's wedge shaped, thicker at the top with a smooth curve. The back is textured plastic making it easy to grip with one hand in any orientation. The screen is a 9.4-inch 1280x800 pixel glossy capacitive touch screen inspired by the monolithic look of Sony's Bravia TVs. While the screen is glossy, it performs pretty well in direct light as there's an antireflective layer between the capacitive touch and LCD screens.

Power and volume buttons are hidden underneath the fold on the right-side of the device. Sony's tweaks to Honeycomb come mostly in the form of bundled apps. Apps like Reader, Remote control, DLNA and others. An excellent addition to the device.

Using reader
One of the more appealing aspects of

Sony's Tablet S

is the fact that it also seconds as an ebook reader. While this is nothing new to the tablet market, the fact that Sony already had a hand in the ebook space means that users of Sony's services will find it even easier to get at their digital libraries. Sony has its own ebook store which makes getting ebooks on the Tablet S even easier.

In fact, if you already had a subscription to this service, you can easily port over all of your old reading material. Not only that, but Sony's past experience with ebook readers means they know how to make the user interface click.

IR functionality
With the built-in infrared sensor on the Sony Tablet S, the device will work as a functional home theater remote. While Sony does give some preference to its own brand of devices, the Tablet S will still work as a remote control for other brands as well and is fairly easy to use.

For an in-depth series on how to use the Tablet S, check out our How Do I series.

For a full review of the Tablet S, check out our Gadget TV episode.