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Asus ZenPad 10 Z300C: Cheap tab, dock combo you can turn up to 11

It's all about the bass. And the treble. And the volume

This Zen is, like, heavy man

The weight of the tablet has forced one design compromise on Asus. To avoid the whole shebang toppling over the tablet won’t lean back by much more than 120 degrees and even at that stability is a little marginal. If you use it as a laptop on your lap you will be forever reaching for the lip to stop it toppling off. Thanks to the tablet’s asymmetric profile you can’t “tent” it with the dock.

The rest of the layout shows Asus’ usual attention to detail. When docked both micro USB ports are close together, so swapping the charge cable from one to the other is easy. The 3.5mm audio jack is next to the tablet’s USB port so, again, is easy to locate.

Asus ZenPad 10 Z300C

The weight of tablet means this is the maximum angle unit will open to. Note the two micro USB ports and audio jack in close proximity

The microSD card slot (the ZenPad has 16GB of storage built-in, 12GB of which are available to the user) is on the bottom but unobscured by the docking hinge. The power and volume buttons reside on the angles of the top left corner and again fall easily to hand whether the tablet is docked or not.

I found the 18Whr battery in the ZenPad to be good for around ten hours of 720p MP4 video playback which I’ll not complain about. A full charge of the keyboard’s 6Wh battery lasted for 13 hours with the speakers belting out music at the maximum volume. Asus reckons that used just as a keyboard, the dock will last a Biblical 40 days.

Asus ZenPad 10 Z300C

Leather-effect patterned back looks good and is pleasant to the touch. You'll find the same on the underside of the dock

Usefully, the amount of power in the dock battery shows in the tablet status bar alongside the main battery. That’s a feature Sony overlooked in the Z4 Tablet

Overlaying Android 5.0.2, the ZenPad has Asus’ ZenUI. As Android slap goes it’s not bad and has a decent range of extra features baked-in, such as the ability to launch apps by writing a pattern when the screen is dormant or turning the power off when you flip the tablet over. There are also a number of functions relating to the Z Stylus but since that’s not a bundled accessory I can’t say much about it.

ZenPad_UI

Asus' ZenUI is highly adaptable. Note the battery meter for the Bluetooth dock in the status bar at top right

If you are more concerned with how your UI looks than works the Asus will let you change the fonts, icons, text size and layout (apps tray or no apps tray, whichever you prefer) until you get it looking just so.

Will the ZenPad get an upgrade to 6.0 Marshmallow? Your guess is as good as mine but considering the entry-level chipset I’d not wager too much on it.

ZenPad_volume

The volume and power buttons are both positioned where you can easily reach them when using the ZenPad 10 as either tablet or laptop

Many of the ZenPad’s subsidiary features are a bit bargain basement. The Wi-Fi radio is an 802.11b/g/n only affair, the cameras boast a feeble 0.3MP (front) and 2MP (back) resolutions and perform even more poorly than those numbers suggest. And there’s no NFC chip though in a cheap tablet that’s probably no surprise or loss.

USB hosting is present, though. Also, given its plastic body these were no issues with GPS signal reception as there has been with metal-bodied Asus tablets of yore.

The Reg Verdict

The ZenPad 10 is no match for the Z4 Tablet but then the Sony package costs two and a half times as much. If you want to watch videos and listen to music without headphones then the ZenPad’s stereo speaker dock is well worth having. It really does sound very good.

They keyboard isn’t great, but it is better than most no-name, third-party Bluetooth affairs.

The low-res screen and budget Intel SoC are still good enough for most tasks but obviously don’t compare with the high-end kit from the likes of Sony or Apple.

On the whole, it’s not a bad bundle especially if you already have a decent smartphone and just want a 10-inch tablet and a keyboard to work on, browse the web, read ebooks or watch films. ®

ZenPad_stock

Asus ZenPad 10 Z300C: Cheap tab, dock combo you can turn up to 11

Affordable 10.1-inch Android tablet with a 800 x 1280 display, Intel C3200 Atom SoC, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 18Whr battery, microSD card expansion and a bundled Bluetooth keyboard dock with powerful and tuneful 2W stereo speakers built into it.
Price: £199 RRP

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