The retail box is fairly spacious for such a slender device, but the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact comes with only the very essentials - a charger (1.5A) and a microUSB cable.
Due to the waterproofing, the microUSB port is hidden under a flap so you might want to consider buying a magnetic charger dock or cable so you can charge the tablet with less hassle. Those are sold separately - they are not expensive by any means, but it would have been a nice perk to have them in the box.
We're essentially looking at an enlarged Xperia Z3, perhaps unsurprising given the name but definitely not a bad thing. The latest evolution of the Xperia design adds a touch of class with a rounded aluminum frame around the sides of the device but keeps weight in check by using mostly glass and plastic.
Unlike Xperia Z phones, here the back is matte plastic rather than glass, which we like better. It's nice and warm to the touch and, more importantly, isn't a scratch and fingerprint magnet. Sure, it's not as cool as an all-aluminum back like on the iPads but the whole Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact weighs just 270g.
Let that sink in, that's 270g for an 8" tablet when a 5.5" Oppo N1 weighs 213g. This lightness has a definite impact on handling - you don't worry you'll drop it (the grippy matte plastic helps here too) and your hand doesn't tire out quickly.
The tablet is super slim too, at 6.4mm it's nearly at the point where you feel the screen glass is glued straight onto the back. This doesn't mean the tablet is flimsy though, the aluminum frame is strong enough to keep the tablet from bending in normal use (though we wouldn't force it).
The metal trim around the tablet features the new design where the corners are made of separate elements, which promise to absorb impacts better.
Thin side bezels and thicker top/bottom bezels are a hybrid solution. At 123.6mm wide, the tablet is okay-ish to hold single-handedly (the rounded aluminum rim around the device isn't very grippy though). You can also hold the tablet horizontally without pressing anything on the screen or covering the front-facing stereo speakers.
The stereo speakers are narrow slits near the edge of the device. They are backed by Sony 3D Surround Sound and xLoud tech.
We're pleased to report that Sony has finally positioned buttons and ports in the right locations for a pleasant experience with tablet docks. The tablet is meant to be docked horizontally - the magnetic charging port is on the left side, but on other products we've seen either the microUSB port or the 3.5mm audio jack residing on the same side and providing less than an ideal solution.
Now the only thing on the left besides the charging port is the microSD card slot and the optional nanoSIM card slot (for the LTE version), both rarely used. The microUSB port is positioned on the lower side, covered by a flap.
The rest of the commonly used elements are now on the left/top - left to right, a 3.5mm audio jack, the trademark round Power key and the volume rocker. This means you get easy access to all buttons and ports, you can say use MHL TV-out while charging the tablet via a magnetic dock, or use the 3.5mm jack as analog audio out.
This orientation - the tablet lying on its left long side - is good for video calls too. The 2.2MP/1080p front-facing video camera is positioned to the side of the central Sony logo, leaving it above the speakers and your fingers when the tablet is docked in landscape.
There's a microphone on the tablet near the 3.5mm audio jack - it's kept clear from the dock for video calls.
You'll have to be more careful with the rear camera on the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact. It's placed in the middle of the top short side and you may cover it with your fingers when holding it horizontally. There are no problems in portrait orientation but the tablet is a bit too big for one-handed shooting.
The camera itself features an 8MP Exmor RS sensor and no flash. Also on the back you'll find the NFC logo - that is there to guide you when using NFC as the short range technology requires fairly accurate placement when interacting with tags or other smart devices.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is available in Black and White with both the glass on the front and the plastic on the back changing color. The Black version even has the aluminum frame painted darker to match the rest of the exterior.
Inside the body of the tablet is a sealed 4,500mAh battery - not out of the ordinary for an 8" tablet and not bad for such a thin chassis though the 6.6mm Galaxy Tab S 8.4 has a 4,900mAh battery. Sony have proven they know what they're doing when it comes to battery life, we'll find out if they pulled off another miracle in a couple of chapters.
It starts off with 2G GSM connectivity goes through 42Mbps HSPA and offers Cat. 4 LTE for up to 150Mbps of download speed and up to 50Mbps for uploads. There's a variant with TD-LTE for the Chinese market. There's no voice call support though, so you'll have to rely on VoIP solutions (Skype, Viber, you name it).
The Sony Xperia Z3 comes with the latest Android 4.4.4 KitKat out of box with the latest Sony improvements to its custom Xperia overlay. As usual Sony's additions are thinly draped over stock Android, which many view as an advantage over competing skins.
The lockscreen is enhanced from the stock version. It supports widgets (one per pane) and has a camera shortcut at the bottom. Sony's contribution here is double-tap to wake feature, which saves you the trouble of reaching for the screen.
Waking the screen is one thing, for unlocking the tablet you can enable Face, Pattern, PIN or Password unlock, in ascending order of security.
The Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact lets you add or remove homescreen panes (you start with five) and set any of them as default. You can't have more than seven panes at any given time though, nor can you change the order they're in.
In the top left corner there are Google Now and Voice search shortcuts, which are visible on all homescreen panes though you can disable them.
Customization options start from adding widgets but also include changing the theme of the interface, which modifies the wallpaper, system colors, status bar elements and UI controls. Themes are available for download from the Play Store, some of which are paid.
The notification area splits notifications and quick toggles into two different tabs. A one finger swipe from the top opens notifications, while two fingers open toggles. The toggles are customizable and you can choose between 20+ different toggles and have up to 12 of them visible on their dedicated pane.
The app drawer is laid out across multiple pages and you can sort the apps manually, alphabetically, by the most used or most recently installed. The menu with these settings is accessible via a swipe from the left edge of the screen and you can also search and even uninstall apps from there.
The Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact app switcher lets you switch between recently opened apps, as well as terminate them with a side-swipe.
There are shortcuts to the so-called "small apps" inside the app switcher interface. They are small floating windows with widget-like applications, which you can move around and use without having to open the full-fledged app. So far, there's a default set of eight: Active Clip, Chrome Bookmarks, Browser, Calculator, Calendar, Gmail, Timer, and Touch Block. You can launch only one instance of a Small App, but you can open multiple Small Apps simultaneously.
Naturally, you can access Google Now by swiping from the bottom of the UI. There's another shortcut right next to the Google Now launch key called What's new. This app has a very slick UI and will show you the hottest apps and multimedia today. It isn't limited to just the Google Play Store, and will display content from Sony's PlayStation store too.
Back to Google Now, it integrates with your Google account and can access your daily routine, internet searches, email, etc. and give you information relevant to your interests and daily needs.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact has a Snapdragon 801 at its heart - quad-core Krait 400 processor at 2.5GHz and Adreno 330 GPU. Sony has paired that with 3GB of RAM, making this one of the best-spec'd tablets on the market.
There's interesting competition in this size segment though - the Exynos 5420 powered Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 and the Tegra K1 powered Xiaomi Mi 4.
Starting off with CPU benchmarks, the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact doesn't place very high but neither the Xperia Z2 Tablet nor the Xperia Z Ultra do much better in Geekbench 3. The no-cheat version of Basemark OS II showed no traces of benchmark rigging and gave the Z3 Tablet Compact an average overall score but a good multi-core performance. Also, a Krait 400 beats a Cortex-A15 one on one as both the Xiaomi and Samsung tablets demonstrate.
AnTuTu 5 puts the Sony tablet in between phablets like the Galaxy Note 4 (powered by Snapdragon 805) and the Ascend Mate7 (based on HiSilicon Kirin 925).
Adreno 330 is a speedy GPU - other than the NVIDIA-powered Xiaomi Mi Pad, the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is one of the top performers. Here the on-screen results are only slightly worse than the standardized 1080p off-screen tests as the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact's resolution is nearly that - 1,920 x 1,200 pixels. Most other high-end tablets have higher resolution. It's on-screen results that count though and it's clear that Mali-packing Exynos is just no match, even the PowerVR used in the iPad mini 2 and mini 3 doesn't cut it.
Basemark X was used to verify the tablet doesn't boost GPU clock speeds while running benchmarks.
The tablet comes with only the Chrome browser, which isn't the fastest on mobile. Other manufacturers typically use customized versions of the stock browser that has been tuned to that particular device, but not Sony.
In conclusion, the Snapdragon 801 chipset (the one with a 2.5GHz processor) offers solid performance for apps. Gaming is some of the best a mainstream tablet has to offer (Xiaomi's market share in the west is still narrow). The web browsing performance is somewhat uninspiring but it's still goof enough.
The Contacts app on the Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact shares a tabbed interface with the favorite contacts and groups. You can side-swipe between the three tabs. The contact list has a dedicated search field plus it offers and a cool alphabetical scroll bar.
You can sync with multiple accounts, including Exchange and Facebook, and you can selectively show or hide contacts from some accounts (as well as filter specific groups in an account), or set the phonebook to display only contacts with _phone_ numbers or only contacts that are online.
Linking contacts is available, and the quick contact feature is here too.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact features front-facing stereo speakers but that doesn't make it very loud. Sony has improved things since the Xperia Z2 Tablet but the new model still gets a Below Average mark. The iPad mini 2 (also with stereo speakers) gets the same scores, but the other tablets - all of them with stereo speakers though not frontally positioned get Good or Very Good.
None of them have waterproofing though, which undoubtedly mutes some of the sound.
The Gmail client and the default Email apps are onboard. Gmail can sync only with (multiple) Google accounts. while the generic Email app can handle POP and IMAP and offers a Combined inbox. In landscape orientation it splits the screen between the message list and displaying the selected message. This can be enabled in portrait orientation too or disabled all together.
As for text input, the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact offers a customizable on-screen full QWERTY keyboard. An easy to use wizard will help you choose the auto-correct setting, learn your writing style from your Facebook, Twitter or Gmail accounts, add or remove buttons (e.g. language change or voice typing), whether long presses show alternative symbols, there are even three keyboard skins preinstalled.
You can also try the so-called Gesture input if hitting those keys individually doesn't give you the desired typing speed.
Other typing options include a small floating keyboard (which takes only a small portion of the screen and is easily repositioned) and a Thumb keyboard, which splits into two halves. This is great for thumb typing in landscape mode as you don't have to reach for the keys in the middle of the screen.
We should all be familiar with Sony's custom gallery - Album. It organizes images into groups of thumbnails and sorted by date. You can change the thumbnails size by pinching. The top half of the screen is a slideshow of your photos (tap to view the current photo). Thumbnails can be resized with a pinch zoom gesture.
The gallery sorts photos by camera roll, folders, favorites, by people's faces or by location. DLNA is supported out of the box (both viewing and sharing photos) and you can view your Facebook, Flickr and Picasa albums. PlayMemories, Sony's own online album, is available too, of course.
There's a slideshow using the SensMe brand and much like the music player feature, this one scans files and groups similar photos together.
Editing can also be done from within Album app. It pops up a minimalist interface very similar to Google's Photos app, offering the ability to enhance your photos with a verity of filters, as well as adjust from a slew of settings including hue, levels, curves, and many more. Images can also be cropped or rotated directly in the gallery.
The app lets you manually add geo-location info and name faces in photos, which is handy for organization.
The Sketch app is a more artistic editor with various drawing tools, stickers, text and other tools. You can download new stickers and enable online syncing via a Sony account.
Finally, there is the Movie Creator. It automatically creates small video clips from your pictures taken with the camera. It does its magic automatically, a lot like HTC Zoe.
The Walkman music player is part of the equipment of all recent Xperia devices. It now features wider audio support - in addition to popular formats such as MP3, AAC, WAV, the Walkman player also handles ALAC and FLAC.
It features Music Unlimited integration and is not above trying to sell you songs, but you can hide the Music Unlimited stuff.
The Walkman interface is based on a hidden swipe-able menu that sorts your music collection by Artist, Albums, Playlists, Folders and DLNA devices. The Playlists option includes SenseMe, which automatically sorts photos into several categories like energetic, relax, upbeat, mellow and so on, there are nine options in total.
The Infinite button is available in the Now Playing screen (just tap the album art) - it will help you find the track's video on YouTube, look up info about the artist on Wikipedia and search for lyrics on Google. You can also post about a song on Facebook from here. Several visualizers are available for a bigger show.
Gracenote is used here too and it can automatically download information about your tracks and album art, but you can edit info manually. Track ID is on board for identifying songs.
Digging into the settings your can select custom presets for a wide range of Sony headsets, including one for the Sony NC31E/EM noise cancelling headset. This one is not bundled though as it is with the Z3 and the Z3 Compact.
The Sound effects contain yet more settings. There's a 5-band equalizer with presets and manual settings (including tweaking Clear Bass). Then there's S-Force Front surround and Surround sound mode (VPT), which imitates the Studio, Club or Concert Hall experience.
The Xperia Z3 also includes Sony's Digital Sound Enhancement Engine (DSEE), which upgrades the quality of compressed music files by using upsampling, but as can be expected from such an operation the results are hardly spectacular. We'd suggest you steer away from it as the added artifacts don't justify the benefits.
Speaker settings include Clear Phase, which adjusts the quality, while xLOUD boosts up the internal speaker. For external speakers you can output Hi-Res audio to USB DAC amps.
The FM radio features RDS support to display radio info, but you can also use Track ID to recognize the currently playing song. You can also post about it on Facebook to show your friends how old-school you are. The radio interface is fairly simple so visualizations are enabled by default to fill in the screen.
The video playing app is dubbed Movies and it too has a great custom UI. It's connected to Gracenote, which helps you find additional information about the movies you have on the phone. It will even download posters and metadata like genre, synopsis, director and cast.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work very well for TV shows - it doesn't recognize the S01E02 format and won't pull info about individual episodes. It gets worse, Gracenote seems to be lacking info on TV shows in general, and we couldn't find even popular shows like The Big Bang Theory.
The tablet can recognize what's playing on your TV too, not just what files are on your tablet. The Track ID TV app is the TV show equivalent of the song recognition app.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact was able to play most of the video files we threw at it but had some issues with AC3 audio and videos that combined AAC audio with the AVC video codec. MOV files played without problem, a rarity on an Android device. In any event, you can always download a more capable (codec-wise) third-party app from the Google Play store.
The video player supports subtitles, and you can customize their looks. Unfortunately, you cannot manually pick the subtitle file, it has to reside in the video folder to load up.
Video Unlimited is a movie and TV show store where you can purchase content to watch on your tablet.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact did decently in our audio quality test. The active external amplifier trial ended with very good scores and average loudness - not quite the best in either clarity or volume but good enough for the vast majority of users.
Plugging in a pair of headphones brought some extra stereo crosstalk, but the overall performance remained solid and it will take a very pretentious audiophile to find something wrong with it. We have seen better from flagship slates, but the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact will certainly do its music playback job fine.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact's camera uses an 8MP Exmor RS sensor. It shoots at a maximum resolution of 3,264 x 2,448 pixels (8MP) in manual mode, or 3,264 x 1,836 (6MP) in Superior Auto. There is no LED flash to help you with some low-light photos.
The camera is positioned in the middle of the top edge of the device, the left edge when held horizontally. We made a note of this in the hardware chapter and we must reiterate it here - it's very easy to cover the camera with your finger, which makes photography awkward. More awkward than your typical tablet photography we mean.
The camera interface is just like that of Xperia smartphones. It's laid across two panes and is shared with the camcorder - in Manual mode you get a still/video toggle, while in Superior auto there are separate still and video shutter keys. There is not hardware shutter key here, not that it would have been useful.
The mode selector (button in the bottom right) offers an additional tab that lets you download more proprietary and third-party shooting modes.
In Manual mode you get limited controls: Exposure Compensation, White balance, Metering, Image stabilization and ISO. Superior Auto makes a best guess at the type of scene and picks the best settings itself.
The Z3 Tablet Compact comes with two livestreaming options - Social live (for Facebook) and Live on YouTube. Face in lets you shoot photos and videos with the front-facing camera inserting your mug into the shot as well. The software tracks your face to make sure it's centered so you don't have to worry about positioning so much.
Multicamera uses other devices - Xperia smartphones or Wi-Fi/NFC-enabled Sony cameras (including the QX models). You can connect up to three devices (two if you use a camera) and record a combined video with all of them.
Sound Photo records a one-second 1080p video with sound, except it uses the uncommon MPO format. There are two AR modes too - one renders a virtual world on top of the real one, while the other is more interactive (it's very similar to Fruit Ninja) making for some fun videos.
Manual mode image quality is not stunning - photos are overexposed, there's noticeable noise and the captured detail doesn't correspond to 8MP resolution. Color rendering is surprisingly okay (may look a little undersaturated if you're coming off a typical smartphone camera).
Superior Auto crops off the image to 16:9 aspect ratio but doesn't actually do much to improve image quality. The photos still come out overexposed and lacking in 8MP-level detail. Overall photos are passable for a tablet, but not on the level of a good 8MP cameraphone.
You can get to HDR mode in the Manual settings. It brightens up shadows way too much and brings down the highlights a bit. The strength of the effect varies from restrained to over-the-top. That depends on the given scene and the fine detail is degraded proportionally.
There's Sweep panorama but Sony's is one of the worst implementations on the market. It's picky about sweeping speed and while you can stop it before completing the 360° circle, the rest of the panorama is filled in with a grey color (which we cropped out for the samples below). Resolution is fairly low - 5MP in total with 1080px vertical resolution when you shoot in landscape mode. Stitching is far from perfect and leaves plenty of squiggly lines and misshapen objects.
If you want you can do some extra pixel peeping in our dedicated comparison tool below.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact shoots 1080p videos at 30fps. They come out with 18Mbps overall bitrate and good 156Kbps audio bitrate (recorded in stereo at 48kHz sampling rate). The Sony Xperia Z3 offers digital image stabilization but do keep in mind that it eats up a significant portion of the field of view.
Like still photos videos are overexposed, but they actually offer good image quality with a decent level of detail. The videos are not particularly sharp but they look better than the still photos. Recorded sound is of pretty good quality too.
You can check out these video sample directly off the device: 1080p@30fps (0:08s, 18.7MB). Or you could watch the 30 second video sample we uploaded to YouTube.
Tablets have not entered the 2160p race yet so there's plenty of 1080p competition to compare with the Z3 Tablet Compact.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact comes with Google Chrome as the default web browser out of box instead of the generic Android browser. While the minimalist interface hasn't changed since Chrome launched on Android, the browser is being constantly refined by Google, and this has resulted in one of the smoothest and most powerful browsing experiences we've encountered on a mobile.
Sony Select does the same as the Sony's What's New app, but comes with much less functions and old UI. We feel Sony should retire it. Both try to promote content from the Play Store. The Xperia Lounge is similar but promises exclusive content and is more varied, it shows trailer for upcoming movies, for example.
Sony Xperia Z3 also features the Office Suite 7, which comes with a Premium license for one month, allowing for viewing and editing office files (docs, xls, ppt), and it can also read PDFs.
Calculator, Clock app (with stopwatch, world clock and timer), Sketch, Notes and File Manager apps are also here by default. The File Manager has built-in support for local networking and FTP.
The PS4 Remote Play feature allows the tablet to connect to a PlayStation 4 and act as the display. You play using a DualShock 4 controller, so you can continue playing even if someone wants to watch TV in the middle of your game. Sony is selling mounts that attach the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact to the PS4 controller, but those aren't strictly necessary.
The Lifelog app is onboard too. If you enable its tracking functions - it will record your motion via phone's accelerometer and GSP and then it will convert the data into steps, distance, sleep hours, burnt calories. The app basically tracks and records all of our activity - in addition to the steps, walking/running/sleeping hours, it also saves time spent on communications, taking/browsing pictures, listening to music, watching videos, playing games, reading eBooks, and web browsing. The app is way more accurate if you are using some of Sony's wearable accessories (SmartBand, SmartWatch).
Phones and tablets are converging - phones are already in the 5.5-6 inch range and 7-8 inch tablets are more popular than their 10" siblings. There was some speculation that the 7.9" iPad mini will eclipse the 9.7" iPad Air, but with the underwhelming mini 3 launch we're not so sure anymore.
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is a direct iPad mini competitor and Apple's neglect of the mini makes this a perfect time for Sony to strike.
The tablet is not compact in the sense of the Xperia Z3 Compact (the smartphone), 8" is actually a fairly standard screen size. The tablet does fully earn its name though - thickness and weight are among of the few areas in tech where lower is better and the Z3 Tablet Compact is about as low as it gets.
There's something special about a 6.4mm tablet that only weighs 270g. True, the new iPad Air 2 is 6.1mm but, in tablets at 8" or so, there's hardly anything thinner or lighter out there. An exposed metal trim gives the tablet a premium touch, while the matte plastic back is practical (light and grippy) and looks much better than smudgy glass or glossy plastic.
The Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact leans on multiple Sony technologies. The 8" Triluminos screen of WUXGA resolution may not have the highest resolution around but it boasts stunning colors, while the front-facing stereo speakers that surround it have Sony's usual battery of sound-enhancement tech. For headphones the number of features gets dizzying - from on-board Hi-Res sound, through the legendary Walkman player to built-in support for noise reduction headphones.
The camera was a bit of disappointment, it's not the best 8MP shooter money can buy. It does well enough at video recording though and it has enough fun features.
In terms of processing power, the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact is certainly fast. Gaming in particular is a focus for Sony and the Snapdragon 801 chipset with Adreno 330 gets the job done, no questions asked. The PS4 Remote Play functionality is an added bonus that can save you the purchase of a PS Vita.
Apple's brand recognition often leads to questions like "iPad or Android tablet?" as if "Android" is a singular thing. The Apple iPad mini 2 and mini 3 have nearly the same specs aside from the Gold color option and the Touch ID sensor that were added to the new model.
The screen is still a 7.9" LCD of 324ppi - topping Sony's 283ppi. More disappointingly though, Apple kept the A7 chipset so the gains in CPU and GPU performance from the A8X remain inaccessible to the minis. The sleek 6.1mm chassis of the iPad Air is similarly an exclusive perk of the big tablet. What we're saying is unless you have plenty of disposable income and you are after some sort of bragging rights, get the iPad mini 2 rather than the mini 3.
As for the iPad vs. Xperia discussion, the Z3 Tablet Compact is the only waterproof tablet in the segment, has front-facing stereo speakers too and it's thinner and lighter than virtually all of them. The iPad mini 2/3 have stereo speakers too but they are not positioned to capitalize on the stereo effect. Also note that the Wi-Fi only version of the tablet lacks GPS. If you want an all-metal chassis it's iPad or nothing though.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4 is one of the very few tablets with an AMOLED screen. It's a very sharp screen too, 359ppi, Super AMOLED fans finally have a replacement for the aging Galaxy Tab 7.7. The tablet is ultra-thin and ultra-light to nearly match Sony's - at 6.6mm and 294g. There's no waterproofing though and the Exynos 5420 chipset is lagging behind the Snapdragon 801.
The NVIDIA Shield is a showcase device for the company's Tegra K1 chipset, but it is also a good all-round tablet, well priced too. The chipset is the version with the traditional Cortex-A15 cores but, going by early benchmark results, NVIDIA's own Denver processor doesn't improve much in multi-core performance. Both versions pack the GeForce Kepler GPU, which wipes the floor with the current crop of mobile GPUs - graphic cards are NVIDIA's bread and butter after all.
The tablet itself stays very close to the Xperia with an 8" 1,920 x 1,200 pixel screen and front-facing stereo speakers. It's thicker and heavier, with no increased water resistance, but it has Note-like stylus support and a standard HDMI port to make TV connectivity a bit easier.
The Xiaomi Mi Pad 7.9 is powered by the same chipset and is an "iPad mini" inspired device, to put it lightly. It has the same screen size and resolution, which also means the same 4:3 aspect ratio. It has the same overall design though colorful plastic replaces the aluminum unibody. It can be hard to find in the Western hemisphere though and imports aren't always hassle-free.
The new Nexus 9 doesn't quite fit into the 8" category and it's noticeably thicker and heavier than the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact. It does come with a Denver-packing Tegra K1 chipset and it runs pure Android, one of the first devices with Android 5.0 Lollipop and a promise for timely future upgrades. The 8.9" screen has 2,048 x 1,536 pixels resolution (matching the Z3 Tablet Compact at 281ppi), there are Wi-Fi and LTE versions and options for 16GB and 32GB built-in storage. Note that it's not expandable and 16GB on tablets is hardly enough. It's not out yet though, it should launch in early November.
Dell recently unveiled the Venue 8 7000, a tablet with impressively slim bezels and mere 6mm of thickness - the only tablet of this size that's thinner than the Sony. It has a screen just like the Galaxy Tab S 8.4 - an 8.4" OLED display of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels resolution (and 359ppi). We don't have official confirmation whether it's a Super AMOLED, but the bezels are razor thin on three sides. The fourth houses the front-facing speaker.
The Dell Venue 8 7000 has a unique Intel RealSense 3D camera (built from two 720p cameras) to add depth perception up to 10m to the 8MP main camera. The tablet is powered by a quad-core Intel Atom with the PowerVR GPU used in the iPad mini 2/3. There's no LTE though 3G comes on all tablets, there's no Wi-Fi only version.
A similar Intel Atom chipset can be had on the Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 8.0. This one shuns the concept of thin-and-light to offer a built-in kickstand, a 6400 mAh battery and powerful stereo speakers. The screen is a 283ppi LCD just like the Sony and you get an 8MP camera as well. It's marginally cheaper than the Xperia tablet and comes with 3G connectivity by default (but like the Dell there's no LTE).
The Sony Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact does not lack competition but its list of features make it the one to beat. It has a super-slim and light body with an exposed metal frame, IP68 waterproofing and front-facing stereo speakers - full of value-added proprietary Sony tech. Offering all of this in a single package is a big win for Sony, but each of those add to the price - which, to be fair, is steep. But that's only if in your world a tablet is either an iPad or a droid - the latter usually presumed to be plain, affordable, inferior and therefore anonymous. Sony says it's time to change your mind.