Sony Xperia Z4 tablet review: incredibly thin and light, and near-flawless performance, but useless keyboard dock makes it too expensive
Context & Ripple Effects
Sony's March announcement promised a 10-inch 2K display shipping globally in June; Engadget's verdict is that the hardware delivered — thin, light, near-flawless performance — while the keyboard dock that justifies the premium did not.
The review lands in a crowded field where keyboards are already the deciding factor: the Samsung Galaxy TabPro S was praised for its keyboard, while ASUS's ZenBook 3 was dinged for one that is hard to use. The Dell Venue 8 7000 at $400 shows the low end competing purely on build and battery.
First-order effects
- Buyers weighing the Xperia Z4 as a laptop substitute now have a clear reason to skip it: paying flagship prices for a productivity bundle whose dock Engadget calls useless.
- Sony's tablet pitch rests entirely on hardware excellence, which the review confirms — leaving the accessory failure as the sole blocker in an otherwise positive recommendation.
Second-order effects
- Samsung's TabPro S, reviewed weeks later with its keyboard singled out as a strength, gains an easy differentiation point against Sony's bundle in the thin-and-light segment.
- Accessory quality becomes a scored criterion reviewers treat as decisive rather than optional, raising the bar for every vendor selling a tablet-plus-dock package.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — great slates undermined by weak keyboard add-ons — the tablet-as-laptop-replacement market migrates toward designs with integrated input, a path Samsung's later Galaxy Z Fold 4 follows despite its own steep price and app gaps.
- Vendors unable to nail both panel and input end up competing on price against devices like the Dell Venue 8 7000 instead of commanding premiums.
The trend: Premium tablets are being judged as laptop replacements, where the keyboard — not the screen or silicon — decides whether the price holds up.