Sony's incredibly thin Xperia Tablet Z tablet

The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is absurd in the best way possible. All tablets should be this freakishly thin and impossibly light. If you were to pick up Sony's (SNE) new 10.1-inch tablet and not look at it, you'd think you were holding a 7-inch device in your hand. It's that light.The Xperia Tablet Z is just 0.27 inches thick and 1.09 pounds. That's 27% thinner and 24% lighter than Apple's (AAPL, Fortune 500) fourth-generation iPad. Announced last month and on display for the first time at Mobile World Congress, which began Monday, the Android-powered Tablet Z packs a decent amount of punch for its size. It sports a 1.5 GHz quad-core processor, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and a full HD resolution of 1920x1080. But on internal components alone, the Tablet Z wouldn't be enough to make anyone take notice. It's by no means the fastest tablet on the market -- its Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset from Qualcomm (QCOM, Fortune 500) is last year's model. Its display isn't the most pixel-dense, but it's suitable enough for 2013. The appeal of this device only becomes apparent when you hold it and see it. After a few brief moments messing around with the Xperia Tablet Z, I found myself excited about a new tablet for the first time in awhile. Related story: Samsung stuffs a phone in new Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet It's not just that it's thin and light, but the Tablet Z is constructed in such a way that the lack of mass doesn't make the device feel cheap, like a toy. It still feels like a premium tablet. Oh, and it's waterproof. Yet there are a couple of drawbacks to consider when thinking about purchasing a Tablet Z. Sony's custom user interface is inferior to Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) stock Android UI, and it annoyingly pushes many of Sony's custom apps and services. The Tablet Z does sport Android 4.1, but Sony only committed to delivering the latest 4.2 update sometime "post-launch." Could be weeks. Could be months. From: The national