The ASUS ZenPad S (Z580CA) Review
by Brandon Chester on August 31, 2015 8:00 AM ESTBattery Life
The first generation of the iPad promised a ten hour battery life, which was exceptional when one considers what the battery life of smartphones and laptops was at that time. Since that time the battery life target OEMs aim for with tablets has usually hovered around that 10 hour mark. Whether or not a tablet lasts that long obviously depends on a mixture of the user's workload and the OEM's honesty in the battery numbers they report. As for the ZenPad S Z580CA, its 15.2Wh battery is rated for up to 8 hours of battery life by ASUS, which is lower than I would expect when the iPad Mini 2 is competing at the same price with a 10 hour battery life. Of course, the ZenPad S is 0.9 thinner at its thinnest point, which leaves less room to put in battery. This may be one of the cases where I would agree that a thicker device with a larger battery would be better, but that will depend on the outcome of our battery tests.
As always, all devices are calibrated to 200nits for all battery benchmarks, and they follow the standard order of web browsing, BaseMark OS II, PCMark, and finally GFXBench 3.0.
In our WiFi web test the ZenPad S falls about 43 minutes short of its rated 8 hour battery life. Had it been designed for a 10 hour rating this wouldn't be a huge deal as you'd still be talking about nearly 9.2 hours of battery life. However, 7.18 hours is a relatively short battery life for web browsing when you consider that the iPad Mini 2 lasts 9.83 hours in the same test, while the Dell Venue 8 7840 lasts 9.59 hours with the same SoC and a similar display area.
The ZenPad S does fairly well in BaseMark OS II's battery benchmark which mainly stresses a device's CPU. However, it's again outclassed by the Dell Venue 8 7840 which uses the same SoC and actually has a thinner chassis. In this case I would say that the ZenPad S doesn't have bad battery life at all, but I do wish it was a bit higher than it is.
The ZenPad S achieves the shortest battery life of our tested devices in PCMark's battery life test. Although both devices are close, its battery life is slightly shorter than that of the Dell Venue 10 7040, which I repeatedly noted as having extremely poor battery life. PCMark is a fairly good example of the battery life that a user can expected from a mixed workload, and the ZenPad S Z580CA's battery life of 5.33 hours is not quite where it needs to be.
The ZenPad S doesn't last quite as long as the iPad Air 2 in GFXBench's battery test, and sits a little more than 46 minutes behind the Dell Venue 8 7840. Evaluating how well a device does in GFXBench requires considering both the battery life as well as the performance. A device can last a long time but deliver performance that isn't even remotely playable. Conversely, a device can last a short time but have incredible performance, which would still be preferable to a long period of unplayable performance.
With a steady frame rate slightly above 19 FPS for most of the test, the ZenPad S doesn't quite offer smooth performance during the 3.69 hours that it ran for. In comparison, Apple's iPad Air 2 lasted longer and approaches upon 50 FPS, which is well above the 30 FPS that many 3D mobile games target. However, it's also worth noting that this is an on-screen test, and in games that render below a device's native resolution it's entirely possible that the ZenPad S would deliver smooth performance while maintaining its 3.69 hours of battery life. It's also worth noting that the iPad Air 2 costs significantly more than the ZenPad, and while we don't have information about the iPad Mini 2 in this test, it's very likely that its performance would be similar. In the end, the PowerVR G6430 GPU is still a fairly capable GPU, even if it can't run intensive 3D games at 2048x1536. I think the GPU performance and battery life in GPU heavy loads that the ZenPad S offers is more than acceptable for a $300 device.
Charge Time
Since tablets have significantly larger batteries than smartphones, they have always required high power chargers to recharge their batteries in an acceptable period of time. Even so, devices like the 2012 iPad took as long as six hours to charge even with a 10W charger due to the sheer size of their battery. Thankfully, reductions in platform power have allowed for smaller batteries while maintaining battery life, which leads to shorter charging times for tablets. At the moment, most tablets seem to take between 3.5 and 4 hours to charge, and with its 15.2Wh battery one would hope that the ZenPad S could go below that 3.5 hour figure. As you can see above, the ZenPad S doesn't quite meet that goal.
The ZenPad 2 charges slightly quicker than other tablets like the iPad Air 2, iPad Mini 2, Nexus 9, and the Galaxy Tab S 8.4. However, it doesn't charge as fast as the Dell Venue 8 7840. To be honest, I had expected a better result here because of the ZenPad's relatively tiny battery capacity. Dell's included charger provides 7W of power, which isn't as much as the 10W+ bricks that come with iPads and some other tablets. It's worth noting that I also checked the charge time when using ASUS's 18W QC 2.0 power brick, but measured no difference from the one that comes in the box. I would like to note that the lack of QC 2.0 support has absolutely nothing to do with the use of the USB Type-C connector. The USB connector is unrelated to the data and power protocols.
In the end users won't be getting a significant shorter or longer charge time than other tablets, but knowing that the battery is only 15.2Wh has me feeling a bit let down that the ZenPad S takes as long as it does to charge.
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Shadow7037932 - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
Man, that's disappointing. I was hoping more value like the Zenfone 2.MrSavage - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
More value like what? Put a 16GB storage along with 1GB of RAM like the iPad mini 2 (as mentioned endlessly in this review) and don't you think it would cost less than $199? So then the Z580CA would be price around $199 or less, and the 2 year old iPad mini 2 would be $100 more. Oh yes, more value please. Afterall, let's compare apples with oranges. Zenfone 2 value? So a 8-inch display for a price similar to a 5.5-inch display device. Put stylus support into the Zenfone 2 and what would that cost?Kepe - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
Does ASUS pay you to troll around here, praising the Zenpad and dissing everyone who finds the product a bit disappointing? Price doesn't matter at all if the product fails on too many categories that would have been rather easy to fix. This thing has too many software issues, such as artificially oversharpening everything on the display (makes small text hard to read for example), always on CABC and poor camera image processing.Cheap price alone isn't enough to justify the problems this thing has. You wouldn't buy a badly made and designed car even if it was 30% cheaper than the competing, well-made and thought of car.
Of course cheap price doesn't always mean something is bad. Look at OnePlus 1 and 2 and the new Moto X. They're half the price of the competition, but you couldn't tell that by the spec sheets or how they are made and what materials are used. Those are good examples of how to make a cheap product in an intelligent and thoughtful way.
MrSavage - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
Hey friend. I think it's okay to challenge people or to question logic. You don't logically compare a smartphone with a tablet. Do you? I would expect a $100,000 car to be on a level playing field as a $20,000 car. I wouldn't compare the Z380CA to an iPad mini 2 because if you removed 3GB of RAM, put in a slower processor, and removed 32GB of storage then the Z580CA would be priced around $200 don't you think? Compare apples with apples is logical. You don't own one so I would suspect you don't have any credibility on what the Z580CA has or doesn't have. With a weak review, things can and should be corrected by people who know better in the comment section. You can always always always get more bang for your buck. Apple proves that. To me the failure is partially on Asus for sending an early review unit that OBVIOUSLY needed a firmware update prior to publisher, and beyond that, one key component the Z stylus isn't even available for those reviews. I'm expressing my opinion to clear up some of the ignorance out there.Kepe - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
You are not making any sense at all. The iPad mini 2 and the Z580CA cost exactly the same amount of money: $299. That is why they can and should be compared. The iPad mini 2 is 2 years old, that's why it has less ram, storage, slower processor and such.Somewhere else in the comments you said people shouldn't compare the Z580CA to a Samsung tablet because it was $100 more expensive. Now you say people shouldn't compare devices that cost the same. What the heck are we supposed to compare, then? Two Z580CA's and look at them with a microscope to spot some differences in the surface texture and then compare them?
Besides, I haven't been comparing a tablet to a phone. The charts in the review have phones as well because they use the same SOCs (processors, GPUs).
The reason graphs and charts are used and detailed measurements are taken (display, performance, specs) is to remove objectivity from the results. Without them, every review would be like this:
"The display is ok I guess. There wasn't any significant UI lag. Gaming was ok. Weight is ok, not too heavy. Battery lasted for quite a while. It's an ok tablet I guess."
That kind of a review doesn't benefit anyone. The only way to properly decide which device is better at which thing is to measure those things, put them in a chart and compare them. As a reader, you should have the brain capacity to understand the price and other differences by yourself. We all know that the Zenpad reviewed here costs $299 and some other devices in the charts are more expensive and some are less expensive. It's up to the reader to decide what kind of price/performance he or she wants. It's the same thing with GPU reviews. The charts have old GPUs, new GPUs, cheap GPUs, expensive GPUs all in one. It isn't unfair, because everyone understands that the cheap ones won't be as fast as the new ones, and the expensive old ones won't be as fast as expensive new ones. You have to use your own brains when you're reading.
MrSavage - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
I can appreciate what you're saying. I'm not trying to argue with you, only to discuss. Let me clarify. Similar price is fair, so long as the specs match up. The ipad mini 2 and Z580CA are total apples and oranges. It's not an equal value trade off at all. If you strip most of the things I mentioned, then you will have a true value comparison.The reason the new Samsung Tab S2 is worth comparing is because they are comparable spec wise, except for the storage and a bit of RAM. The value proposition of the Z580CA exceeds the negatives, but that's my opinion.
Charts and graphs have some value, so I'm not disregarding those entirely. Obviously anandtech is very reliant on their data and that's fine. Perhaps the audience reading the review will figure things out on their own, but it's a false assumption to assume that people understand the technicalities. I don't disagree that people need to use their brains when analyzing data or stats. Some stats however are statistically insignificant and that's why I take issue with some of those devices listed.
Those best review is one that looks realistically at the cost/value proposition. Everything out there sucks in the tablet category against the iPad Air 2. Beyond that, the review here of the display is sporadic and unclear. If it's software? If it was patched at some point during the review? That should not be made as an aside. It's not clear to me if the issues were resolved with the update and that essentially nullified most of the previous complaints being made about the display. Just not good enough in my books. Beyond that, it's never a good idea to trust one review and make a decision or judgement based on that.
BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
Let me try to word it a different way. For the same price you get an extra 3GB of RAM, a faster processor, and an extra 32GB of storage. If those things are of highest importance to you, then this equates to more value. However, if your personal priorities dictate that use of iOS, Apple branding, build quality, display quality, etc. are more important, then perhaps you come to a different conclusion.LoganPowell - Friday, November 27, 2015 - link
Unfortunately Asus Zenpad Z580CA ranks rather poorly among top rankings (see ranking http://www.consumerrunner.com/top-10-best-tablets/ for example...)BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, September 2, 2015 - link
@Kepe: It doesn't matter if the iPad Mini 2 is two years old. That doesn't make it suddenly a better value. Either the price needs to drop accordingly, or a newer updated version needs to hit the market. Of course, you may find it a better value given other characteristics, but that depends on your priorities.Puck85 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
serious question: what should I buy instead of this around this price range? Is there a better value out there I should consider?