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- Mediocre battery life
- Slow to charge
Low-resolution tablets like the Asus ZenPad 10 Z300M often last absolutely ages between charges, like the otherwise-uninspiring LG G Pad 10.1. Asus says the Z300M lasts up to 11 hours, but in our battery test it didn't do quite that well.
Playing a 720p MP4 video on loop at maximum brightness takes 26% off the 18Wh battery, suggesting it'll last a little under six hours. The Asus ZenPad 8.0 in contrast lost just 16% of its battery in the same test – though that's a well above average result.
The Z300M's stamina will improve if you drop the screen brightness, with Asus's own figures based on brightness of 100 nits, but the Asus ZenPad 10 Z300M is still not a super-long-lasting tablet. It's painfully slow to charge too, taking over four hours as there's no fast charging tech packed in.
Camera
- Basic camera
- Images often appear washed-out
Tablet cameras have improved a lot over the last couple of years. They're a step or two behind phone cameras, but higher-end models can take shots worth saving and even printing out. Cheap tablets like the Asus ZenPad 10 Z300M sensibly keep their cameras basic, though.
There's a 5MP snapper on the back and a 2MP selfie camera on the front. They're the old kind of tablet camera, and you see this in the Asus ZenPad 10 Z300M's image quality.
Transfer your pictures to a laptop or desktop and you can see all of a photo's meaningful detail without zooming in. There's no scope for cropping or using the ZenPad's in-camera digital zoom without your images looking ropey.
Fine detail in daylight images is flattened by a rather aggressive noise reduction algorithm and faulty white balance often leaves skies looking greenish.
While color appears fairly vibrant in well-lit shots, the relatively low-quality lens and sensor often struggle with any serious degree of light contrast in a scene, making the image appear washed-out.
There's around 0.5 seconds of shutter lag too, but this all adds up to a camera that's about as mediocre as we'd expect at the price. It's not a good camera, but it's probably the right one for the ZenPad 10 Z300M.
A lot of bonus modes are included, such as HDR, a GIF-maker, a shallow depth of field mode and a QR reader. However, with such limited image quality it's not worth expending too much energy on them. Unless you have a terrible phone, stick to using your handset's camera.
The front camera is similarly basic. Detail is low, and the Asus ZenPad 10 Z300M struggles to compensate for strongly backlit scenes.
