Gaming on the iPad is pretty great, but if you really want to see
where the envelope is being pushed for mobile games, look no
further than Android.
With so many manufacturers trying to distinguish themselves in
the crowded Android tablet market, gaming performance is one
way these guys can rise above the noise.
IÃ?m Donald Bell, and in
this Top 5, IÃ?m counting down the best Android tablets for
gaming, ranked by our own CNET Labs using the 3DMark
performance benchmark.
Starting off at #5: the Sony Xperia Tablet S.
This is a proper all-
around tablet.
You get a bigger 9.4-inch screen, plenty of extra
features, and that that signature Sony fit and finish.
Now, the tablet is almost a year old at this point, but the good
news is that the original $400 price is starting to soften all the
way down to $299.
For a high-end Android 4.0 tablet with a
3DMark score topping just over 4,000, thatÃ?s arguably the best
deal on this list.
But if you want better performance, youÃ?ll have to cough up a
little extra.
At #4: the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700.
Priced just under $500, this is a beloved Android tablet that does
a convincing job of switching into a sort of Android laptop.
NVIDIA Tegra 3 chipset, beautiful screen resolution, and that
keyboard dock accessory bumps up the battery life quite a bit --
which youÃ?ll need if you really plan on living the dream of playing
Assassin's Creed from your beachside cabana.
A score of 4,298 means thereÃ?s plenty of polygon pushing power
here, but if youÃ?re going to spend the money, you may want to
wait until you hear the rest of this list.
Coming in at #3 with a 3DMark score of 8,050: The Google
Nexus 10.
This is more like it.
2GB of RAM, Android 4.2, and a
reasonable price of $400.
This is the first tablet to use
Samsung's 1.7GHz dual-core Exynos 5250 CPU along with a
Mali T-604 graphics processor.
All of that translates into buttery
smooth frame rates and serious gaming performance.
The downside here is that for whatever reason, this tablet
charges super slow.
It canÃ?t even pull down enough juice to
charge while youÃ?re playing games -- so if you run out of battery,
youÃ?ll just have to take a breather for a few hours while the tablet
recharges.
Boo.
Still not fast enough for you?
Well then, sliding in at #2 with a
3DMark score of 10,200: the Sony Xperia Tablet Z.
Insanely thin,
incredibly fast, and itÃ?s even waterproof in up to 3 feet of water
for 30 minutes.
So if you fit that sweaty-handed gamer
stereotype, or perhaps you play best while wearing one of those
top-heavy beer helmets, then a waterproof tablet should come in
handy.
Which brings us to the #1 Android tablet for gaming, ranked by
our CNET Editors Eric Franklin and Xiomara Blanco.
Fresh out
of the factory: the 2013 Google Nexus 7.
With a 3DMark score of
11,601 and a starting price of $229, the best gaming tablet in the
world is also one of the most affordable.
It packs a 1.5GHz
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro with 2 gigs of RAM and a
beautiful screen that measures twice as bright as the original
Nexus 7.
Gamer or not, if youÃ?re an Android fan looking for tablet that runs
rings around the iPad Mini and costs $100 less, this is your
tablet.
So there you have it, five tablets that will do justice to every pixel
of zombie brain you can splatter.
For more details on the
benchmarks, head over to the full post over on CNETÃ?s Android
Atlas blog.
And for more Top 5Ã?s from me, Top5.CNET.com.
IÃ?m Donald Bell, thanks for watching.
