Battery Life & Performance

The Eee Pad has an integrated 24.4Wh battery as well as an optional external 24.4Wh battery courtesy of the Transformer dock. The tablet by itself has battery life similar to that of the Motorola Xoom, and shorter than the iPad 2. With the dock however we measured a 64% increase in battery life in our general use test. With over 15.5 hours of battery life on a single charge, a docked Eee Pad is pretty impressive.

General Usage—Web Browsing, Email & Music Playback

ASUS tells us we aren't seeing a near doubling of battery life with the dock in use because of inefficiencies in the current firmware—something that could improve with the May firmware update.

Video playback battery life is identical to the Xoom. Remember NVIDIA's Tegra 2 doesn't completely accelerate the H.264 decode pipeline, so there's some software offloading that unfortunately keeps the Cortex A9s awake during our video decode test. As a result the Eee Pad and Xoom post lower-than-iPad results here.

Video Playback—H.264 720p Base Profile (No B-Frames)

With a 1GHz Tegra 2 under the hood, the Eee Pad performs just like a Xoom:

2011 Page Load Test—Average

SunSpider Javascript Benchmark 0.9

SunSpider Javascript Benchmark 0.9.1

Rightware BrowserMark

WiFi Performance

The Camera The Honeycomb Update & Software Preload
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  • spambonk - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link

    Hey, Anand - did you test for light bleed?
    Some people have reported light bleed at the edges in a dark room.
  • ol1bit - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link

    These are great for flights over seas! 15 hours of battery life, you can watch movies, listen to music, browse the web (over the states), type emails, edit documents.

    All without a power cord, and it's small.

    I love it and the price is killer!

    I still want one like the Atrix, so I can carry one less device, ho and for this device, it can't be on AT&T. :-)
    \
  • lcjgol - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link

    Anand, you mentioned that the dock has a USB port. For the retail version review, could you stick a regular mouse in there and tell us how it works (or doesn't).

    -thanks

    After reading this review, I'm 80% sure I'm getting this for my wife's Bday in May (the remaining 20% of my decision will be based on the final retail review).

    My family may be Asus' target audience. My wife is a very light computer user at home and also slightly interested in an eReader and/or tablet. Up till now, she hasn't shown enough interests to warrant a single device, but this Asus tablet can do all of the above relatively well. I know an E-ink device would be better for reading, but she doesn't want another gadget around the house if it will only be used lightly. She also needs a keyboard sometimes, and that has been why we haven't bought a tablet yet. This dock solution is the best I've seen. Add to that the fact that I've been thinking about getting some kind of (relatively decent) touchscreen device for my young son to doodle with, and Asus may have my money yet again.

    Great review of a great device.
  • mino - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link

    "ASUS was at the forefront of the netbook revolution thanks to its close partnerships with Intel and Microsoft."

    What the **** has ASUS team's ability to innovate to do with Intel or Microsoft ?!?

    (Both of which actually tried to stifle the EeePC project.)

    Anand, you have just proved to me you really lost it. Can as well rename yourself to Anand, The Spinner.

    Old rule says "money rules". Having it only proven once again somehow fails to make me less sad.

    Old reader turned hater.
  • bplewis24 - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link

    Okay, hater, please explain to us how Asus would have innovated the netbook market without Intel and Microsoft products. I'll be waiting.

    Do you see his point now? He's not taking anything away from Asus.

    Brandon
  • BugblatterIII - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link

    That's too heavy to carry around with the dock attached, but while I often need the keyboard I rarely need the extra battery life.

    Is the dock battery removable? If so does the dock still work, and how much weight does that save?

    Thanks.
  • Abot13 - Monday, April 25, 2011 - link

    When you remove the battery from the keyboard (if possible) would that mean that it topples over. iaw wont the "screen" be to heavy in contrast with the keyboard?
  • BugblatterIII - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 - link

    Possible; I saw another review say that the EeePad is top heavy even with the battery in the keyboard.
  • ProDigit - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link

    Too bad it's missing a mic/line in, and lan port, and 3 USB ports is a necessity for most!
    Has a low battery capacity, though high battery life,
  • BruceOTB - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link

    Lack of 3G is a deal breaker for me.

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