ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 21, 2011 4:00 AM ESTBattery 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.
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.
With a 1GHz Tegra 2 under the hood, the Eee Pad performs just like a Xoom:
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Azethoth - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
Yes it is Steve. I feel special knowing that hes hanging in the forums!IronPalm - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Apart from flash support if you're in my line of work...flash based dashboards...Rick83 - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
You're right, the only legitimate reason to buy a tablet is to show off how rich you are, and nothing does that better than an apple.For those that actually want to get use out of the devices, I recommend the Archos tablets, at least they're affordable, and only medium-shitty, and offer a plethora of form factors.
Of course, personally I have the 5 inch Archos, because I don't believe in smart phones (too much to go wrong...) and couple it with an S40 phone and a Mi-Fi to get it connected on the go. But then I still have a dedicated MP3-player, so obviously I'm just some old fart who doesn't get along with the times.. All I need now is a foldable keyboard, BT mouse and hdmi 720p pico-projector, and I'll have a desktop replacement in a fanny-pack.
damianrobertjones - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
or just maybe buy a small laptop?Rick83 - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
I hate laptops with a passion.Their lack of modularity is one of the most frustrating things I've ever seen, durability, performance and screens are shitty, even on the best models, and you always lug around tons of equipment, and are still unable to work properly.
No thanks.
Wonder when HMD's will finally catch up (1080p@ 250 euro and no larger than a set of large sunglasses?), and tablets, laptops etc become obsolete over night, because screens are just too clunky.
swaaye - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
That's an interesting opinion of notebooks.kmmatney - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
I do a ton of work on my laptop (it my main work machine), and my 17" 1920 x 1200 screen is pretty awesome. The only thing I lug around is the power adapter, and a few memory sticks. I've not regretted my transition from desktop to laptop one bit. I'm a Scientists / Programmer / Engineer who works in the semiconductor industry.Interesting take on the screens. A high-res HMD would be "less clunky" if you are talking about watching movies, or activities with light input needed, but I don't know how I could do real work (coding, excel, editing... ) with one.
RickyLing - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Anand,Please double check with ASUS regarding build-in GPS support cause accorinf to ASUS TW, there is integrated GPS chip inside the Transformer model with WiFi only
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
You're correct, there is an integrated GPS :)Take care,
Anand
damianrobertjones - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
It's a shame that the Asus EP121 has pretty much been stepped over and dissed by the reviewers as it's a really, really nice machine.