ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 21, 2011 4:00 AM ESTFinal Words
ASUS delivered three things with the Eee Pad: a very competitive price point ($399), a surprisingly useful (albeit pricey) dock, and a good display. The price point alone is enough to make the Eee Pad the Honeycomb tablet to get assuming you don't need integrated 3G or LTE connectivity. The Eee Pad is comfortable to hold and use and despite the lower price point you don't feel like ASUS has sacrificed much at all to make it. The display has similar characteristics to what Apple ships in the iPad 2. Overall from a hardware standpoint, the Eee Pad is solid.
The Transformer dock is an extremely tempting addition to the Eee Pad, I only wish it were cheaper. When in use the dock extends battery life by 64%, pushing the Eee Pad past 15.5 hours in our general WiFi test. ASUS tells me that the Transformer dock will be compatible with all Transformer branded tablets in the future. I can imagine a thinner Kal-El based version must be in the works at this point.
Tight integration between the keyboard/trackpad and Honeycomb makes the Eee Pad Transformer one part tablet and one part Android netbook, and the whole thing works a lot better than I expected it to. When you need a netbook form factor, you have one, and when you just want to kick back and relax with a tablet you've got that as well. The experience isn't quite fast enough for me to replace my notebook, but I can see where things are headed.
I actually believe the dockable tablet is indicative of where the netbook (and perhaps ultra portable notebook) market is going. Give me some more (or faster) cores and an OS even better suited for notebook duty and the line between a tablet and a netbook becomes quite blurry. I finally understand why NVIDIA opted for four cores in Kal-El and why Microsoft keeps looking to Windows 8 to be its tablet strategy. Windows 8 tablets will be Windows 8 netbooks; they'll just be modular.
The biggest issues here are software related. Honeycomb has matured significantly just with the 3.0.1 update, but there are still dock and camera behavior issues that need to be worked out before ASUS takes the Eee Pad to market. I feel like Honeycomb got a worse rap than it deserves, but there are real issues that need addressing here. I lost a couple of pages of this review thanks to an unexpected hard lock and a reboot while typing this on the Eee Pad. For casual use it's not an issue but the platform isn't mature enough for real work yet.
So why do companies keep introducing tablets with known software issues? I always remember what AMD's Eric Demers once told me: the best way to lose a fight is to not show up.
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Stuka87 - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Oh I love the APU, and I hope it gets picked up by more hardware manufacturers.But this is all recent stuff. But thats not to say its too late for them to get in on the action, just that they are going to be fighting an uphill battle. And this goes for Intel just as much as it does for AMD.
I know Intel is working on porting Honeycomb to x86, and they could give them a huge boost. But I still think that the current x86 CPU's are simply too power hungry for a proper tablet. They may be upteen times faster, but that doesnt matter as much if you end up with less than half the battery life in a machine that is thicker and heavier.
mados123 - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
This tablet really seems like a winner and no surprise it comes from Asus who essentially introduced the netbook market. As stated in the review, $200 less than the Motorola Xoom (although it doesn't have GPS) is outstanding (shouldn't the chart on first page state $599 for the Xoom if we are doing an orange to orange comparison *sorry Apple*)! I like the versatility with the keyboard, mouse and battery dock. In my opinion, all it needs now to be the ultimate productivity tool is a stylus, like the HTC Flyer's (active digitizer technology by N-trig). Price it at $450 then after the upgrade. Here is a link that shows and tells exactly why and when paired with a product like MS OneNote, it would be unbeatable:http://blog.tabletpc.com.au/2011/02/14/active-digi...
LostPassword - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Tablets still seem like a toy to me. I'm probably gonna wait for win8 to come out.kmmatney - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
Although I really like the iPad (and have almost bought one several times) I do agree that its a toy for now (albeit a very cool toy).The "work" that I could do with an iPad, like emails, I can also do with my iPhone. I really need something like Windows 8 as well. If they can ever make something for an iPad that can run windows XP through a virtual machine, then that would change things quite a bit.
kmmatney - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
Well, this might change things...http://www.tuaw.com/2011/03/09/vmware-brings-virtu...
virtual machine on the iPad running Windows XP.
kmmatney - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
Woops - this isn't a real virtual machine - more like a remote control app for a virtual machine hosted on a server. Still pretty cool, as I use a lot of virtual machines, all windows XP based.marvdmartian - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Love the idea of the dock, should definitely be worth the price, once they can double the tablet battery life with a firmware fix. Really will give the best of both worlds.One thing I'd love to see Asus do is think about bumping up/offering a larger size screen. I realize that this will shorten battery life, but coupled with the above mentioned firmware fix, it should give a longer life (with the dock) than it would otherwise. Simply put, I've got a 10" netbook, and normally have to use it with the screen about 18" from my old eyes, in order to easily see the print (either that, or switch to a lower resolution, which isn't really a good choice, IMHO).
Also, here's a clue, to Nvidea. Not everyone has a smart phone yet, so don't plan on only making smart phone docking to tablets/netbooks your only choice, or you're simply screwing your own business/profit.
claytontullos - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
"I've been thinking about device synergy, something I brought up in our PlayBook review. The problem is as follows: if I'm on my desktop with half a dozen tabs open and perhaps a PDF as well, but I decide to switch over to a tablet - there's no quick way that I can transition my reading environment between the devices. What I have to do is sit down on the couch, whip out my tablet, and manually navigate to each website and redownload/open the PDF"That was my suggestion/comment in the first Xoom giveaway. :p
qhinton - Monday, April 25, 2011 - link
If you have an android phone or tablet you could use a program in the Google Chrome browser called chrome to phone. It basically sends the website to your device and your browser opens magically.dan76 - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Great review, thank you.There appears to be a lot of confusion about whether or not the US version of this magificent tablet will a wifi only version with GPS.
This review states that there is no GPS in the US wifi only version. Other sites and spec references all say there is GPS though. Asus currently only has an international spec site that is pre-today's US release date announcement.
SO, this is the first I've heard of there not being GPS in wifi only TF101. It has been confirmed that the UK and earlier released wifi only models do in fact have GPS, but I understand the US version could be different.
Can someone please confirm with references? Thank you very much!