ASUS Transformer Pad 300 (TF300T) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 22, 2012 3:00 AM ESTBattery Life
The Transformer Pad 300 ships with a 22Wh integrated, non-removable battery compared to the 25Wh unit in the Prime. The 12% decrease in battery capacity obviously reduces battery life compared to the Prime, however I believe the panel further reduces the life on a single charge.
The 300 either uses a less efficient panel, a less powerful backlight, or a combination of both as you need to drive the panel at around 70% of max brightness to hit our standard test luminance of 200 nits. The Prime, on the other hand, is capable of reaching 200 nits at 40%. The net result of these factors is a drop in battery life compared to the Prime, and approximately equivalent battery life to the original Transformer:
Note that these are older results for the first Transformer (not on ICS) as I haven't yet had the opportunity to re-run them. I'll be doing that as well as working on our new video playback test over the coming weeks.
I didn't see a huge impact from toggling power saving modes on battery life, although that does say more about the CPU load of our web browsing test than anything else. In general I saw spikes at up to 1.2GHz, but most of the time the Tegra 3 never reached beyond 1.1GHz and more often it operated in its lower frequency states.
The addition of the dock increased battery life by around 50%. Remember that the dock isn't perfectly power efficient, you lose some energy in the charging process and the dock itself consumes energy to power the keyboard and touchpad.
Charging
The new 18W charger (front) vs. the old 18W charger (back)
ASUS ships the Transformer Pad 300 with an 18W AC to USB wall adapter, although I noticed that the version that came with the 300 is actually a bit shorter than what I got with the Prime and original Transformer. Its power delivery capabilities remain unchanged however. By supplying 18W to the Transformer Pad, the power adapter can perform a complete charge of the 300's integrated 22Wh battery in a bit under 2.5 hours (remember charge current drops after all cells reach a certain voltage).
ASUS' latest Live Wallpaper, the water level indicates battery charge level
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Hrel - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
I wanted to upvote this. But I'm not on reddit:(hackbod - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
<quote>Google has even added support for external batteries like the Transformer Pad's in Ice Cream Sandwich</quote>This isn't true, this is a customization that Asus has done. The power of open source, etc., etc.
sprockkets - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
That was true of 3.0. You have a source saying it isn't in 4.0?hackbod - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
You can look at the source code if you want to confirm -- for example look at BatteryService.java and see there is nothing there for reporting multiple batteries.Also I know what stuff we have added to Android in this area, and internal + dock battery is not one of them. :)
XZerg - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
Is there a USB port or not on the tablet itself? I noticed the charger is usb based, correct? If so, can that port be used to connect other devices such as keyboards and usb keys?Impulses - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
There's no USB port but you can use a 40 pin to USB adapter, it's like $12 (and took forever to come out after the original TF but it's finally readily available as of a few months ago). Other tablets with a micro USB port still require the use of a special USB OTG cable AFAIK, so neither approach is clearly superior.haar - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
WELCOME to the niche market!... 80000 transformers sold! lol ...where you have to carry two pieces, a keyboard and screen, so that you can transform it into a notebook that should have been...
so how is a tablet with a 10 inch screen+keyboard any better than the 11 inch macbook air with win8 ...do you think would you use a 11 inch screen in a laptop for everyday work?... when you answer that question for yourself, then you will know if this transformert ablet is good for you.
exact how are you going to remove the perception that you are using a "toy"... dont "real" tech geek use "powerful" processors! HUGE screens!, 1337 Ice cream OS's!!!!
transformer infinity? ... it does NOT exist for sale! why list it in a table?... and because it doesn't exist how can the specs be correct...? making an article 10% ad copy in is beneath Anandtech.com or shoud be!
crankerchick - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
Including the Infinity in the spec comparison is very helpful for those of us deciding to wait it out. Obviously it is not a available yet and a performance and quality comparison isn't an option yet, but reminding us of the features helps us keep a mental note that there is something more on the horizon so we can decide if what is different spec wise is worth waiting for. The specs are as correct as can be confirmed by what has been released by ASUS. Get over it.TrackSmart - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
Yes, the article was quite informative. I'm researching tablets right now for a relative. The analysis, comparative performance data, and the frank opinion provided in the conclusions were all useful for the decision-making process.And for Haar (above), many of us would be buying this as a tablet only - without the dock. And for use as a entertainment / media consumption device, rather than for work. The only useless information here is your rude comment.
Souka - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - link
stick the iPad3 screen onto the Transformer Infinity guts... "Winner" :)