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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shriganesh - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Asus rocks! My original Transformer got ICS 4.0.3 update just a few days back! ICS is great and shuttering is gone! UI is much better and feels smooth!Netscorer - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
Even though I like the idea of dockable keyboard, from practicality perspective we would need to wait for Windows 8 tablet for this to take off. I just don't see Android ICS as a serious notebook replacement. Given the rest of the specs, for only $100 more one can get an iPad with vastly better screen, battery life, GPU and other characteristics that actually do matter in tablet. I am not trying to compare ICS with iOS5 here as both have they merits but we should also consider the maturity of the App Market comparing to Google Play and other Android contenders.Finally, ASUS have yet to prove that it can ship any significant volume of their tablets. I wanted to buy the original Transformer but for two months could not find any stock and then cooled to the idea. I was following the Infinity model again with no stock until new iPad was already on the market. What are the odds that ASUS will suddenly release this model in quantity?
I'm sorry ASUS but for Pad to take off, you would need to price it at no more then $350 (with 32GB of RAM) and a $100 dock. Otherwise no-one outside of the geek community would even consider your tablet as an alternative to iPad.
Naguz - Monday, April 23, 2012 - link
If only they had included a USB port on the tablet itself - along with a display connector you could connect a VGA adapter to for presentations.dreddit - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Hey guys are you sure the dimension for the infinity are correct. If so then the Bezel must be much smaller than the primes, by 10mm either side.The asus web site still has dimensions the same as the prime. I hope it is a smaller form factor but with the same 10.1 ips screen
Lucian Armasu - Tuesday, April 24, 2012 - link
Put a dual core (or quad core next year) Cortex A15 chip at 2 Ghz in it, and with a 2560x1600 resolution at 11.6", and I'll take it. There's no way an x86 device with Windows 8 would be in the same price range. It would probably be closer to $1000 than $500.slagar - Wednesday, April 25, 2012 - link
Looks like another fine ASUS product.Absolutely second Anand's comments regarding one of these with Windows 8 later this year. I can't wait to see what happens :)
Thanks for the great info and reviews as always Anandtech!
Anonymous1a - Saturday, August 4, 2012 - link
I absolutely love Asus' product range but the only problem I have with them is that they don't have their own direct store. Although the base models are easily available on the internet, finding a 3G version of the TF300 is like finding a needle in a haystack and the only place I found the needle was ebay and at ridiculously high prices (600+) and considering the fact that two models have already come out after it and the iPad 2 has it's 3G version at 529, this is just wayyy too high, with these vendors exploiting the lack of a direct chain and lack of availability of these products. And there was literally nowhere I could the the Infinity or Prime with LTE anywhere. I wish they would, at least, for a few major markets like USA and UK have their own direct online selling point.