ASUS VivoTab RT Review
by Vivek Gowri on October 23, 2012 3:01 PM EST- Posted in
- Asus
- Mobile
- Tablets
- Windows RT
- Vivo Tab
Viewed within a vacuum, the VivoTab RT is a strong first effort from ASUS as part of the new Windows tablet push. It’s a conservative and mature design that has proven itself in the marketplace. It’s a thin tablet with a clean, modern aesthetic that doesn’t push the boundary much. A high quality IPS display, solid performance, decent camera, a well-designed laptop dock, good battery life that becomes awesome when you include the dock - really, there isn’t too much wrong here. It’s a well-rounded, high quality product.
Unfortunately, we can’t evaluate products within a vacuum. The existence of Surface clearly puts all third-party manufacturers on their heels. Having had the opportunity to play (however briefly) with Surface at the launch event in June, it’s simply the one of the most impressive hardware specimens I’ve seen from a design standpoint. Sure, part of the buzz around Surface is the hype machine at work, but it’s not every day that the world’s largest software company decides to jump headfirst into making PC hardware, especially not hardware that looks and feels as impressive as Surface does. It’s on the same experience-first mentality and degree of attention to detail that we typically find in Apple products, except with a completely different design ethos. Apple has gotten so good at executing their designs that consumers and media are collectively jaded about what to expect from them (the 7.6mm thickness of the iPhone 5 barely got a second glance from anyone other than 3GS owners), but Surface is stunning because it’s still fresh. It’s not necessarily as well rounded as the VivoTab RT, though we’ll have to wait for the reviews to really get a good read on Microsoft’s first tablet. Just from what we know thus far though, it’s definitely heavier, thicker, and I’d much rather have the ASUS laptop dock than either the Touch Cover or the Type Cover. The additional battery in the dock is really a killer feature here that I hope doesn’t get lost in the Windows RT hype - having a 2 pound touchscreen Windows notebook with 14 hours of battery life is one of the best things about the switch to ARM. But the VivoTab RT won’t turn heads the same way that Surface will.
Microsoft obviously has a built-in pricing advantage with OS licensing, and can afford to make less on the hardware to push the platform, similar to a console launch. We saw Microsoft play this tactic very successfully with the 360, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see them do something similar and cut into their margins to win on pricing, even if they don't sell at a loss. This puts third party hardware manufacturers at a distinct disadvantage out of the gate with licensing fees for both Windows as well as Office, but ASUS rapidly shifted their pricing targets to beat or at least match (depending on how much you value the laptop dock relative to the Touch Cover) pricing of the equivalent Surface RT, and it seems likely that we’ll see other device companies do the same.
But overall, what I take away from this is how successful Microsoft has been in bridging the gap and getting mobile devices to come as close to true convergence with the personal computer as we have seen thus far. It’s pretty impressive to see how capable the VivoTab RT is as a PC replacement, certainly more so than any previous tablet platform. It’s certainly a great tablet, but it also doubles as a fantastic $600 ultraportable, merging the best parts of the tablet world with the best parts of the PC world. For now at least, that’s as good as it gets.
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lmcd - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Either way just wait for S4 Pro tablets.VivekGowri - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
It's got minor lag in desktop mode, noticeable but livable. Anything slower than T3 though, and livable quickly becomes intolerable. Most of the time, you live in Metro anyways so it's not that big of a deal.TrackSmart - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Just a heads-up, in case it is the Anandtech ad servers, and not my own system: Clicking between pages on this site, I got a popup that looks like adware. The link, after making it non-clickable was this: surveyorster dot net /d/j4u2i16147?r=http%3A%2F%2Fgjetefa.info%2Fin.php%3Fq%3DM%2FOEglLmwNcgOzwtBLg9uSk36%2BpwOyaQwIB9U0Q%3DI also saw an annoying "floating advertisement window" recently on the site, which I've never seen in the past.
I have not seen anything strange while browsing other websites.
shomizu9 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
In a google search, I'm seeing a few mentions of similar behavior involving the domain name "gjetefa.info" for other sites (wowhead, etc). I haven't personally seen any redirects like you mention on Anand. If it was my pc, I'd suspect malware and check it out with something like MalwareBytes.Urizane - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
It has happened to me only twice. I don't remember the URL, but I have clicked on an article link from the main page, got the article, and one second later was presented with a page that copied the facebook design and called itself some kind of survey. I saw fields asking for my name and phone number and something else, but my CTRL+F4 reflexes kicked in. The next time I clicked on the article, that didn't happen. I got one roughly 2 weeks ago and another last Friday, and that's all. I think it's something that wedged itself into the ad rotation.michal1980 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
No offence to Vivek. But apple comes out with a "new" product, we get a 200 page in depth review with deep analysis from Anand.Microsoft releases both a huge new OS, a new tablet platform. and gets Vivek? And like 5 pages of coverage.
Unbiased? Just based on volume you can tell Anands bias.
VivekGowri - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
You speak too soon, my friend. Between myself and Anand, we're dumping roughly 20k words of Windows RT-related coverage on you today. Just wait for the full Windows RT review.magnimus1 - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
Vivek, This is a slight change of subject.....but do you guys have any plans to review the RAZRi?Also, Thanks for this article......are you going to do a similiar one for the Vivo Tab? I'm torn between the VivoTab and the full blown Transformer book. I need AT to help me choose!! :-)
darwinosx - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
If you were actually familiar with the site or Apple products you would now they often take weeks longer than anyone else to write a review.Don't you need to run the malware scanner on your Android phone now?
Relic74 - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
That is just silly, I personally have never gotten a malware nor have I ever met anybody who received one. If you stay away from cracked apps and add ridden games it should never be a problem. Besides I would gladly endure such a nuisance just to have a system that includes a filemanager, able to play almost every media codec, Java, Flash, SD Card slot, complete rom/system/data backup, ability to side load apps, true multitasking, multi-view, SAMBA/FTP/SSH support within the filemanager, DLNA, printer support, removable battery, NFC, ect. iOS is an overrated mobile OS but I'm glad your happy with it, that's all that matters.