ASUS Transformer Book T100 Review: Redefining the Entry-Level Windows Notebook
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 18, 2013 12:00 AM ESTCPU Performance
The Atom Z3740 in the T100 features a 9% lower base clock and 22.5% lower max turbo frequency than the Z3770 we previewed back at IDF. Given how good of a job Bay Trail does turboing up to max frequencies under normal use, I’d expect proportionally lower scores in our tests.
I’ll start with our cross platform browser based benchmarks before moving on to a look at the Z3740 vs. Z3770.
Note for all of these benchmarks I’ve used Google’s Chrome browser. IE11 integrates well into the modern UI of Windows 8.1 but is otherwise a pretty terrible browser by comparison. I think the modern UI Chrome experience on 8.1 isn’t as good, but it’s a better/faster/less-finicky option. Out of all of our tests only SunSpider seems to run quicker under IE11, whereas Chrome wins everywhere else. I think it’s a bit insane to switch between browsers based on the benchmark being run, so we’re sticking with Chrome across the board.
Lightly threaded performance is actually quite comparable to the Chromebook 11, which was a bit surprising. Throw a multitasking workload at the two notebooks and you'll separate the boys from the men though:
Chrome under Chrome OS performs extremely well for obvious reasons. But here the T100's additional cores and solid memory interface really come in handy when multitasking, there's hardly any performance penalty for this sort of multitasking on Bay Trail while the dual-core Cortex A15 based Chromebook needs serious help.
The T100 remains extremely competitive compared to the Chromebook 11 and definitely compared to Android tablets.
Next up is putting the Atom Z3740's performance in perspective compared to our earlier FFRD data:
In all of these tests we see nearly perfect scaling compared to the Atom Z3770. Turbo frequencies are regularly hit when under load, and as a result see see proportionally lower performance from the T100. I would’ve liked to have seen the Z3770 used in the T100, but not if it meant a higher price, an optional dock or a worse display.
GPU Performance
I didn’t have a ton of time to go through gaming performance on the T100, but with a quarter of the EUs of Ivy Bridge it’s clear that you shouldn’t expect a GPU monster out of Bay Trail. In our cross platform graphics tests however the T100 is quite competitive, although not industry leading by any means.
I did see some choppy animations at times and indications that the GPU (or its drivers) weren’t up to snuff, but that’s exclusively in classic desktop mode. In the modern UI, the Atom Z3740 was very smooth.
Storage Performance
Our Android IO tests rely on Androbench with a relatively limited LBA span. I increased the difficulty of the test a bit under Windows 8.1 but still kept it reasonable since we are dealing with eMMC solutions. I’m testing across a 1GB LBA span and testing for a period of 1 minute, which is an ok balance between difficulty of workload and sensitivity to the fact that we’re evaluating low-class SSDs here.
Sequential read and write performance is competitive with the high-end examples we’ve seen in the Android space. Random read performance is similarly good, while random write performance is appreciably better than what we’re used to in Android tablets. It is good to see ASUS/Intel/Microsoft concerned about random write performance, but I’d still like to see a 5 - 10x increase in these numbers with a focus on sustained performance before I’m truly happy.
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azazel1024 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review. It has solidified that if nothing "better" comes out between now and the holidays I'll be selling my iPad 2 and getting a T100.It certainly doesn't sound perfect, but it does sound "good enough" for me. I need a tablet that is a decent content consumption device. It needs to have a decent enough panel in it that it doesn't hurt my eyes or my pride to use it. It needs to be able to be decent for watching movies, listening to music, looking at photos, browsing the web and writing email. Windows 8.1 and the T100 seem to have that.
As a bonus this means I can leave my HP Envy 4t at home on occasion when traveling light, and still have a machine that can use Lightroom 4. It doesn't have to be super fast, but it has to be capable of running it, which it sounds like this will. It should be on par or faster than the old Turino based 17" Toshiba laptop my wife used to have a few years ago, which I used Lightroom on for on the road image review/light editing. Also bonus points for being able to run some older Windows based games with a bluetooth game pad or keyboard/trackpad/wireless mouse.
$399 for the 64GB version plus around $50 for a 64GB microSD card isn't too bad. I would like to see what kind of performance the microSD card slot is capable of though to judge what kind of card I should get for it.
I do wish Asus at least had an option to bump the silicon up to the Z3770 and 4GB of memory. I'd gladly pay an extra $50 for that. I'd just as gladly pay $100 extra for the Z3770, 4GB of memory, dual stream dual band Wifi (bonus points of 802.11ac) and a better quality panel that was 900p.
For me my absolute max budget is $500 for a "tablet" and I doubt I'd ever be willing to pay more than that. I'd of course rather spend less, so $399 is nice...but again, I'd rather spend a bit more for even faster silicon, more memory and a better panel (better wifi wouldn't hurt). I do wonder if Asus might have another Transformer Windows 8.1 tablet down the road, a higher end one...maybe before Christmas?
I can hope anyway.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Wow, this is pretty amazing hardware for $350-400! I'm getting really, really impressed by these Windows 8 tablet/hybrid things, and their pricing. This is kind of what Microsoft's been hinting at for the last decade, but the hardware's finally catching up to the idea.Dang, these things are practically impulse buys, cheaper than a freaking iPad lol
Hector2 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I bought a brand new 15.4" Win8 2.4GHz Pentium dual core full feature Lenovo laptop on sale last year for $270. It's great & I'm real happy with it. Internet-only Chromebook prices need to be less than $200 for me to buyOneOfTheseDays - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Another terrible review from Anand. It's becoming quite clear to me that this guy is incapable of reviewing any Microsoft products at this point due to his obvious Google/Apple bias.For starters, this is a $349 device. Who the fuck cares about delta E and calibrated displays at this price point? What a completely irrelevant point to make for a device that is obviously geared at people who couldn't care less about that. The bottom line is it's IPS, has decent resolution, and gets bright enough and has decent contrast. It gets the job done, period.
Also, what is this about Metro IE11 being horrible? Are you kidding me? Metro IE 11 is probably the best TOUCH browser experience you can get on Windows. Desktop IE11, that's a different story. Still, if you are in tablet mode Metro IE11 is perfectly capable for any user.
Finally, battery life. This thing gets 8.5hrs. That is MORE THAN ENOUGH for 99.99% of users. Again this is a $349 device, the fucking garbage Chromebook 11 you just reviewed can barely muster 4 hours and it's nothing more than a glorified web browser running ARM.
This site is going down the tubes and Anand is clearly to blame. He needs to stick to SSD reviews and let other reviewers without bias handle these ones.
BrianChase1776 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I thought it was pretty fair even though I didn't understand the Chromebook fascination, those things are trash. But, when comparing tablets it makes sense to compare these vastly superior machines to those toys since the majority of tablet buyers care more about how it looks and how quickly it loads a Youtube video than what it has inside. Unfortunately, we're a minority by a large margin.OneOfTheseDays - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
It was a terrible review that focused on all of the wrong things. Nobody cares about how calibrated a display is at a $349 price point. Anand's reviews are becoming increasingly off the mark IMHO.BrianChase1776 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I still have to disagree, my parents, for example, don't understand that a simple Google search could explain how to fix the calibration issues. If they received the device and took issue with the colors they would quite literally assume it is broken and move on to looking for another device. We can figure it out, and we want options, but most people can only handle simplicity.BrianChase1776 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Can't find an edit option but for the record I think the t100 looks amazing! I strongly believe that Apple and Android are garbage and, for those of us that plan to do anything serious on a tablet this device will do the job. I'm just defending the practice of writing a review for the majority, even thought it is sad that it has to be done that way.steven75 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
It's definitely an interesting option to say "Apple and Android" are garbage. The consumer market speaks and it soundly disagrees with that.Nagorak - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Until recently there wasn't even another viable option, so it's kind of a stretch to say the market has spoken.