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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andrejg - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
After readin this review and getting an offer from our local distributor, I purchased 64Gb version. I must say, Transformer is exactly what I was looking for. I used Dell lattitude XT2 for a two years now and since I travel a lot and need a lot of data at hand and also spreadsheets and documents, my phone was not enough due to my ageing eyesight and lattitude, albeit 12" and light was too much to carry around all the time. Speed of the unit is non issue for me. it is fast enough, it is a tablet and netbook, it runs smooth and display is very nice, I was expecting less at this price point.Sinca all my computers and phone are from the same OS generation - Windows 8, I find it very simple to have all the data at hand and all desktops almost the same, no matter which device I use. it saves me A LOT of time I used to spend to transfer, save, carry and also lose those USB keys...
So, if one uses it like this and also like entertainment tablet at home, it is all OK. Some heavy duty stuff can take you back to 2005 speed. And battery - I have it with me all the time the whole day and I have never really needed to charge it during the day. With lighter use it gets two days of use easily. It just isn't gamers device or workstation. But there are choices for those too, just they cost almost 5 times more.
zodiacfml - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
I'm back from the first day this review is published and there's nothing out there to compete with this. I just wished it had 4GB ram.vmr - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
The T100 supports the new Win 8.1 Miracast/WiDi feature. I tried it with a ActionTec ScreenBeam WiDi adapter and it worked great when I tried it with Youtube, PBS videos and Netfilx.zodiacfml - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
I reckon there would be an T110, with an 11inch screen and hopefully 4 GB of RAM.Jettilton - Thursday, January 16, 2014 - link
Was in the market for one of these until I went into Best Buy and the only one they had had a keyboard that was coming apart around one of the USB ports....looks like the keyboard is really flimsy, but the tablet itself looked more solid...now Im going to get a real laptop, not a hybridmalkovich - Tuesday, May 13, 2014 - link
I better choose this <a href="http://www.buzred.com/dp/B00H7PWRU2/toshiba-satell... windows notebook</a>. As my first notebook.crlamke - Thursday, May 29, 2014 - link
Great review, Anand! I'm consistently impressed by the quality of your work. Thank you.SllimA - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
T100TA is a interesting unit. The issue here is the docking method. It sketches the screen borders. I am more concern about the quality. I bought 3 units last week and sent 2 back for touch pad alignment. On receiving, the unit cannot be started and had to stick my charger in at the service counter. One could be restarted and we can see that the battery charge status at 70%. The 2nd unit can restart. They advice me to resubmit for repair. All these happened within 5 days of buying. Today the 11 days of buying the 2 units they are still under repair. I just called the service center and they told me that one is ready but the other had to wait for a few weeks for spare parts. This is unacceptable. of the 11 days, two units are repair status for 6 days. Asus Singapore Service Center referance are 130201, 130202, 130449 and 130450. I wonder what is happening to Asus quality.