ASUS Transformer Book T100 Review: Redefining the Entry-Level Windows Notebook
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 18, 2013 12:00 AM ESTDisplay
The T100 features a 10.1-inch 1366 x 768 IPS display, which makes for awesome viewing angles and an experience that will put most entry level notebooks to shame. Compared to what we’re used to seeing from Windows notebooks, ASUS did a tremendous job with the panel selection given the price of the T100.
Brightness, black levels and contrast are all reasonable but nothing extraordinary. Max brightness in particular is limited to only 228 nits. That’s more than bright enough for indoor use, but outdoors or in direct sunlight you may wish for a brighter panel. Black levels are quite good, which helps deliver great contrast ratio. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, the gap between display panel and cover glass is large enough that reflections can be an issue - a problem that is worsened by the fact that the panel can’t get super bright.
Whether or not any of this is a problem to you really depends on perspective. If we’re limiting our comparison to traditional entry level PC notebooks then ASUS has really redefined what it means to be a $349 PC. If you broaden the comparison to Android tablets and even Chromebooks, the comparison grows more difficult.
Color accuracy isn’t great on the T100. Once again, compared to what you’d traditionally get from a Wintel PC at this price point it’s amazing. Compared to the Chromebook 11 we recently reviewed at $279 however, the T100 needs some work.
It’s definitely not a bad display, it just doesn’t live up to the expectations of some other low cost devices we’ve seen lately (e.g. 2013 Nexus 7, Chromebook 11). The charts below show you the stark difference between what we're expecting to display and what the T100 actually displays:
There's a green hue to all of the white/grays, and the other colors are just off. Users definitely benefit from the viewing angles of IPS but the T100 needs calibration.
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RyuDeshi - Sunday, October 20, 2013 - link
This is one of the reasons intel introduced the ultrabook specification. My Yoga 11s will standby/sleep for weeks before fully discharging on a relatively small battery (for a laptop).AsusJake - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
windows computer operating system vs android os in terms of power consumption is a ridiculous comparison...ricardodawkins - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Exactly... the man keep on harping about the stupid Chromebooks that are a complete FLOP. He talks about the 3rd party app situation of the MetroUI but what about the app situation for ChromeBooks ???Heck if you need a Chromebook just install Chrome on this Asus T100.
AsusJake - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
exactlygsusx - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Genuinely a bit stumped by people moaning about this. He said it's a great product with fantastic potential that is almost perfect. Lest we forget this is a tablet with a fully fledged os behind it. What do people expect for the price point. It's not a laptop replacement, then again a laptop is not a tablet replacement. For the money. For what you get its fantastic. It's a real middle ground machine. If you have a desktop or heavy duty laptop at home and want something portable but with the ability to do a bit more this thing is perfect. The Dell machines will be more expensive of that I have no doubt and the surface pro is double the money. You can argue about performance till you're blue in the face. Want impure over performance. Buy a machine and spend the money. You pays your monies you takes your choice. Personally I'm selling my MBA 11" to fund this.sri_tech - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Well said.StormyParis - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Exactly. I see it as a tablet that can double up as a laptop in a pinch. I'm still unsure about apps in tablet mode though: are there good apps for dlna, LAN, video... I'd hate to have to switch back to Desktop for Touch use...Belldandy - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Good review especially with the limited time you had with the device. I'm looking forward to your full update. Here are a few questions I'd really like answered as well.Is the microUSB port only usable for charging or can an adapter be connected to allow things to be connected like the Nexus 4's usb port.
Is the microSD card slot capable of supporting the microSDXC 64GB and larger cards?
I'm assuming the micro HDMI can be setup for extended or cloned display like any other windows laptop.
StormyParis - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I have an old HP 10" Netbook that is very small, a newer 13" Lenovo that I can't use in economy class... I guess the sweet spot for me is at 11.6", which is a pity because that Asus looks very nice for the price.teiglin - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Thanks for clearly laying out the available storage--that was a big concern for a device like this for me. Two questions--of the 19 GiB occupied at boot, does that include the pagefile and hibernation file (which should admittedly be much smaller than on a typical machine with 8GB RAM)? And is the remaining ~10 GiB partition accessible at all? Obviously this is going to be a larger issue on the 32GB version--with the same 19GiB occupied, they obviously can't leave the entire remaining 10GiB inaccessible, so I'm curious how some of that storage is reclaimed.Also, am I correct that the pricing is $350 for the 32GB model and $400 for the 64GB, and that both include the dock? Your table is pretty confusing where it says "$349/$399 (including dock)"--makes it seem like the extra $50 gets you the dock, rather than extra storage.
Anyway, it's an interesting device. Honestly, though, I remain unconvinced that the 10" form factor is worth anything at all; I can only assume it was spurred on by the iPad and all the me-too Android tablets that followed. Your experiences with the keyboard reinforce the fact that 10" is really too small for a clamshell, and smaller tablets have proven to be more popular for "sit back and read, browse the internet, and watch YouTube" experience--even Apple had to concede on the iPad mini front.
I have both an iPad mini and a Galaxy Tab 7.7 and gravitate to my 13" ultrabook nine times out of ten, so I have concluded that I'm not a tablet person, but I'm watching with interest to see if the upcoming 8" Windows tablets can be successful.