ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 21, 2011 4:00 AM ESTFinal Words
ASUS delivered three things with the Eee Pad: a very competitive price point ($399), a surprisingly useful (albeit pricey) dock, and a good display. The price point alone is enough to make the Eee Pad the Honeycomb tablet to get assuming you don't need integrated 3G or LTE connectivity. The Eee Pad is comfortable to hold and use and despite the lower price point you don't feel like ASUS has sacrificed much at all to make it. The display has similar characteristics to what Apple ships in the iPad 2. Overall from a hardware standpoint, the Eee Pad is solid.
The Transformer dock is an extremely tempting addition to the Eee Pad, I only wish it were cheaper. When in use the dock extends battery life by 64%, pushing the Eee Pad past 15.5 hours in our general WiFi test. ASUS tells me that the Transformer dock will be compatible with all Transformer branded tablets in the future. I can imagine a thinner Kal-El based version must be in the works at this point.
Tight integration between the keyboard/trackpad and Honeycomb makes the Eee Pad Transformer one part tablet and one part Android netbook, and the whole thing works a lot better than I expected it to. When you need a netbook form factor, you have one, and when you just want to kick back and relax with a tablet you've got that as well. The experience isn't quite fast enough for me to replace my notebook, but I can see where things are headed.
I actually believe the dockable tablet is indicative of where the netbook (and perhaps ultra portable notebook) market is going. Give me some more (or faster) cores and an OS even better suited for notebook duty and the line between a tablet and a netbook becomes quite blurry. I finally understand why NVIDIA opted for four cores in Kal-El and why Microsoft keeps looking to Windows 8 to be its tablet strategy. Windows 8 tablets will be Windows 8 netbooks; they'll just be modular.
The biggest issues here are software related. Honeycomb has matured significantly just with the 3.0.1 update, but there are still dock and camera behavior issues that need to be worked out before ASUS takes the Eee Pad to market. I feel like Honeycomb got a worse rap than it deserves, but there are real issues that need addressing here. I lost a couple of pages of this review thanks to an unexpected hard lock and a reboot while typing this on the Eee Pad. For casual use it's not an issue but the platform isn't mature enough for real work yet.
So why do companies keep introducing tablets with known software issues? I always remember what AMD's Eric Demers once told me: the best way to lose a fight is to not show up.
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damianrobertjones - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
"Give me some more (or faster) cores and an OS even better suited for notebook duty and the line between a tablet and a netbook becomes quite blurry. "See above, Asus EP121 (Then again, the battery life isn't that great)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
We've actually been begging ASUS for a review sample of one for a while now, let me try again :)Take care,
Anand
ludikraut - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
Yeah, you guys definitely should get one. I've had mine for a little over a month now, and my wife's iPad has been collecting dust ever since. Apart from battery life, it outclasses, outperforms, and outdoes the iPad in every way.l8r)
joe_dude - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
On the road, is the Transformer good enough to replace both an iPad and a laptop?Hmmm... article posted at 4:00 am. Late night for Anand! ;)
kmmatney - Friday, April 22, 2011 - link
depends what you do on the laptop. Also, the fact that it still crashes for no apparent reason, and reboots spontaneously, would make me so no. Not yet.Matchstick - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
I have a Wifi-only version of the transformer here and it definitely does have GPS supporthttp://img840.imageshack.us/i/screenshotredacted.j...
SimKill - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Anand,I noticed in this review that you found plenty of bugs, and flaws in the Eee Pad, which could have easily been found on the QA stage. Do you think the eeepad is still not ready to market or do you think Asus is just using reviewers as another layer of QA testers?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Let me see how the tablet and dock behave with final firmware. The problem is everyone is trying desperately to push hardware out asap to avoid missing key points in the buying cycle.I believe the unit/firmware/software combination I have today isn't ready for prime time. Apparently there are updates less than a week away that would fix that - if that's indeed the case, then ASUS just rushed the launch for PR reasons.
Take care,
Anand
Stuka87 - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
"I always remember what AMD's Eric Demers once told me: the best way to lose a fight is to not show up."Shame AMD has not made a showing in the ultra-mobile space. Be it cell phone or tablet. They are just now getting into the netbook space just as its dieing off.
But back on topic, I have been waiting for a device like this. And I look forward to them maturing into a complete replacement for the netbooks we have now.
nitrousoxide - Thursday, April 21, 2011 - link
Not exactly.There's Acer Iconia Tab W500 with AMD C-50 APU built in. I bought one as soon as it's available in U.S. The hardware is excellent; the two x86 cores and Radeon HD6250 GPU shames Tegra 2. It can play Star Craft 2, something beyond the capability of Eee Pad, iPad or whatever pad you come up with. Windows 7 user experience isn't that bad--especially web browsing. IE9 is faster and more compatible and supports HD Flash playback. You can basically use it just as you use any laptop.
Battery life is definitely an issue here. But that has been exaggerated by media. This thing comes with a 28Whr 3-cell battery and it lasts as long as 6 hrs in Wi-Fi browsing, or 4 hrs 1080p HD videoplayback/3 hrs 3D Gaming. That's not impressive because C-50 has a 5W TDP. Also it weighs 900g, making it not very portable.The biggest problem with this tablet is very poor build quality, not surprising because it's an Acer. It comes with a keyboard dock (included in $550 price), but the keyboard is a disaster.
AMD not showing up in the game? Negative! APU makes a lot of sense in tablets, but current generation Ontario isn't ready yet. It offers higher performance, but the power consumption is still a serious issue. W500 is the only tablet with AMD processor and Win7 this year but I guess with Win8, Wichita APU (3W TDP) and Next-Gen Atom joining in, life will become harder for ARM based tablets with Honeycomb.