ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on April 21, 2011 4:00 AM ESTThe Camera
I don't expect that most tablet owners really care all that much about camera image quality, however if you're going to include the feature it's bound to be judged. The Eee Pad's 5MP rear-facing camera is pretty standard fare for a Honeycomb tablet. Images are captured at 2592 x 1944 and compressed down to 1.2—2.1MB jpegs depending on the scene.
Image quality is fine for use online but nothing spectacular. Most images captured are reasonably sharp in the foreground but not very detailed in the background. Images can look hazy depending on the lighting conditions. The front facing camera is similarly standard, comparable to the Xoom:
The camera app itself is stock Honeycomb. It takes just under 2 seconds to launch and up to 2.8 seconds to capture an image once you hit the shutter button. Occasionally (even with the latest software update available to me) the camera app will show me a green screen instead of the output from the camera sensor. Reopening the camera app always fixes the issue.
ASUS has a serious issue when it comes to video recording. For some reason video recorded using the rear camera on the Eee Pad is captured at a much lower than real-time frame rate:
This issue exists regardless of capture quality setting (High, Low, YouTube). The front facing camera captures video smoothly but only for the first couple of seconds, at which point captured video pauses entirely. Clearly the camera software needs serious work.
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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.