ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime & NVIDIA Tegra 3 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 1, 2011 1:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Assuming the WiFi and minor dock issue I encountered aren't widespread (ASUS insists they aren't), I am comfortable calling the Eee Pad Transformer Prime the absolute best Android tablet on the market today. The hardware looks and feels great. ASUS picked the best display possible and married it to some really good industrial design. I was impressed with the styling of the Zenbook, and the Prime continues to position ASUS as a purveyor of high quality mobile devices.
At the same time, NVIDIA has finally delivered an SoC capable of delivering the sort of smooth experience we'd expect from a $500 tablet. Honeycomb was a great first attempt by Google at a tablet OS, but Tegra 3 really makes the whole experience complete. Everything you'd expect to be smooth, is finally smooth. Video playback is no longer an issue, the Prime and Tegra 3 can finally play back virtually anything you'd want to throw at it. Thank goodness.
As good as the combination is today, I admit that I still can't wait to put Ice Cream Sandwich on this thing. Even more polish on the OS side (and the absence of any hardware issues during the testing process) would've easily catapulted the Prime into editor's choice territory.
Battery life is the big unknown at this point. At worst it's roughly on par with the old Eee Pad Transformer. I'll know more in the coming days, but 9 hours of continuous use isn't bad. The question is how much better will it be as we start playing with the available power options? I'm also curious to see what having four cores does to web page loading performance. There's clearly an impact on JavaScript rendering, but what about the overall real world experience? In my testing I was limited by the WiFi issue I mentioned earlier, but I hope to have an answer to this soon enough.
The inevitable iPad comparison is, well, inevitable. I still firmly believe there's not a whole lot of iOS/Android cross shopping. If you want an iPad, that's what you should buy. Android isn't an iOS substitute, just as iOS isn't an Android substitute. You can do similar things on both, but personal preference will really determine what suits you the best.
I'll have more coverage on the Prime over the coming days, but if you're making your decision before then: this is the Android tablet to get.
Update: ASUS has removed GPS support from the Prime's official spec sheet. Check out our update here as well as our follow-up to the review.
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steven75 - Saturday, December 3, 2011 - link
If you want the best tablet for your grandmother, shouldn't you be making decisions based on her needs and not yours?SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Anand, do You think the Dual Core Snapdragon S4 will be able to beat the Quad core Tegra3? Thnx :)A5 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
As with any core-based discussion, it depends on what you're doing.tipoo - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Yeah, depends on how well optimized applications are for multicore. In most cases I'd bet a fast dual core would beat a slower quad.tipoo - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
If I'm not mistaken, Honeycomb doesn't have GPU acceleration on all windows by default like ICS will, and ICS will also have better multicore optimization. I'd like to see some benchmarks on the Prime after ICS.HighTech4US - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
I second this request.SydneyBlue120d - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Another question: Any info about the audio chip? I mean: Can we expect wolfson Galaxy S quality? Tnx!Willhouse - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Why is the cost drifting up instead of down? The whole appeal of the original transformer was that is was "comparable" in quality but $100 less than other quality tablets. Those of us who are mildly interested in tablets, but can't stomach the costs, aren't going to rush out to buy this even if it is the best android tablet. Is there a large tablet enthusiast market that needs the absolute best hardware at all times?Sorry if this was mentioned - I was immediately outraged and didn't read all the comments.
Roland00Address - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
The Transformer Prime has 32 and 64gb for the internal storage (with micro sd expansion). Note the base model is not 16gb.32gb
499 Transformer Prime
599 Ipad 2
64gb
599 Transformer Prime
699 Ipad 2.
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If you want to get a tegra 2 tablet cheaper than 400 you should be looking at the winter sales on such products, it may not be the asus transformer but it is stlil a tegra 2 honeycomb tablet. No one is going to release a better product cheaper than there old gen, in a cut throat market with decreasing margins unless that product has serious competition.
Kegetys - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Is it correct that it doesn't come with 3G (or 4G) connectivity at all? I'm so used to being able to be connected almost anywhere with both my cellphone and laptop with zero hassle that being restricted to WLAN only would be quite a limitation for a mobile device like this.Also, seriously Asus, why cant you have those beautiful IPS screens available for laptops as well?