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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medi01 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
So am I.But as I recently discovered, it's much easier to switch on tethering on my phone and connect via wi-fi than to swap sim card between devices..
It was hard for me to justify having 2 internet enabled sim cards, but it might be just me.
Kegetys - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
I find tethering to be a huge battery drain for the cellphone and it's usually not that practical either for anything else than occasional "emergency" use. But I have three sim cards from my carrier all with unlimited use anyway so I dont need to do any sim swapping. I guess if you need to pay extra for that then tethering is a reasonable alternative.MiSoFine - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
3 SIM cards with unlimited use for no extra cost? Who's your carrier? I was going to suck it up and pay AT&T the extra money for tethering, but if that's an option, I'll take it!Kegetys - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
> Who's your carrier?Saunalahti :)
medi01 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Hi,could you include "time it takes to fully charge" please?
On samsung tab it takes surprisingly long (about 4 hours) for some it might matter.
metafor - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
That's going to be true of any device that standardizes on a USB 2.0 connection -- which I think all Android tablets thus far use; it's just a different connector.iDevices sort of get around this by using a non-standard USB connection (up to 1A vs the standard 500mA) which is why it can charge faster.
It won't be until USB 3.0 becomes more common that charging speeds will really pick up.
Mugur - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Well, this is not quite right. My 2 phones have 1000mA chargers through USB even if the standard for pc is max 500mA. My Nook Color has a non standard but downwards compatible USB charger with around 1900mA.I agree though that the tablets recharge time is slow...
anandtech pirate - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 is a beast. I still remember waaaay back when powerVR used to make pc graphic cards.Death666Angel - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
They still do Intel integrated graphics in the Atom, if I'm not mistaken. :-) They were the supplier of all Intel motherboard IGPs as well, though those aren't around anymore. :DPenti - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
They were not the supplier of Intel's IGP's, only the Atom US15W/L/US11L one and some (not all) of the Atom integrated graphics in the CPU and in variants of SoC. Intel has made their own graphics since i740. Thus Intel GMA is their own tech. Own drivers. And so on. Only GMA500 and GMA600 (SoC), and newer GMA3600 and 3650, and likely GMA5650 in D2600/2700 is PowerVR. They don't have exactly excellent drivers for Windows and GNU/Linux desktops.GMA3150 is Intel, which runs in the latest Intel Atom N4XX and N5XX series, D4XX and D5XX.