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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mcnabney - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
"Android File Transfer won't push over a file greater than 4GB"That means don't expect to stream HD content off of a home server/computer. Heck, uncompressed DVD-quality might not fit. Massive fail!!!!! Looks like a tablet is still not in my future. Maybe next time the industry tries to make a 'media consumption device' they will do something to allow it to consume media.
name99 - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
"Maybe next time the industry tries to make a 'media consumption device' they will do something to allow it to consume media."The bulk (BY FAR) of "the industry" is Apple. As far as I know, iPad handles larger than 4GB files (h264 or otherwise) without a problem.
(I think there is a problem with very large AAC files, but this is a problem with the AAC spec, not with the file size --- you get problems when the number of samples in the file exceeds around 2^31, which happens at around 14hrs for 44k samples/sec.
This appears on other platforms as well, so I'm guessing the container file spec has a 31 or 32 bit field somewhere in it.)
vvk - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
4GB is the limit for FAT - if you have exFAT or NTFS formated card should work with no problem.Death666Angel - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
"That means don't expect to stream HD content off of a home server/computer." Streaming should not be affected by the file system limitation, because it streams the content and doesn't save it on the device.lordmetroid - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Can I install another operating system of my choice?Omid.M - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Just held the galaxy tab 8.9 and I think its the perfect size.Likelihood that Asus would release a Prime in that size?
Nice review. ICS and 8.9 screen would've sold me.
@moids
joe_dude - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Anand, will you do a short review when the ICS comes out in January?Thanks for the late-night comment responses, BTW. :)
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
Absolutely :) Expect to see Brian Klug's first thoughts on ICS before then though :)Take care,
Anand
tipoo - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Good to know, I don't think Honeycomb is well optimized for multicore, ICS sees some nice improvents across the board on them so the Tegra 3 should really shine more once it gets upgraded.isorashi - Thursday, December 1, 2011 - link
My sisters and I are planning on getting my mom a tablet for xmas. She's pretty clueless when it comes to computers -- she can turn one on and start skype, but she needs my dad to check fb / email for pictures of the grand-kids.The choice basically comes down to android vs ios. Transformer Prime in one case, iPad 2 in the other. Personally, I'm leaning towards the android because I have a better idea of what's going on there in case they need help. Plus I like the idea that it can easily interface with their Win7 pc to transfer pictures and what-not. That actually is a statement against the iPad -- I'm very VERY reluctant to inflict iTunes on my parents :-/