ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity (TF700T) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 25, 2012 3:00 AM ESTBattery Life
The Transformer Pad Infinity features an integrated 25Wh battery, similar to the original Prime. You can obviously extend battery life by docking the Infinity into the optional keyboard dock.
Without an increase in battery capacity, you can expect a drop in battery life compared to the Transformer Prime as there's a leakier SoC, faster DRAM, higher resolution panel and brighter backlight to drive. The drop isn't huge, but it's noticeable:
While the original Prime pulled just under 9.5 hours, the Infinity borders on 8 hours of continuous use on a single charge. It's very similar to the battery life from the original Eee Pad Transformer, and better than what you can get out of a TF Pad 300. Eight hours isn't bad by any means, but it's the price you pay for maintaining portability while driving up performance/display.
Video playback battery life is thankfully quite respectable on the Infinity. I haven't had time to run the Prime and TF Pad 300 through our new tablet video playback test but at over 10.25 hours there's really nothing to complain about here. You can watch a few movies on a single charge, which is great for anyone stuck on a long haul flight.
For our gaming battery life test I'm not sure just how comparable the iOS/Android numbers are because it's quite likely that the NVIDIA hardware is actually doing more work here. But the important takeaway is the significant drop in battery life compared to the TF Prime. What we're likely seeing here is the penalty of the leakier SoC combined with the higher speed memory and increased memory bandwidth demands. If you're gaming on the Infinity, just plan on having a charger handy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
112 Comments
View All Comments
xype - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
"The colors and brightness and contrast are better on the TFP."The colors aren’t. Neither are the ppi. Something that actually makes a real impression in most situations—unless for some reason your only usage of a tablet is in bright sunlight.
The TPI and iPad 3—as hardware, only—each have their strengths and weaknesses. To claim one is absolutely better at everything just sounds fanboi-ish. Or, you know, astroturfer-ish (which you happily accuse others of being above).
joelypolly - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Sounds like someone is getting paid to Asus to say these things...zappb - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
I thought this product was Vaporware considering it was annouced around Jan...and still not released but Awesome screen all the same - Look at those Contrast / white / black level numbers, haven't seen a screen like that in years...and at 1920x1200.When you look at the numbers, the significance of the screen has been glossed over in the article, - the only reason I can see for that, is perhaps that resolution sucks on Android, or apps don't scale well etc..
Lepton87 might have a point but the overall feel of the review is to wait for windows 8 tablets when perhaps the resolution will make more sense.
Cali3350 - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Your being very unfair. 1920*1080 is a great resolution and a big step up. But its not 25*18. That really IS big deal, its more than most 30 inch monitors. Your trying to equate a good improvement to a complete shift. Way to be objective yourself.sawilson - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
I own them both. I can hold them side by side. It's really hardly noticable at all until you get the tablets closer than one would use them, and once again I'm talking about the prime versus my 32gb verizon 4g iPad that work gave me. I'm happily at work now typing this on my prime because it has completely replaced my Dell laptop running windows 7. The iPad could not do this. The only reason they went with a resolution that high is they have NO CHOICE. iOS is crippled and has to use multiples of the 6 year old iphone display resolution and dimensions. That's why it has a fail 4:3 display like an old television rather than a proper 16:10 display. That's why you have to buy all new apps for it instead of the superior Android solution that mimics what your laptop or pc and mac already do. Just scale things properly. There's no such thing as a "tablet optimized" app. That's marketing. That's apple attempting to justify failure in their mobile OS design by turning it into a positive. You can tell how intelligent a tech review is by looking for terms like "tablet optimized" or "fragmented" or "retina". It means they lack the technical knowledge to understand that's just marketing meant to talk around shortcomings in their own poorly designed device.LordConrad - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
"That's why it has a fail 4:3 display like an old television rather than a proper 16:10 display."Tablets are designed primarily as consumption devices, which is how most people use them. For such a device, I find the 4:3 aspect ratio to be superior in most respects. Internet Browsing, email, and ebooks all look much better to me on tablets with a 4:3 aspect ratio. Gaming is a wash as I don't have a preference. The only drawback is watching movies as the black bars are larger unless you zoom-in.
I have nothing against Android, I actually prefer the openness of Android, but I much prefer the paper sized 4:3 aspect ratio for handheld tablets.
Lepton87 - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Anand is such a huge apple fanboy and it shows in his articles but it shoudn'tJunereth - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
were we reading the same article here?xype - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Probably not. Anything short of "I ONLY HAVE SEX WITH MY ANDROID TABLET FROM NOW ON!!" under Final Words is seen as definitive proof of Apple-bias by some, it seems.Cyleo - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Before I owned the original TF Prime I was probably inclined to agree with you. However after 6 months of use, I can see Anand's point. Where iOS is polished in almost every possible way, Android is still rough around the edges. Browser performance on Android is excellent when it works, but it also hangs a lot. Engadget for example is a website that constantly brings my TFP's browser to its knees. And I can tell you that constantly force closing your browser is pretty annoying.There is a huge potential for Android tablet, but Asus and Google need to polish the user experience if they really want to compete with Apple.