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.
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Screammit - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
sadly, "tinkering" for 90% of the public is to change their background picture.Belard - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
" I’m only afraid they will end up being too schizophrenic for that, trying to do it all and ending up doing nothing well enough for people to give a shit."BINGO!
andrewaggb - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Personally I haven't been able to use either for work. The TF + dock is almost usable, but it doesn't have enough of the apps I use (I don't want lame substitutes) and ultimately the tf+dock is almost a netbook... so I just use my much more powerful laptop. The ipad is not work worthy. And apple doesn't try to market it that way, so I'm ok with that. I love the ipad for what it is, instant-on, relax on the couch.Surface may be suitable for light work, though I'm not sure how it will work in your lap, so the asus version will probably be better. But I suspect it'll take a good year for the apps to be available for ARM, so at launch I'd be looking at an x86 version... and it doesn't look like AMD or Intel has a tablet winner SOC for the fall. Ivy Bridge will do, but haswell would have been better. And an ultra low voltage trinity maybe?
I'm not certain that when the dust settles I'm going to want to work on a tablet with a keyboard anyways. I like the idea of one less device, but maybe it's a dream. I think phone,tablet,laptop,desktop,xbox/appletv, all play a somewhat different role and I'll probably keep buying all of them.
I like the concept of running windows 8 on everything, but I'm currently mixing android,apple,and lots of microsoft and I'm getting along just fine :-)
kmmatney - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
" BUT what disadvantages do you get? On Android I have none, except of voiding my warranty."I have my iPad 2 Jailbroken, and there are no disadvantages - at least none that I've ever come across. The advantage is being able to install RetinaPad, iFile, NES emulators with Wiimote support, and a few UI customization apps.
DeciusStrabo - Tuesday, June 26, 2012 - link
My iPad 2 slowed down a lot when I jailbroke it and installed some jailbroken software. It was rather annoying and the reason I went back into Apple's golden cage. No such issue with rooted/custom-ROM Android, where you rather see a stability and speed increase, not a decrease.BabelHuber - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
I miss tests of actual games on the TF Infinity.The TF Prime is a real joy in this regard. Shadowgun, GTA3, Max Payne, N:OV.A. 3, everything is running smooth like butter, but only at 720p.
How does the TF Infinity play these games? With its 1080p resolution the GPU has much more to do, especially the Pixel Shaders.
So, does the higher-clocked Tegra 3 with its enhanced bandwith compensate for the higher screen resolution?
XZerg - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
^^ when?bleh0 - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
I love the form factor of the Transformer series but it needs RT. With Nvidia being the ARM partner for Microsoft at the moment we might see better battery life and performance out of RT then under Android. As always I'll be waiting patiently for the Anandtech review when the device is released.jwcalla - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
Maybe slapping Ubuntu for Android would help seal the deal on this thing. You get the "hybrid device" feel that Windows is going for, plus you have the Android app ecosystem to work with.Quad-core Cortex A15s will be interesting as you could run two operating systems (like Ubuntu and Android) simultaneously. And Ubuntu is surprisingly mature and smooth on ARM w/ GPU acceleration.
riottime - Monday, June 25, 2012 - link
it's alright tablet but i'll wait for win8 surface. i own ep121 and it's still working great with i5 cpu. i might just upgrade the os on it to win8 when that comes out instead of buying a brand new 'surface' tablet. as for android, my samsung player 4 is sufficient. :)