ASUS Transformer Book T100 Review: Redefining the Entry-Level Windows Notebook
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 18, 2013 12:00 AM ESTFinal Words
It’s tough to sell an entry-level Windows PC these days. You’re sandwiched between a couple of aggressive price points: the Nexus 7 at $229 and the iPad at $499. Traditionally, the PC you’d get between those price points would have mechanical storage, the cheapest of cheap TN panels, be bulky as possible, an unimpressive keyboard/trackpad and have 2.4GHz-only WiFi. About the only solace would be that it’d have some insanely quick Core architecture CPU inside, which more or less didn’t matter since the overall experience was hampered so much by the spinning disk inside. Thankfully, times are changing.
Assault first and foremost comes from Google’s latest lineup of Chromebooks. The HP Chromebook 11 addresses many of these concerns but with a fairly limited OS and silicon that’s honestly a bit too slow, even for the target market. But you do get an awesome keyboard, eMMC based storage, and an IPS panel among other things.
The Transformer Book T100 is really the Wintel camp’s answer to the Chromebook onslaught. Compared to the traditional entry-level PCs out there, the T100 really is a breath of fresh air. You get an IPS panel, great battery life and modern WiFi all in a package that can work as both a notebook and a tablet. The system is responsive and predictable in its performance thanks to the use of solid state storage. While there isn’t a full blown SSD inside, the eMMC solution is clearly better for light consumer workloads than a mechanical disk. Solid performance from the rear facing speakers and excellent portability round out the T100’s package. If I had to compare it to what you’d normally expect to get from a $349/$399 Windows PC, I’d say the Transformer Book T100 is a clear winner.
Where things get complicated is if/when you start comparing across platforms. ASUS and Google set the standard for affordable color calibrated displays with the 2013 Nexus 7, and unfortunately the T100 comes no where close to that. Even HP’s Chromebook 11 delivers a more accurate out of box experience than the T100. Again, the T100’s display isn’t bad, it just desperately needs a factory calibration.
It’s important to keep the T100’s performance in perspective. For light multitasking or single app-use workloads, the T100 does very well (much better than the Chromebook 11 we just reviewed). Light browsing and document work are at home on the T100. Don’t expect it to be a Haswell replacement though. I would like to see the gap narrow between Intel’s Atom and Core lines, but I’m afraid it’s going to take real performance pressure from a competitor before we ever see that day.
The dock experience on the T100 is reasonable, but it’s clear to me that the Transformer Book T100 is first and foremost a tablet, and only serves as a clamshell device as a secondary function. That’s not to say it makes for a bad notebook experience, it can just be cramped as a result of the 10.1-inch display footprint. If you’re looking for a device that you’ll use mostly as a tablet but want the flexibility of turning it into a notebook when you need to, the T100 can definitely fit the bill. If your desire is primarily for a touchscreen notebook, then the T100’s tradeoffs may be more frustrating.
At the end of the day the T100 is a good device, but like the Chromebook 11 we recently reviewed it could’ve been amazing with a few tweaks. With a less reflective display, color calibration at the factory and a better feeling keyboard/trackpad I’d be absolutely in love with the T100. I also wonder if 10.1-inches is the right form factor for this sort of a device. I’m not sure that Microsoft’s decision to go with 10.6-inches is the right one either, but the typing experience on a Surface’s type/touch covers does feel remarkably less cramped.
The T100 truly lives up to the Transformer brand. The combination of Intel's Bay Trail silicon and ASUS' mechanicals gives the device a dual personality. In tablet mode it's just as portable as any other 10-inch tablet, while in clamshell mode it can be a netbook-style ultraportable PC. I’d love to see ASUS continue down this path and truly try to perfect the device. I look at the work that ASUS and Google do together and can’t help but wonder what the T100 would look like if it had the same sort of pressure/influence. Perhaps that’s a bigger criticism of how Microsoft works with its partners, but I look at the comparison of ASUS tablets with and without Google’s influence and try to imagine a further polished Transformer Book. That’s something I’d really like to see.
There are very few perfect computing devices out there, but ASUS is one of the companies with the ability to build one if it really tries.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
158 Comments
View All Comments
azazel1024 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review. It has solidified that if nothing "better" comes out between now and the holidays I'll be selling my iPad 2 and getting a T100.It certainly doesn't sound perfect, but it does sound "good enough" for me. I need a tablet that is a decent content consumption device. It needs to have a decent enough panel in it that it doesn't hurt my eyes or my pride to use it. It needs to be able to be decent for watching movies, listening to music, looking at photos, browsing the web and writing email. Windows 8.1 and the T100 seem to have that.
As a bonus this means I can leave my HP Envy 4t at home on occasion when traveling light, and still have a machine that can use Lightroom 4. It doesn't have to be super fast, but it has to be capable of running it, which it sounds like this will. It should be on par or faster than the old Turino based 17" Toshiba laptop my wife used to have a few years ago, which I used Lightroom on for on the road image review/light editing. Also bonus points for being able to run some older Windows based games with a bluetooth game pad or keyboard/trackpad/wireless mouse.
$399 for the 64GB version plus around $50 for a 64GB microSD card isn't too bad. I would like to see what kind of performance the microSD card slot is capable of though to judge what kind of card I should get for it.
I do wish Asus at least had an option to bump the silicon up to the Z3770 and 4GB of memory. I'd gladly pay an extra $50 for that. I'd just as gladly pay $100 extra for the Z3770, 4GB of memory, dual stream dual band Wifi (bonus points of 802.11ac) and a better quality panel that was 900p.
For me my absolute max budget is $500 for a "tablet" and I doubt I'd ever be willing to pay more than that. I'd of course rather spend less, so $399 is nice...but again, I'd rather spend a bit more for even faster silicon, more memory and a better panel (better wifi wouldn't hurt). I do wonder if Asus might have another Transformer Windows 8.1 tablet down the road, a higher end one...maybe before Christmas?
I can hope anyway.
Wolfpup - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Wow, this is pretty amazing hardware for $350-400! I'm getting really, really impressed by these Windows 8 tablet/hybrid things, and their pricing. This is kind of what Microsoft's been hinting at for the last decade, but the hardware's finally catching up to the idea.Dang, these things are practically impulse buys, cheaper than a freaking iPad lol
Hector2 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I bought a brand new 15.4" Win8 2.4GHz Pentium dual core full feature Lenovo laptop on sale last year for $270. It's great & I'm real happy with it. Internet-only Chromebook prices need to be less than $200 for me to buyOneOfTheseDays - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Another terrible review from Anand. It's becoming quite clear to me that this guy is incapable of reviewing any Microsoft products at this point due to his obvious Google/Apple bias.For starters, this is a $349 device. Who the fuck cares about delta E and calibrated displays at this price point? What a completely irrelevant point to make for a device that is obviously geared at people who couldn't care less about that. The bottom line is it's IPS, has decent resolution, and gets bright enough and has decent contrast. It gets the job done, period.
Also, what is this about Metro IE11 being horrible? Are you kidding me? Metro IE 11 is probably the best TOUCH browser experience you can get on Windows. Desktop IE11, that's a different story. Still, if you are in tablet mode Metro IE11 is perfectly capable for any user.
Finally, battery life. This thing gets 8.5hrs. That is MORE THAN ENOUGH for 99.99% of users. Again this is a $349 device, the fucking garbage Chromebook 11 you just reviewed can barely muster 4 hours and it's nothing more than a glorified web browser running ARM.
This site is going down the tubes and Anand is clearly to blame. He needs to stick to SSD reviews and let other reviewers without bias handle these ones.
BrianChase1776 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I thought it was pretty fair even though I didn't understand the Chromebook fascination, those things are trash. But, when comparing tablets it makes sense to compare these vastly superior machines to those toys since the majority of tablet buyers care more about how it looks and how quickly it loads a Youtube video than what it has inside. Unfortunately, we're a minority by a large margin.OneOfTheseDays - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
It was a terrible review that focused on all of the wrong things. Nobody cares about how calibrated a display is at a $349 price point. Anand's reviews are becoming increasingly off the mark IMHO.BrianChase1776 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I still have to disagree, my parents, for example, don't understand that a simple Google search could explain how to fix the calibration issues. If they received the device and took issue with the colors they would quite literally assume it is broken and move on to looking for another device. We can figure it out, and we want options, but most people can only handle simplicity.BrianChase1776 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Can't find an edit option but for the record I think the t100 looks amazing! I strongly believe that Apple and Android are garbage and, for those of us that plan to do anything serious on a tablet this device will do the job. I'm just defending the practice of writing a review for the majority, even thought it is sad that it has to be done that way.steven75 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
It's definitely an interesting option to say "Apple and Android" are garbage. The consumer market speaks and it soundly disagrees with that.Nagorak - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Until recently there wasn't even another viable option, so it's kind of a stretch to say the market has spoken.