ASUS Transformer Book T100 Review: Redefining the Entry-Level Windows Notebook
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 18, 2013 12:00 AM ESTBattery Life
The Transformer Book T100 features an integrated 31Wh battery. As the keyboard dock doesn’t include an extra battery, that’s all you get. The good news is that Intel’s Atom Z3740 is built on the company’s first 22nm SoC process and it’s paired with LPDDR3. At least on the silicon front, the T100 should be fairly power efficient. Granted there are still the PMIC, display, WiFi and other components to worry about, but here’s to hoping ASUS did a reasonable job there as well.
Unfortunately ASUS delivered our T100 review sample less than 48 hours ago and I’ve been using it non-stop since then. I think I technically broke embargo by using it at a press event but it’s the only way I’d get enough time with the thing under my belt to feel comfortable writing about it. The bad news is that I only had enough time to provide a battery life teaser. I’m still running more data but for now all I’ve got is our WiFi web browsing test.
The T100’s results are presented with the keyboard dock attached and with the display calibrated to 200 nits:
Battery life looks decent at just over 8.5 hours on a single charge. In practice I had no complaints about battery life while using the device. It feels more like a tablet in that regard and less like a notebook, which is a good thing. Once again we’re seeing ASUS redefining what we’ve come to expect from an entry level notebook PC here. Even compared to Chromebooks we see the T100 do extremely well. I’m curious to get a better feel for how Bay Trail performs in the battery life department, which I’ll be doing over the coming days. So far the results look good but not quite stellar if you compare it to traditional Android/iOS tablets. I am curious to see how BT running Android would turn out.
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USGroup1 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
"...you can obviously run nearly all old x86/Windows applications. This is a huge deal as it means you can replace IE11 with Chrome...the tablet experience alone isn't as good as what you'd get on Android or iOS."I stopped reading at the end of that paragraph. Your anti Microsoft bias is showing again.
Drunktroop - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
IE 10/11 make way more sense in touch input than Firefox/Chrome.The touch and gesture support is good and sensible, and it is way smoother than them in low end Clover Trails.
Firefox is still my choice for Desktop and Laptops, but for Windows Tablet in Touch mode, IE10/11 is the better pick.
ricardodawkins - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
The man keep on harping about Chromebooks like some Google PR parrot.Breaking News to the editor: Chrome can be installed on Windows 8/8.1
if he was besides me I would ask him: why should I waste my money in a Chromebook when I can get this x86 full windows OS PC that provides the samething as the Chromebook (Chrome browser), x86 compatiblity and the new Metro UI?
Braumin - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Yes and I also disagree with Anand when he claims the multitasking win is due to Clovertrail and not Windows 8.1.My Surface RT can multitask very easily and it has far less performance than the Chromebook's A15s.
ChromeOS is just junk. It's always been junk and it's still a glorified web browser OS.
Asus has a decent machine here, and for a great price.
Really the only thing Windows 8.1 needs at this point is more quality apps. There's lots of apps but many of them suck. That can be said of other app ecosystems as well but overall the number of quality apps are higher due to sheer volume.
althaz - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I see that in the article there seems to be a big deal about the poor calibration of the screen. On most tablets this is a valid concern, however on x86 Windows tablets, although it may be worth mentioning, it's a complete non-issue for anybody that cares: The display can be calibrated manually :).pSupaNova - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
The target consumers of this computer would have a hard time getting films to play on this thing let alone calibrate the screen.Android/IOS Tablets have nothing to fear from this device.
Drumsticks - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
What? The average person isn't going to care about or even notice calibration, and if you're implying performance problems, you're just wrong.AsusJake - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
man 3 year old and 5 year old kids calibrate these damn devices, any teenager or adult can too........what target users are we missing ? old people? who take their devices to dealers for shit like that ....dude I'm 3 years ahead of this discussion ..and want to say ...I hope you haven't eat too many crayons since then, and hope by now you can calibrate a damn touch screenLaststop311 - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
If you are broke and your laptop just broke and u rly need something now and can't wait and save money i guess this is a good choice. I'm kinda in love with the yoga pro 2 13". 8GB ram core i5 256GB SSD on sale for 1100.sherlockwing - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Lenovo cut corner on that thing too, it somehow don't have 5Ghz Wifi for a $1100 laptop :(