Asus Transformer Prime – Review
The newcomer to the ultrabook category is the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime. The Transformer Prime is available in either ‘amethyst gray’ or ‘champagne gold’. Design-wise the Prime is angular, tapering down a pretty sharp edge. At 0.33 inches thick it’s fractionally thinner than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and weighing just 586g, also slightly lighter. But it doesn’t feel delicate or flimsy at all thanks to the aluminum frame.
The port selection on the barebones slate is minimal, but the optional dock provides a full-size USB-2 port and SD card reader. The Eee Pad Transformer Prime itself lacks even a micro-USB interface. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right-side, and on the left a mini-HDMI socket, and volume rocker. A single speaker grill is perched on the right side. Volume is pretty good. A 1.2MP front-facing camera is paired with an 8MP, f/2.4 LED flash-enabled cam on the rear. The 8MP rear camera takes good pictures, even if faintly washed-out. Here are some up close pictures:
Asus has provided the Eee Pad Transformer Prime with a 10-inch Super IPS+ LCD display, with 1280 x 800 pixel resolution whose brightness is astounding – it’s 50% brighter than the usual tablet displays. Deep blacks mean contrast is also excellent. Viewing angles are marvellously wide at 178 degrees. Super bright, Super IPS+ mode can be disabled to conserve battery life without significantly affecting user experience.
That keyboard dock is what gives the Transformer Prime its transforming capability, and it will set you back an extra $150. It has been has slimmed down to match the Prime’s reduced dimensions. Once the dock is connected the battery starts charging automatically – the second battery inside the dock uses its own juice to power the tablet’s on-board battery, so you can plug a flat-battery slate into a fully-charged dock and the slate’s battery will charge. Here is what the dock looks like:
The dock features a small multitouch-enabled trackpad, though for pinch-zoom you’ll need to use the display, which is a bit of a fudged solution. It’s certainly responsive – too much so perhaps, as there’s no way to disable it while typing. The island-style keys give good travel but are a little small. Yet for all its faults, the dock is still preferable to any on-screen keyboard.
The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime sees the arrival of quad-core CPUs in the tablet format. Swiping through menus, launching apps, navigating about the OS – everything is snappy and satisfying and the display is equally responsive to taps and gestures. Yet there is still the odd pause found on all Android devices. But as far as tablets go, benchmarks show the Transformer Prime to be the new market leader. ShadowGun runs smoothly and demonstrates the Prime’s 3D capabilities – easily the best gaming experience available on a tablet.
The OS of Prime tablet is Android Honeycomb 3.2.1 for now, ie a few tweaks and sly tricks with the odd new shortcut thrown in, – Bluetooth, WiFi, Super IPS+ mode, auto screen-rotate – but the killer app would have been Ice Cream Sandwich, alas, you’ll have to wait for an update. Pre-installed apps include Amazon Kindle, Movie StudioBooks, Davinci THD, File Manager, Glowball, Movie Studio, MyCloud, MyLibrary, MyNet, Netflix, Photaf Lite, Polaris Office, Press Reader, Riptide GPk ShadowGun, SuperNote, WebStorage, Zen Pinball, Zinio – the list goes on.
Battery life gave a superlative 10 hrs 17 minutes (16 hrs 34 mins with the dock attached) of video-looping, matching the Apple iPad 2. Oh and that’s in standard power mode – economy mode will extend battery life even further. Clearly the new NVidia Tegra 3 chip is as efficient as it is fast.
Before now every premium Android tablet was measured against the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. No more. The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime is now the slate to beat. Check out these gorgeous pictures of Tranformer Prime at its best:
Check out this Prime review video courtesy of engadget:
Related posts:
- Transformer Prime Preview – Asus Raises The Bar
- Asus Transformer Prime Pre-order
- Asus Transformer Prime not with Ice Cream Sandwich
- Transformer Prime benchmarked
- Prime not available
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