The realm’s love affair with tablets could have been bubbling along under the skin for some time, however really got started in earnest during CES 2010 . Back in those wild days, you may see 15-inch jumbo screens , TV tuners , or even hybrid pseudo-laptops stalking the tablet area of your favorite trade exhibition. ASUS was there too, without a doubt , though it still believed inside the upstart smartbook category — a modernized tackle the netbook that trusted an ARM CPU and a mobile OS to extract more battery life out of a lighter, thinner device — and was busy showing off a seductively slim prototype of just this type of machine. Alas, nothing came of that Neo concept, probably as it was counting on Android 1.6 and a Tegra 2 system-on-chip that was then still months far from hitting the market.
Today, however, is yet another day. The 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 is finally being produced in volume, Google has evolved Android to version 3.0, specifically targeting higher-resolution displays, and ASUS has abandoned the concept a keyboard is important to mobile computing. No, wait, that last bit’s still there. The Eee Pad Transformer is a ten.1-inch Honeycomb tablet greatly in line with the 2 current trend 2 , however it also has an optional keyboard dock that turns it right into a, you guessed it, instant smartbook. So, does that mean you’ll get two devices in a single or has ASUS been overly ambitious and compromised an excessive amount of? We got to grips with the £380 16GB WiFi-only model and its keyboard buddy (£430 when bought as a couple) so as to discover. Answers await just past the break.
Hardware
The Transformer is an outwardly unremarkable slab of technology. A single sheet of glass covers its IPS LCD, front-facing camera, ambient light sensor, and 18mm of black bezel that stretch from either side of the display. That arrangement is then ensconced inside the overall metal frame of the tablet, that is a gloomy, desaturated brown with a textured back. Stereo speakers pump out sound laterally from the lower left and right edges, with a microSD card slot, a Mini HDMI 1.3a port, a combined mic / headphone jack, and the ability / lock and volume keys filling out the remainder of the gap at the Transformer’s sides. Its bottom is populated by just a few holes for coupling with the keyboard dock and a — cringe — proprietary connector that relays data and tool between the 2 Transformer parts or between the slate and your nearest desktop PC.
6 The ability / lock and volume keys are well positioned at the Eee Pad’s right shoulder. It’s a location naturally close by of your left hand, with a purpose to are typically the single supporting the pad when you use it along with your right. Obviously, in case you be a leftie, the ergonomics aren’t so awesome, but attributable to Honeycomb’s ability to work without reference to the tablet’s orientation, one can flip the slate 180 degrees and feature these controls under hand.
7 The Transformer’s chief competition on this space in the meanwhile is supplied by two popular devices, Apple’s iPad 2 and Motorola’s Xoom. ASUS’ concoction is markedly longer than either of these slates, with tons of room on each side of its already widescreen (1280 x 800) display. It truly is justified whenever you jack the Transformer into its keyboard dock, which needs the additional space to offer you a completely fledged keyboard, nevertheless it does make the Eee Pad a slightly less compact tablet. With the exception of its necessary elongation, we’d actually liken the Eee Pad to the unique iPad — it’s concerning the same thickness and its back is designed very similarly. Watching the photos below, you’ll notice there’s almost no difference in thickness between the Transformer and the Xoom, although Motorola’s tablet is a bit heavier. The iPad 2 is significantly lighter than both, which makes a difference in regular use, but its extra thinness wasn’t a differentiator.
Overall, what attracts us to the Transformer over the Xoom is ASUS’ intelligent button and camera placement — the 5 megapixel rear camera is centered on the top of the back cover. With the ability to quickly access the tablet’s unlock button is basically pretty high on our list of typically underrated priorities, and ASUS has managed to tuck the camera right into a position where stray fingers will almost never obscure its view. One little oversight from the corporate, however, is the shortage of a standing light. The Xoom flashes its need for attention at us when it has unread emails, however the Transformer variety of just sits there. The sole indicator light ASUS provides is a charging monitor at the keyboard dock, or even that one refuses to do double duty with notifications.
Internals
The Xoom and Transformer share greater than their OS, they’re also both running NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 system-on-chip. Much has been said and written about this powerful dual-core solution — it was certainly the preferred thing going at CES 2011 — however the hardware that has shipped with it up to now has been underwhelming. LG’s Optimus 2X and, to a lesser degree, Motorola’s Atrix 4G have suffered from software problems, while the ViewSonic G Tablet and Toshiba Folio 100 slates were ignobly 1 discontinued 1 by major retailers because of user experience issues. We don’t know who’s responsible for some of these failures to correctly harness Tegra 2′s prowess, however the track record to date hasn’t been great. ASUS a minimum of sets itself up for fulfillment with 1GB of RAM, either 16GB or 32GB of integrated storage, a 5 megapixel rear- and 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera, the aforementioned microSD expandability, and some very handy ports on its keyboard dock to boot. The stereo speakers work alright, although the standard loss of bass and coffee volume ceiling shortcomings are present here as they’re with most mobile devices. 802.11b/g/n wireless networking can be available, and worked flawlessly during our testing with the Eee Pad.
Battery life
We actually didn’t have the Transformer long enough so as to draw any firm conclusions about its battery life. Our time was spent plugging it out and in of the keyboard dock — which functions as a further battery pack that recharges the tablet’s own cell when both are paired — whose impact muddied the waters. What we will say is that we bid goodbye to the charger on Saturday night, tinkered and messed with the Transformer in the course of the evening, left Gmail to auto-update itself, and by noon tomorrow the battery was all the way down to 60 percent. 13 hours of idle time chewing through 40 percent of the battery isn’t outstanding, however does project to round about 30 hours of standby time. ASUS has done extensive testing and claims you’ll have the capacity to squeeze nearly 10 hours of HD video playback (both 720p and 1080p) out of the Transformer, and after we actually utilize it with browsing, capturing, being attentive to music, etc, the tablet held up well.
A 30-minute video clip we watched at the BBC iPlayer website (the app wouldn’t work for us, for whatever reason) cost us 10 percent of the battery’s charge, though we were a little bit greedy and raised brightness to about 70 percent. Extrapolating that out to the battery’s full capacity, we get a good looking impressive five hours of juice. That’s impressive because we’re talking about in-browser Flash video streaming, the standard enemy of portable devices’ endurance. We’re therefore greatly inclined to believe ASUS’ numbers are legit, though we’ll naturally report back if we discover anything to disprove them. The keyboard dock also is rated to increase battery performance by another six hours or thereabouts. Something often overlooked about tablets is their general neediness to be held and kept upright, which might be a true pain when watching movies. The dock’s sturdy hinge and additional battery juice score a synergistic point for ASUS by providing both a superior platform with adjustable viewing angles and a long running time for the movie lover at the go. Great things.
Keyboard dock
3 Sure, ASUS has gone for a proprietary connector here, but just check out what it hooks you as much as! There are two perspectives from which to go looking upon the Transformer’s optional dock and both provide great reason behind excitement. At the one hand, we’ve often pondered tips on how to turn tablets, which everyone by now knows are better fitted to media consumption than creation, into something shall we potentially do our work on, and the 2 things holding us back had been the shortage of rapid text input methods and the dearth of an SD card slot to permit us to dump all those sizzling-hot hands-on pictures. Well, the Eee Pad scoops the prize by offering us this here keyboard to punch out stories with and, indeed, an SD card-reading slot. Moreover, it even has two full-blown USB 2.0 ports. That actually puts it right alongside the elemental specs of a netbook and brings us to our second exciting perspective. We’ve always thought netbooks would get advantages greatly from having a touchscreen with the intention to eliminate the reliance on cramped touchpads or even more cramped arrow key arrays. Again, the Transformer ticks that box, plus the additional person who reads “1080p video playback,” another typical shortcoming of the lowly netbook. Ergo, whether you’re it as an expander of the capabilities of a tablet or as an (awesome) evolution at the basic netbook proposition, the Transformer’s keyboard attachment seems like a winner.
Looks, however, can also be deceiving. We plugged a USB stick into the side of the Eee Pad’s dock and nothing happened. We swapped it for one more USB drive, we tried the opposite port, and nothing continued to happen. We jacked in an SD card and still got no response. It was only after an entire reboot of the tablet that those ports magically began functioning, but that wasn’t the sole issue we experienced with the docking solution. On multiple occasions, the Eee Pad wouldn’t recognize the relationship or disconnection between itself and its peripheral part, leading to it either ignoring our input at the dock or expecting the physical keyboard to still be attached and consequently refusing to present a software text input method.
When the Eee Pad did work, the included File Manager app made it a breeze to throw data to and from the tablet, and we even got this tingly feeling in our fingertips that reminded us we were touching a bit slice of the long run. USB and SD card compatibility are major boons for folks aspiring to work on their tablet, and if ASUS can straighten out its software, they’ll be one of the most compelling reasons for spending the additional dough to possess the dock.
That’s to not say that the Transformer’s keyboard is a slouch, removed from it. The buttons feel nice and chunky, each exhibiting a stunning amount of travel (a great thing), and there’s practically zero flex to be found anywhere along and across its sturdily built body. We still wouldn’t advise penning a PhD dissertation in this button slate, however it’s still a couple of orders of magnitude better than using a tablet’s touchscreen to input text. The simplest thing holding it back from excelling is the pair of extremely shrunken Shift keys. ASUS has a history of contracting the width of the best Shift key with the intention to fit the arrow buttons in a piece tighter, but we didn’t like that trend on its laptops and we don’t find it irresistible here. It’s a compromise that didn’t necessarily must be made. Then again, there’s a litany of handy shortcut buttons — music playback controls, a dedicated unlock key, home and search shortcuts — which truly improve the user experience. Given the time to get acquainted with their position and use, we are able to imagine ourselves flying through Android’s otherwise touch-oriented UI.
9 The touchpad is nearly exactly as wide because the 13-inch MacBook Air’s trackpad is tall. Installed other words, it’s not the most important one you’ll ever familiarize yourself with, but it surely maximizes what little space there’s under the complete-sized keyboard and is often very responsive. It may also be said to be somewhat too responsive, because the mouse cursor dashes about with great sensitivity, but that could be only a matter of adjustment. The only mouse button also works well, with a click its left half reminiscent of a faucet at the screen and its right side acting as a Back button. There’s no multitouch on offer here, but you’ll be capable to do gestures at the screen itself so none was necessary.
Display
0 When ASUS’ pricing for the Eee Pad Transformer became known at £380, the immediate reaction among our staff was puzzlement on the company’s ability to slot a ten.1-inch IPS screen within one of these tight budget — quite other than the alternative spec goodies already outlined above. The particular display failed to disappoint, either, with , well saturated picture that maintained its vibrancy while you tilt the tablet to check out ASUS’ promised 178-degree viewing angles. Some brightness is lost at extreme angles, nevertheless it’s a real IPS panel, of that there’s little doubt. It’s gorgeous enough to make the Xoom press its own power button and skulk off right into a dark corner.
1 There are a couple of downsides to the Transformer’s display. Firstly, as you can find above, there’s quite a noticeable distance between front glass and the true IPS panel, which takes somewhat clear of the standard of the image at more oblique angles. Secondly, and more importantly, bringing this tablet out for a walk within the sun proved a genuine struggle for us. We were barely out the door when it selected a mirror mode we didn’t understand it had. Reflectivity from the glossy screen was pretty terrible, even without direct sunlight hitting it — an atmosphere that was simply bright was sufficient to neutralize all of the foregoing good stuff in regards to the Transformer’s display. Once you can’t see it, who cares if it’s really pretty? It bears mentioning that neither generation of the iPad, the sole other device on this class to tout an IPS display, was without its sunlight-related issues, so we suppose that’s only a burden for IPS fans to bear. We’d still take the Eee Pad’s classy screen over the Xoom’s standard issue LCD, we just don’t consider outdoor performance that important with regards to tablets.
Camera
2 Want the excellent news? ASUS has installed some fine optics at the Eee Pad, which produce greater than acceptable imaging results. Want the bad news? Tapping the capture button is followed by a delay that lasts almost two seconds before the real capture, post-processing at the tablet messes up saturation and produces unnatural colors, video recording is straight up broken and loses frames, and oh yes, that fetching green screen above will not be an homage to Android, it’s a busted camera app. At the picture-taking front, the Eee Pad simply takes too long to compose itself. We’re comparing it mostly against our experience with smartphones, which could not seem perfectly fair, but these devices are all using a similar internals so there’s no reason HTC’s latest handset can offer Instant Capture as a feature worthy of capitalization while ASUS’ tablet can’t shoot capture a slow-moving London taxi. We’re almost unimpressed with the colour results produced by the Transformer’s camera. Merely, they don’t match what our eyes saw at the day, alternately being over- or under-saturated, which appears like a kick to the tummy while you see just how much detail the sensor was in a position to pick up. Sharpness is retained even at full resolution and a few extremely fine detailing survives inside the captured images. Why ASUS needed to go and mess all that up in software, we don’t know.
We will’t discuss the standard of the Transformer’s video recording, because there’s something clearly very broken about it. Not just did it record at an excessively low frame rate, it produced artifacts, and fully mangled the audio. Again, we’re observing a software in preference to hardware issue, however it was major enough to utterly discount what would rather be a valuable feature for this tablet. Or, if ASUS didn’t consider the camera that important, it shouldn’t have included one within the first place.
Software
8 At the brighter side of factors, ASUS’ tweaks to the Honeycomb UI have almost universally been for the higher. The corporate has added a trio of its own widgets, and we appreciated each one in every of them. The elements monitor 4 integrates beautifully 4 with the default cloudy wallpaper, such a lot in order that its weather effects seem to blend in with the final background, making for a slick visual trick. The mail widget is only a barebone outline that offers you your unread email count, a link in your inbox, and a great reason to invite why Google doesn’t provide an equivalently useful widget of its own. Finally, the date widget just provides the day and date, omitting linkage, but keeping a similar emphasis on clean presentation of data.
Anyone who finds the 16GB Transformer a decent squeeze for all their data will appreciate ASUS’ WebStorage option, which does exactly what its name suggests. It also expands functionality a bit beyond simple cloud storage by allowing you to remotely access your desktop at home, provided you’ve installed the accompanying program on that computer. We didn’t have time to dig into these options intimately, but they may well prove valuable over the future, particularly when allied to the power to transfer data to and from USB and entire-size Secure Digital storage drives.
ASUS has worked in its own onscreen keyboard, one which grants various row on the top, tweaks button arrangements, and includes single-button input for smiley faces, but that’s only an optional extra — the default Android Honeycomb keyboard is but more than one taps away. We found the ASUS keyboard surest when setting up passwords, as lets enter full alphanumeric strings while not having to change between keyboards, though basically we found neither option entirely satisfactory. We were never capable of feel entirely comfortable or on top of things with the Transformer’s software text input. There’s a small delay in responding in your taps — something that’s missing at the iPad, whose virtual keyboard feels an epoch previous to what we’re coping with here — which ends up in uncertainty as to if letters were registered, eventually leading to an inconsistent and frustrating time for the user.
an absence of responsiveness is usually evident inside the Android UI. Apart from a delay in activating the function you’ve selected, there also are troubling instances where input isn’t registered in any respect. That leaves the user with out a lower than three potential scenarios when she doesn’t see an instantaneous response — she can be taking a look at lag, an unregistered tap by reason of software, or an unregistered tap since the physical input was too light. Such uncertainty doesn’t build a good user experience and the Transformer, unfortunately, doesn’t offer an outstanding user experience. Much of that’s, regrettably, all the way down to Honeycomb itself. It’s not a finished product yet. It’s actually an excellent distance faraway from a finished product. Some apps are done to absolute perfection while many of the “glue” bits, the stuff that goes between the apps and basically makes up the OS, is either confused, not responsive enough, or broken in any other way. Let’s take this stuff in turn, starting with the great parts.
Playing back music at the Transformer, or another Honeycomb tablet, seems like something Marty McFly brought back from the long run. It’s smooth, seamless, and effortless. Browsing through your music is a 3-dimensional tour de awesome. Google Maps can also be a flawlessly executed slice of software, one that beautifully harnesses the Tegra 2 chip to deliver an exceptional and responsive mapping experience. Gmail, too, is at its excellent on Google’s own OS, with the expanded resolution truly making it a joy to take advantage of. Scrolling in those apps is instantaneous, or near it, and function is on a par with the perfect, whether you’re talking smartphone or tablet software. Google’s notification system also merits great praise, because it stuffs all noteworthy events into your bottom-right corner, where subtle popups provide you with a warning to objects that require attention before dissipating into the ether, to get replaced by unassuming little icons in what amounts to Android’s version of the Windows system tray. Customization options for the five homescreens also are comprehensive, and the hardly perceptible crosses that denote the grid layout when arranging apps and widgets help to orient the user.
The hot Apps secret’s a positive point to mark where things begin to turn sour with Google’s OS. The assumption is great — showing a visible overview of open apps, including a text label and their icon — but why do we only see five apps at a time, why is the list not scrollable, and why are we able to not kill apps using something like a protracted press? That button is ubiquitous through the OS, nevertheless it offers no app control, you may just take a look at them them or enter them, nothing more. Another perplexing feature is the coupling on the top left of the screen — you get a Google search box with the intention to deliver results from both the internet and items you will have at the Eee Pad, that’s sat right next to a voice search that (almost) only ever searches the online. Ergo, a textual look for “Twitter” will bring back the app you’ve installed at the tablet and Twitter.com, whereas a voice search would just send you to a Google web look for that term. Further diluting matters is the truth that once you look for “map of London” (or anywhere) by voice, you’ll get sent into the Maps application. Text and voice searches shouldn’t be treated differently in the event that they’re sitting close enough to sniff one another’s breath. Integrating Maps into voice search during this peculiar fashion is also indicative of a software build that was rushed out before it was truly ready for its time within the spotlight.
The “ugly” to this trifecta of excellent, bad and ugly aspects to Honeycomb’s UX is lag. We’ve already discussed the Transformer’s occasional failure to select up taps, however the pervasive lag that’s found in the OS can really drive down the standard of user experience over the years. It’s not that it’s terrible or long, it’s that it’s present everywhere you go, it’s always with you — or, more accurately, always that little bit behind you. From the first actual moment you decide up the tablet and check out to unlock it, you spot animations may be so far as an inch behind your finger. Home screen transitions are smooth and fluid for the foremost part, but screen re-orientation between portrait and landscape modes takes just a little too long and the true animation may be stuttery from time to time. Normally, performance will be described as acceptable, however the Eee Pad hardly seems like a tablet running a dual-core superchip, a critique that may be leveled on the Xoom with equal validity. Ultimately, you shouldn’t consider Honeycomb’s relative immaturity reason enough to write down off the acquisition of an Android tablet, but when you do buy one, do yourself a favor and not pick up an iPad 2. The delta in responsiveness between both is so vast as to make grown geeks weep.
4 Browser performance at the Transformer keeps to the foregoing trend. It ranks as acceptable, with reliable pinch-to-zoom and scrolling operations, however it does grow a bit bemusing when it tries to arrange pages as a way to make the text fit better on screen. Page formats get thrown out of whack and its reorganization of paragraphs tends more toward the awkward than the helpful. Moreover, the iPad 2 comparison have to be mentioned again, because it seems to us that Apple’s doing this right and Google’s hardware partners are doing it wrong. The trick employed by the iPad 2 coders is to fill areas of a webpage that the tablet can’t yet populate coherently with a checkerboard pattern (the visual equivalent of a “loading…” sign), thereby allowing it to give its best-in-class smoothness and responsiveness no matter having to take care of an excessive amount of content. The Transformer, then again, attempts to offer you everything that your demanding swipes ask of it, which inevitably results in the tablet choking up in seeking to resolve quite a bit content on screen, particularly when there also are heavier things to cope with like Flash ads and embedded videos. On a more positive note, playing back those videos was done exceedingly well by the Transformer, something that the iPad 2 likely won’t be capable to claim for an extended, long term. What emerges from that dichotomy, however, is that the Eee Pad, along side the remainder of these Android tablets popping out now, are fully able to matching the smoothness and responsiveness of Apple’s slates, it’s only a matter of suboptimal software riding atop of them, that is a downer.
Wrap-up
5 We’ve only reviewed two Honeycomb tablets up to now, this one included, but we discover ourselves having to copy a well-known refrain from our Android handset reviews: it’s the precise Honeycomb tablet yet. The Eee Pad Transformer has a manifestly superior screen to the Xoom, matches it on all key specs, and gives a keyboard dock that’s extremely rich on potential added functionality. It’s also a bit of bulkier and, as a result of its proprietary connector, less compatible than the Xoom, but with a value tag that’s exactly £100 cheaper, the Transformer can’t help but be the clear-cut more sensible choice. Unfortunately, it’s hampered by software troubles, some major and a few merely niggling, that prevent it from challenging the Apple hegemony on the top of the heap, but for those on a limited budget and a pressing need for a tablet, the Eee Pad is an exceptionally compelling option.
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