Gradually a decent selection of Android Honeycomb tablets are finding their way onto the market, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer being one of these such devices.  The current three leading devices would be the Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and this, but what makes it different?  What would make you choose the Asus over Motorola or Samsung?  They all would appear to have similar specs, design (oh my god, someone sue someone!) and dimensions, so why might you choose the Transformer?

Read on and we’ll see if we can answer this question.

Design

Despite what Apple say, there are only so many ways a tablet can look, but having said that, I feel Asus have slipped up a little here.  There are a few points I’m not keen on with the Transformer and I’ll start with the sharp edges.  When holding a Xoom or Tab, it feels comfortable, nice rounded edges fit into your hand.  The Transformer seems to feel ‘pointy’ and sharp, almost like when you have heavy shopping bags and the handle cuts into your hands.  It’s not as extreme as that, but there’s a marked difference from the Tab for example.

Next comes the plastic casing.  People moan about Samsung’s phones and I will always defend them, plastic doesn’t mean cheap or flimsy.  The Asus Eee Pad Transformer doesn’t necessarily feel flimsy in any way, but the plastic backing and edges round the device don’t give it a good feel.  A ridge can be felt where the plastic stops and the screen begins.  The patterned back has a vinyl feel to it and it worries me that it doesn’t give very good grip.

Linked to this, the bezel round the screen is almost identical to the Tab, which is nice and thin, but then the plastic casing adds another 6 or 7mm both sides.  It might not sound much, but when trying to type with your thumbs in the middle of the screen, this makes quite a difference.

Then we have the speakers.  In stead of being located up high, they’re just a few centimetres up from the bottom on each side, right about where you might hold the device…  why?!?!  Why would you put them exactly where people’s hands will be?

Plenty of negatives there, here’s the reason you might consider the Asus over it’s competition, the keyboard dock.  The idea here is you can very easily go from having a tablet to having a laptop.  It actually works better than I thought it would.  The keyboard is well designed and responsive, the only thing I missed was any kind of back lighting.  The only real problem with this set up is the matter of weight distribution.  The keyboard weights 570g, the tablet 684g.  All I would say is, be careful how you put it down if you have the screen lent back.  It doesn’t feel that stable, especially on a softer surface.

Hardware

The Asus Transformer specs are not outstanding, but at the same time they’re about as good as you can buy at the moment.  It has a Dual-core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 proccessor with a ULP GeForce GPU, Tegra 2 T20 chipset.  It backs this up with 1 gig of RAM and either 16gig or 32 gig of internal storage.  This can then be expanded through the MicroSD card slot, meaning you could have as much as 64gig of storage.

As you might expect from a 10″ tablet, the Asus Transformer has a 1280 by 800 pixel LCD capacitive screen.  On auto brightness the screen copes fine.  Turn this off and crank up the brightness and it’s visible in even very bright environments.  It’s a very clear screen, text looks crisp and video’s look good.  Personally I don’t feel YouTube videos look as good as they do on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, the colours not quite as bright, the image not quite as sharp, but still very good.

The Transformer comes with stereo speakers, but as I said above, they’ve been positioned very badly at the bottom of the edges, where you would have your hands!  It does have a 3.5″ audio jack for headphones and it also has a HDMI out, although I didn’t have a suitable cable with which to try this.

Along with the HDMI out, the other key feature and strong selling point of the Asus Transformer is it can be purchased with a keyboard. I was rather sceptical of the keyboard at first.  Initially I found it a little slow and laggy, but only the first time.  I’ve used it a few times since and found it to be a very usable keyboard, far more usable than any on screen version.

The keyboard clicks in very easily, and can be removed very easily too.  A silver slide unlocks the keyboard and you simply pull the tablet away from the dock.  The Android OS copes very well moving from one state to the other.

When in keyboard mode, you can also use the trackpad at the front of the keyboard to control a pointer around the screen. It took a little while to get used to and I found myself still poking at the screen instead of using the pointer even after a week of use.  Mind you, I call it a pointer, but in the spirit of all things Android being designed for touch rather than stylus, the pointer is actually a big ring.  Initially I thought it meant something was loading, but in fact, move the circle round where you might normally touch and tap to select.  Once you get used to this, it’s quite effective.

Camera

Asus have obviously decided the main camera is much more important than the front facing camera on their Transformer, the main cam being 5MP and the front facing merely 1.3MP, compared to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 which was 3MP and 2MP.

The camera app is nice enough, with a few different options such as sepia and black and white photos.  The camera does a reasonable job, although as I’ve said in other tablet reviews, I don’t see it was an important part in any way.

See all the shots I took with the Asus Transformer here.

Here’s a sample shot of some handsome fellow too.

The video quality seems pretty good at 720p, although the sound comes across as a little hollow and base filled.

Benchmarking

As with other dual core devices I’ve used Smartbench 2011 to test the Asus Transformer -

• Samsung Galaxy SII (2.3.4)  -  3,600
• Motorola Xoom (3.2)  -  2,800
• Asus Transformer (3.2) – 2,600
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1  (3.1)  -  2,600
• HTC Sensation (2.3.3)  -  2,000

Although results seem identicle to the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, I would say it doesn’t feel that way when using.  The Asus actually feels snappier and quicker.  The SGT 10.1 does suffer a little from laggy moments but none of that on the Transformer.

Battery

I’ve been looking around the internet, trying to find the specs of the battery in the Transformer and can’t find any quoted mAh, only screen on time, which Asus claim to be 9 hours of playing a video.  Cleverly, there’s a battery built into the keyboard that will charge your device while plugged in, apparently extending it’s life to 16 hours.  If these figures are accurate, that’s plenty of screen on time to last most users 3 or 4 days.

What I’ve found so far, I’ve had the device for over a week and I’ve not had to charge it yet!  I can’t tell you the screen on time, because each time plug the keyboard in, it treats it like it’s plugged in to charge and the battery stats reset.  Unfortunately there’s no battery meter for the dock, but the tablet is at 50% and charging once more from the keyboard as I type this.

Conclusion

I very much like my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and figure it would need a pretty amazing tablet to make me think I’d bought the wrong device.  Bottom line here, the Transformer has not given me any buyers regret.  It is a great device, people buying the Transformer wont be disappointed in any way.

It’s strongest point is probably how snappy it is, the device feels quicker than other tablets I’ve used, much more responsive.  This and the seemingly epic battery life when used with the keyboard will make many people, very happy.

Whilst I don’t think this will necessary replace a netbook or a laptop, it will give you the benefits of both of these along with the benefits of a tablet. I’m sure for many people, this will be an ideal device.

Many thanks to Steve Gibbon for lending us this device to review.

http://www.testfreaks.com/tablet-computers/asus-eee-pad-transformer/