That's not to say the It must be said, though, that it doesn't necessarily feel better in the hand. While the Galaxy Tab It's the same sort of shape as the iPad 2 and, while it certainly isn't uncomfortable to hold, the terminating edges of this device can cut into the more vulnerable bits of your palms after a long period of use. This does, at least, help the tablet turn into a nice clamshell shape when paired with its dock, the accessory that turns this thing from being a merely very nice tablet into a potential laptop replacement.
As far as ports and other such trappings go, the optional dock naturally steals the show with its full-sized USB 2. The selection on the tablet itself is a little light -- but no more or less than most slates. Pick this guy up in landscape mode and you'll find a 1. Look down on the opposite side and you'll see the proprietary connector that allows the tablet to slide neatly into the dock. This handles all the data exchange with the dock itself and, if you want to get data off the thing, this is how you'll have to do it.
There's no standard micro-USB connector here. There are two other openings on the bottom that serve as receivers for a pair of latches built into the dock. These come plugged up with bits of rubber when you unbox the tablet, so be sure to clear them before your slate has its first curious encounter with the dock.
Still holding it in landscape, you've got a 3. Rounding things out is a single finely cut speaker grill, sitting on the right side under the back. This of course dismisses any hopes of stereo sound but, more troublingly, places that single tweeter exactly where your palm is likely to go should you be holding it with your right hand.
Of course, you can always just flip the tablet over should the dialogue from that episode of SVU you're streaming get a little more muffled than usual, but we'd have preferred the speaker somewhere on the top. Or, even better, facing right at you, as on the new We are happy to report that, when unimpeded, the volume coming out of the lone speaker is actually quite good.
With or without the heroic prefix and mathematical designator it's safe to say this is a very nice panel. What you have here is a inch, x display that manages a stunning brightness maxing out at nits, handily topping what you'll find on most laptop panels and more than 50 percent higher than your average tablet panel.
The luminosity is quite noticeable, and the contrast too, with deep darks and vibrant brights. However, color reproduction seemed a bit flat, with whites tending toward yellow and brighter hues coming up short.
If you're using this tablet indoors you won't need to go anywhere near maximum brightness to get an eyeful, though we won't blame you if you crank it up anyway. Even when we did that and dialed the brightness down to 50 percent, the display was still quite arresting. ASUS claims degree visibility and indeed, we were able to make out the screen clearly from severe side angles. From the front, too, the colors stayed strong even as we dipped the screen farther and farther forward -- an area where even high-end displays on MacBooks start to show their limitations.
That yellowish hue did start to darken when we took the angles to extremes, but even then we could still follow what was happening onscreen without issue. Let's start by being clear on one thing: this is not the old dock, rebadged to go with this brand new tablet. It, too, has gone on a diet and, thanks to some slimmer dimensions, it won't be compatible with your first-gen Transformer.
Sorry, early adopters. The good news is that even with the dock attached, the tablet is thinner and lighter than a netbook remember those? You can easily stuff the whole thing in your messenger bag with plenty of room left for, well, anything, really.
To connect the tablet to the accessory you simply flip-up the connecting port on the back of the dock and slip in the Transformer. Yes, this is a very good tablet - and the best Android tablet for the money.
However, the iPad 2 still appears to be the better choice. The OS is better, battery life is better, app selection is better, and performance is generally on par. The Prime is the closest any Android tablet has come to leaping the high bar set by the iPad 2, but it still can't top it - and it won't really have a chance of doing so unless battery life is improved and Android 4.
We had been hoping for iPad-beating levels of responsiveness, smoothness and battery life. Despite being easily as thin and light as most rivals, this aluminium-clad tablet is far more powerful thanks to its quad-core Tegra 3 internals. Quite simply, the Prime is the best Android tablet available and arguably the best tablet per se. Unfortunately, the keys remain cramped. We were wowed by its brilliant IPS display, razor-thin design, and remarkably comfortable keyboard dock.
However, if you're looking for the most powerful, portable inch Android tablet on the market, look no further. The docking station option makes it a superb choice for power users who want a tablet that converts into a productivity workhorse. Our full rating is pending until our testing is complete, but this tablet is shaping up as one of the top contenders you can buy today.
We'll update this review with full testing results when available. The Transformer Prime ships through online retailers December 12, and will be in stores December No word yet as to the availability of an expected 3G version. I can't recommend it the same way I would the iPad 2, assuming that there's an app available for whatever. You'll end up carrying around a hefty bit of kit when it's all slotted together. The all-metal constuction is responsible for that weight, but it does at least mean that when it's all closed up, the Prime is hunkered down like a frightened armadillo.
The keys are of the square, isolated variety. Although they are spread the whole way across the base, they're still fairly squished up, so they can be awkward to type on. It's about the same size as a netbook's keyboard, so if you can't squash your hands in enough for one of those, you'll struggle to type for too long on the Prime. The trackpad is rather small, but it supports multi-touch gestures and is easy to swipe your finger across.
It's reasonably comfortable to use, but if you're doing lots of scrolling around web pages, you're much better off using your fingers on the screen.
The dock adds a USB 2. It also has its own battery, which complements the tablet's own, giving an extra 6 hours of run-time on top of the tablet's As Asus' flagship tablet, we'd really expected it to push the boat out on software as much as it has in the construction. Sadly, it hasn't yet loaded it up with the latest version of Android for tablets and phones, Ice Cream Sandwich , but has instead gone for the older Android 3.
To the average person in the street, having the latest updates may not be high on their list of priorities. But when you're spending half a grand on something claiming to be absolutely top-of-the-range, it's galling to know that it's already running outdated software, especially when ICS has started to ship on high-end devices like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
Asus told us the Prime will be updated "hopefully" some time in January, but that it can't say if any of the tablets sold after that time will ship with the new software. It's clearly a priority for Asus, but if it had waited to send out review units until the software was ready it would have avoided this confusion.
Thankfully though, the Honeycomb experience on the Prime is still a pleasant one. You get five home screens to fill up with apps and live widgets. There's a few widgets provided by Asus, including a handy battery indicator for the tablet and dock. There's also a useful weather widget that shows the weather of your location -- of course, you could just look out of the window and see for yourself.
At the bottom of the screen are the three buttons for navigating around, taking you back, to the home screen, or bringing up a carousel of currently open apps.
Any apps you don't want displayed on your home screens are thrown into grids over various pages, similar to iOS home screens on the iPad. The web browser is clean and simple and supports multi-tabbed browsing, which is handy. The on-screen keyboard is very basic but easy enough to use. Android allows you to download different keyboards, so grab one of those if you don't like the default.
First, the option to focus on certain areas of the image via the touchscreen is a pleasant surprise. In addition to that, the white balance and the exposure value can be set manually. Moreover, there are nine different scene modes, such as portrait, night, or landscape shots, that preset certain color temperatures and exposure values.
The location data can also be saved together with the picture via GPS. The camera in the precursor, Transformer TF , only had a resolution of 5 megapixels, which doesn't inevitably mean that the picture quality is lower in practical use. The camera in the Transformer Prime can very well compete with inexpensive digital cameras. But it doesn't even come close to system or SLR cameras due to the lack of depth of field. It suffices for occasional snapshots; we wouldn't make vacation pictures with the tablet, though.
The panorama mode is also nice and easy to use. The panorama scenes are saved in a resolution of x pixels at 96 dpi and reproduce an angle of approximately degrees. Consequently, they aren't very rich in detail. However, the picture quality is very good in favorable light, as can be seen in our sample picture.
Nevertheless, external apps offer a larger functionality: A convenient software solution would be the app "Photoaf Panorama Pro THD", which makes pictures with degrees possible and exploits all four cores of the Tegra 3 chip. The 1. A moderate image quality is accepted in favor of a stable connection.
The given image and sound quality is quite impressive when used outdoors in good lighting conditions. However, image noise is noticed even on HD pictures indoors. Asus offers a " Smart Cover " as an official accessory. This cover is actually a lid that is inserted into the slots, intended for the keyboard dock at the same time, via two holders. The origami idea is quite unique. The cover is folded and forms a stand for the tablet.
Only styli that are generally suitable for capacitive screens work should one be used on the Transformer Prime.
However, the use of a pen that has a bulky rubber ball at its tip is a matter of taste. The keyboard is made in a chiclet design, but it has slightly smaller keys in a size of 13x13 millimeters. In comparison: Keys with a size of 15x15 millimeters are frequently found in notebooks with a chiclet style keyboard.
The keys' pressure point is fairly soft so that typing has a slightly spongy feel to it. Since it isn't a keyboard with a Windows layout, it has a Home key rather than a Windows key. It brings the user back to the home screen in every situation. Moreover, it has two keys for FN switching right away - a gap would have possibly been created otherwise. However, only the four arrow keys are assigned with switchable functions.
The touchpad with the two usual mouse keys is actually unnecessary here because navigating via the touchscreen is a lot more convenient. It's only more suitable than screen navigation when clicking on small objects. The only multi-touch gesture that we could discover was scrolling with two fingers. The Transformer Prime has been equipped with all customary sensors common for a tablet. Thus, the touchscreen responds to finger inputs without delays as is often the case in low-priced smartphones, for example.
Scrolling through an Internet site or the context menu is continuously smooth. The gravitation sensor detects the tablets position, among other things, and rotates the screen from landscape to portrait mode with a delay of about one second.
Cars in racing games, such as Riptide GP will be introduced further below, are controlled by swaying the screen. It works quite reliably. The gyroscope is responsible for this. It records the tilt of the device in all directions. The compass that always points the direction, such as in Google Maps, is also quite handy. Additionally, the light sensor measures the ambient light and allows the screen brightness to be adapted automatically.
The tablet's virtual keyboard can always be used comfortably. Touch inputs respond without delay, and thus more experienced users will be able to type quickly. There are also two different design options: The default Asus keyboard supports text inputs via Swype. This means that the user can glide over the keys of the word and receives suggestions like in T9. Android's default keyboard is - even if only in portrait mode - a bit more compact because the fourth row with numbers has been omitted and it doesn't support Swype.
Nevertheless, text inputting using the hardware keyboard is always most comfortable. Asus also doesn't promise too much with multi-touch support of up to ten fingers. Although this function doesn't contribute a great deal to productivity, it works in correspondingly developed games or the vast number of popular piano apps without flaw.
All in all, it can likely be said that the Transformer Prime may have the best screen among the currently available tablets with these excellent rates. Apart from good case and design, there aren't many major novelties to be discovered when compared to its predecessor, Asus Transformer TF Although the resolution of x pixels and a size of The good low black value of 0.
Asus specifies a viewing angle of degrees in its Transformer Prime. Merely the reflective screen mars the enthusiasm a bit. Thanks to the excellent brightness, reflections can be compensated quite well outdoors. However, direct sunlight isn't much fun with this tablet either. Buying an anti-glare screen protector is definitely worth it when the tablet is to be used outdoors frequently. The Tegra 3 is supposed to supply more power and have a lower power consumption at the same time.
This sounds like a contradiction, but the chip manages this with a fifth, so-called companion core , which is clocked with MHz and is responsible for less processing intensive tasks.
The four main cores have a default clock of 1. The Transformer TF has three performance modes for energy saving purposes. They can be selected in the menu on the lower right. Balance Mode: maximum CPU clock of 1.
To measure the performance comparably, we use the popular Android benchmark app, Smartbench versions and , as well as several browser benchmarks for a cross-system performance measurement. We were first interested in the difference before and after the upgrade to Android 4. All rates were slightly higher here and since the difference was so marginal, we won't deal with the benchmark rates under Android 3. And the Transformer Prime's rates almost all surpassed all other current tablets even before the upgrade.
But this was to be expected with the newest ARM quad core. The iPad 2 stands unrivaled at the top only in Google's V8 benchmark. In return, the Transformer beats all other Android devices by more than twice the score.
The Asus tablet also clearly beats all other Android tablets in all other benchmarks. The Android 4. At first glance, only cosmetic modifications are noticed because the performance hasn't been improved much. Switching between the desktops is a bit faster, the fonts have been slightly altered and the context menu has been arranged more clearly. In addition to the apps, a link to the Android market can be found and even better, the widgets are in an extra category.
The one or other new one has been added with the upgrade.
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