Asus Eee Pad Transformer review

The worry we had with Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablets was that they’d all be very similar and there’d be little to distinguish them, a bit like the current netbook market.

However, with the second Android 3.0 tablet we’ve reviewed, Asus has managed to make its Eee Pad Transformer very different to the Motorola Xoom. The main difference is that the Transformer has an optional keyboard dock, turning it from a plain tablet into a more powerful netbook.

We also feel that Asus has got the price right, with the 16GB model costing £380 without the keyboard dock or £430 with. Without the dock, it’s around £20 cheaper than the Wi-Fi 16GB Apple iPad 2. Given that Apple’s tablet is the one to beat, Android tablets need to be cheaper in order to compete, which is partly where the Xoom went a bit wrong.

Just because the Transformer is cheaper than the iPad, it doesn’t mean that it’s cheaply made. While the plastic case isn’t as nice as the all-aluminium body of the iPad, it feels tough. It’s good that the sides are made of metal, to help protect the tablet when you carry it.

Using plastic means that the Eee Pad Transformer weighs 680g, which is just 80g heavier than the iPad 2. In use it means that it’s comfortable to hold and we didn’t get the urge to put it down as often as we did with the Xoom.

Asus has used an IPS panel for the 1,280×800 screen. Comparing it side-by-side with the iPad 2, we found that there was very little difference in terms of image quality. The Eee Pad Transformer’s screen looks absolutely fantastic, with bright whites and deep blacks. Viewing angles are superb, too, as you’d expect from IPS. We like the wider aspect ratio of this tablet, as it leaves more room for web pages and other content than the iPad 2’s lower-resolution screen.

As with the majority of new non-Apple tablets, the Eee Pad Transformer is powered by a 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 chipset. Its dual-core processor is very fast, powering through the Quadrant Android Benchmark with a score of 2,146, making it slightly faster than the Xoom. Running the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, the Transformer completed the test in 1,878ms, which is again slightly faster than the Xoom and iPad 2.

We found the Transformer slightly smoother and faster to use than the Xoom. The transition animation when switching between homepages was particularly smooth. We found web browsing that bit quicker, too, with transitions from portrait to landscape (and vice versa) quicker than on the Xoom. However, put this tablet next to the iPad 2 and Apple’s seems faster and smoother, particularly in scrolling.

A big advantage of Android 3.0 is that it supports Flash, so lets you view pretty much every website. Flash isn’t always very efficient, though, so it’s worth setting the browser to load it only on demand. This makes general web browsing much better. Even then, we found that the browser would occasionally crash, deleting all of the open tabs with no recovery options. Crashes were few and far between, but Android 3.0 is clearly in need of a couple of updates to make it more stable.

We weren’t very impressed with the rear-facing 5-megapixel camera. We found that still shots were quite noisy, with soft details. Video is the really disappointing part – the Eee Pad Transformer is completely incapable of shooting smooth video. All our test footage was incredibly jerky and basically unusable.

Switching to the 1.2-megapixel front camera produced smoother video, but then you’re limited to shooting footage of yourself, or guessing where you’re pointing the camera. The jerky footage feels more like a software issue than a fundamental hardware flaw.

It’s good to see that GPS is built in, so you can use location aware apps, such as Google Maps, when you’re out and about if you tether the tablet to your mobile phone over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth to provide a data connection.

We were pleased to see the My Library eBook reader app. This scans the tablet’s storage automatically looking for compatible books. It will work with ePub and PDF files, and can read encrypted documents if you sign into your Adobe Digital Editions account.

We found that it would read our encrypted PDF test file, but it didn’t handle it particularly well. If you zoom into one page, it doesn’t reformat the text to make it bigger, and it only remembers settings for one page; when you change to the next page you have to set up the zoom level again. EPub handling is much better and zooming in resizes the format and reformats the page. However, it didn’t work with one of our purchased books and crashed.

It’s the keyboard dock that will garner this tablet a fair amount of interest. Once you’ve clicked the tablet firmly into place, it can fold flat against the keyboard, turning the Eee Pad Transformer into a netbook. The keyboard dock is exactly the same size as the tablet, adding 680g to the weight and 13mm to the height. With a total weight of 1.34kg, it’s similar to a standard netbook. In some ways it’s better than a netbook, as it’s quicker to respond and the IPS panel is both better and has a higher resolution than the screen on an average 10.1in netbook.

The keyboard is fairly comfortable to type on thanks to its decent-sized Chiclet-style keys. We like the way that Asus has put shortcut keys to control power to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as there’s no built-in Widget in Android 3.0 to do the same thing. Using the touchpad to control Android is odd at first, and we found ourselves often reaching for the screen rather than using it.

We found the keyboard occasionally causes problems or isn’t as useful as it could be. Asus has bundled Polaris Office with the Transformer, but this app doesn’t support Android’s copy-and-paste (you have to double-tap the screen instead), so keyboard shortcuts don’t work as they should. This feature works in other apps, such as Gmail, so you may want to try a different office app such as Documents To Go.

We tried to use the keyboard to type into Google Docs, but it doesn’t work. All that happens is the text on screen appears and disappears. It’s practically useless, so you’ll undock the tablet and go back to the custom Asus onscreen keyboard in no time. We recommend switching back to the standard Android version, though, as the custom version squeezes in a row of number keys, making it more cramped and harder to type on. However, if you want to plug the hardware keyboard back in, you’ll need to switch back to the Asus version to keep key compatibility.

The dock also gives you a full-sized SD card slot (the tablet has Micro SD only), as well as two USB ports that can be used for mass storage. You can access any storage that you plug in using the built-in file manager, which helps the Transformer feel more like a netbook that you can use for pretty much any job.

Battery life is very good – the tablet lasted a good couple of days in normal use. When using just the tablet it lasted 8h 37m when playing a video. Plug the keyboard dock in and the tablet gets to use its battery, too, extending battery life by an additional 7h 6m. It’s still less than the iPad 2, which lasted an astonishing 17h 5m, but the Transformer comes close when coupled with its dock.

If you don’t buy the dock or want to carry the tablet around by itself, it’s worth buying a case. Asus has an official Eee Pad Transformer soft case, which is very similar to the original iPad case. It protects the sides, rear and screen, plus it can fold round to form a rest. At the time of writing availability and price for this accessory were not available.

We’re pleased to say that Asus hasn’t altered the Android 3.0 interface at all. This means that it’s easy to pick up and use, while updates to the OS should be quicker to roll out. One of the problems with Android on smartphones is the sheer number of customisations on various handsets, which can changing the look, feel and operation of the OS dramatically.

With its high-quality screen and relatively low price, the Eee Pad Transformer is currently the best Android 3.0 tablet there is, easily beating the Motorola Xoom. We have to say that the Apple iPad 2 remains the best tablet in terms of how smooth and easy it is to use. If you’re adverse to Apple products and want something else, though, this is the tablet to buy. The keyboard dock isn’t essential, but it’s a nice add-on and gives you better battery life; if this isn’t important, buy the cheaper dock-free model instead.