Asus Eee Slate EP121 review

Take one look at the Eee Slate and it’s clear to see that Asus has produced something rather special; with sharp lines, plenty of brushed metal and a textured finish, it’s a great looking tablet. A huge 12.1in widescreen display also makes it something of a behemoth, but that extra room has been filled with some powerful internal components.

Instead of using a low-power Intel Atom or AMD Fusion processor, the Slate is powered by a much faster Core i5-470UM. This dual-core chip runs at 1.3GHz and made Windows 7 Home Premium feel very responsive, even with several programs open at once. The 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium uses all 4GB of the fitted RAM, so it didn’t struggle when running multiple browser tabs. With an overall score of 29 in our multimedia benchmarks, the Slate was around three times faster than a netbook or low-power tablet.

The 1,280×800 display resolution looks sharp and is large enough to watch native 720p video or browse the web with minimal horizontal scrolling. High Definition playback was impressively smooth thanks to Intel’s integrated graphics, which can also output to an external display using the mini-HDMI port. Unsurprisingly it isn’t capable of playing modern games, scraping a lowly 7.6fps in our Call of Duty 4 test. A pair of in-built speakers tick a box, but aren’t particularly loud and audio quality was unsurprisingly muted.

Using the Slate, it was immediately obvious that Asus understands Windows isn’t the ideal operating system for a touchscreen device. The single hardware button on the front of the device sensibly defaults to the alt-tab keyboard shortcut, which makes switching between programs much quicker than using the touchscreen. Another useful addition is a hardware button to toggle the on-screen keyboard. This was quicker than dragging it into place by hand, but typing still felt slow and cumbersome, even on the large multi-point capacitive display. Thankfully Asus bundles a Bluetooth keyboard with the Slate, so you can type as you would on a regular laptop if you need to. It has a slightly curved layout which can take a short while to get used to, but it’s still far easier than using the tablet itself.

Asus also supplies a stylus (which it would prefer we called a Digitiser pen) for natural text input. Obviously this is slower than using a keyboard, but the character recognition was very accurate. When you aren’t using it, a slot in the back of the unit holds the stylus to stop it getting misplaced. There are two USB ports if you prefer to use a keyboard and mouse, as the leather slip case doubles as a desk stand.

Although the performance increase is fantastic, there are negative side effects from using a Core i5 processor instead of an Atom or Fusion chip. We weren’t expecting amazing battery life, but a pitiful three hours away from the mains is very disappointing. Thankfully the power adaptor is very compact and includes a USB port for charging your other mobile devices, but it’s still annoying to have to take it with you everywhere for when the Slate inevitably runs out of power. The processor also creates a lot of heat; to keep the system cool, the fan has to spin constantly and is very noticeable. The fan noise would be easier to bear if it ever spun down, but it always ran at full speed regardless of our choice of power setting.

The other major downside to the Eee Slate is its price. With high performance hardware and a 64GB SSD it was never going to be cheap, but we were still astounded when Asus announced it would cost almost £1,000; this is easily twice as much as almost every other tablet currently available. Even knowing this it was still difficult not to like the Slate, as it has a great design and a very responsive touchscreen. It might be the best Windows-based tablet we’ve ever used, but the fan noise and below average battery life stop it from being truly great. If it cost half as much it would definitely get a recommendation, but at this price an ultra-portable laptop would be a much more sensible choice.