Asus Eee Pad Slider review

Fold the screen flat and the Slider turns back into a regular Android tablet. Due to the keyboard, it’s a bit thicker than we’re used to at 17mm. At 906g, it’s also a touch heavier than a normal Android tablet, but it’s around 400g lighter than the Eee Pad Transformer with the keyboard dock attached, making it the better choice to lug around all day.

The slider runs the latest tablet-specific version of the operating system, Android 3.2, which irons out some of the first release’s problems, without adding any new features of note. In particular, the OS is that bit smoother and once the tablet had finished booting, the transitions between the home screens was silky smooth.

Asus has barely touched the OS, which is a good thing in our opinion, leaving Android to work the way it was designed. In addition to Polaris Office, Asus has added its MyLibrary eBook app (it’s Adobe DRM compatible), File Manager (for accessing USB keys and browsing memory) and Asus Cloud. The latter gives you a year’s free online storage, after which time you’ll have to pay to use it.

As with the Transformer, the Slider’s 1,280×800 IPS screen is one of the product’s highlights. Side-by-side with the iPad 2, it’s every bit its equal in terms of image quality. Brilliant and accurate colours matched with bright whites and superb viewing angles make it a joy to use. The higher resolution than the iPad 2, means that web browsing and movies feel more natural. If you’re watching films, a pair of headphones will make sense. Although the Slider’s speakers are loud, they sit underneath the screen, so in slate mode they sound a bit muffled.

The Slider has the same great display as the Transformer

It’s all helped by the dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra chip inside the tablet, which gives it plenty of power and the Slider never felt sluggish to us. This chip will handle HD video and, should you tire of watching on the 10.1in screen, there’s a Micro HDMI output so you can send video to an external display instead. Battery life is pretty good, lasting just over nine hours in our video playback test, although this is shorter than Transformer in dock mode, which lasted more than 15 hours (as a standard tablet, the Transformer lasted a similar 8h 37m).

The five-megapixel camera sits against your lap when typing. It can be activated in keyboard mode, but it’s difficult to hold and you’ll spend most of your time taking pictures of your desk. In tablet mode it’s a lot easier to hold and take pictures. Bizarrely, the focus on the camera didn’t work very well taking the sharp-looking preview image and knocking it out of focus. Detail was average in the resulting image and noise was high. Video recording at 720p (30fps) is also possible. Footage isn’t brilliant, though. Details get soft the further back in the frame you look, while noise is evident even in the brightest of rooms. Potentially more useful is the front-facing camera for video calling.

The camera isn’t great, and is next-to impossible to use when the keyboard is deployed

In terms of design the Slider is certainly very clever and the hinge feels robust and smooth in operation. The keyboard is useful, although it’s not always the most comfortable to type on. We found that the Eee Pad Transformer was easier to type on and, as it’s currently cheaper with the keyboard dock, is our preference. If you’d rather have a standard Android tablet, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 remains our top choice. For the sheer convenience of a keyboard in a relatively small form factor, though, there’s no beating the Eee Pad Slider.