Asus Taichi review

Windows 8 is designed to work well on both laptops and tablets, so it was only a matter of time before we saw a hybrid of the two. The Asus Taichi is like no laptop we’ve seen before; as well as a normal 1080p screen on the inside, there’s a 1080p touchscreen built into the lid.

The Taichi is one of the boldest designs we’ve seen in some time

The laptop’s inner screen doesn’t support touch, but close the Taichi and you’re left with a touchscreen tablet. A dedicated button switches between the various screen modes available. You can have one screen or the other, both screens at once mirroring each other or, in Dual Screen Mode, show something completely different on each screen, so you can show off a PowerPoint presentation to your colleagues while still being able to read your notes.

There are two versions of the 11.6in Taichi. The basic model comes with an Intel Core i5-3317U processor and a 128GB SSD for £1,000, while the £1,200 top-spec model reviewed here has an Intel Core i7-3517U CPU and 256GB SSD. The Core i7-3517U processor runs at 1.9GHz, and it’s definitely quick enough to run Windows 8 smoothly. The Tai Chi has 4GB RAM, and managed 46 overall in our benchmarks. For reference, a desktop Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5-3570K scores 100, so this puts the Taichi in the top 10% of Ultrabooks when it comes to performance.

Unlike some hybrid devices, it functions perfectly as a laptop

We enjoyed using the laptop for normal tasks. The keyboard has wide, evenly-spaced keys that provide a good amount of tactile feedback for such a thin chassis, and the all-in-one touchpad didn’t get in the way of our hands while typing.

We were also pleased to note that the touchpad supports multi-touch gestures, which went some way for making up for the lack of touch support on the inner screen. Typing was also a relatively silent affair, but typing at speed tended to produce a rather unwelcome low rattling sound when we hit the keys.

The Taichi’s tablet form really works well with Windows 8’s tiled Start Screen and apps; the touchscreen makes scrolling through the various menus and icons much smoother and easier than trying to navigate the desktop with the all-in-one touchpad or a mouse.

That said, the Taichi’s tablet mode wasn’t an entirely seamless experience. It may only be little more than 17mm thick, but at 306mm long and 199mm wide, you’ve almost got to cradle it in your arms to make sure you don’t drop it, making it just a little too big to use with the same comfort and confidence as a dedicated tablet. It’s also twice the weight of an iPad. Having a screen as a lid is also a cause for concern. It picks up fingerprints like a forensics expert and, even though it’s made of hardened Gorilla Glass, we’ve seen enough scratched laptops to worry how long the Taichi’s touchscreen would stay pristine. Asus does supply the Taichi with a slip cover to help protect it, though.

Unsurprisingly, the thin chassis means there’s no optical drive, but the Taichi does come with two USB3 ports, a micro HDMI port, an audio jack with adjacent volume control, and what Asus calls a mini VGA port, which you can use to connect to a VGA display with the supplied adaptor. There’s no Ethernet port, but a USB to 10/100 Ethernet adaptor is in the box.

For graphics, the Taichi uses the processor’s integrated Intel Graphics 4000 chipset. This is no gaming chipset, as shown by a stuttering 15.8fps average in our Dirt Showdown test. This makes it less than ideal for gaming, but the graphics are still perfectly good for watching video in HD.

Integrated graphics often bode well for good battery life, but the Taichi only lasted for 5 hours and 13 minutes in our battery test. This is below average – we expect at least six hours from an ultra-portable laptop these days.

The Taichi’s two screens have some sensible features. The inner screen has a matt finish so won’t suffer too much from overhead reflections if you need to work out and about; the keyboard is also backlit so you can work in the dark too. The outer tablet-style screen is a glossy model which gives colours more punch so is better for watching films and playing games.

Our main complaint is the lack of an interior touchscreen. During our test period we repeatedly reached over the keyboard to tap an inviting big tile on the Windows Start screen, only to find that nothing happened and we had to reach for the touchpad. You’ll probably get used to it with time, but we bet you’ll still pine for a touchscreen on both sides.

Both displays also have super-sharp 1080p resolutions, which is plenty of pixels across an 11.6in screen. We did have problems with screen brightness though, with both screens often appearing too dark. Turning off the automatic brightness control fixed this, but left us to set our own levels manually – something we don’t expect to do on a tablet. We can’t be sure if the Taichi’s light sensor is to blame (or was even faulty in our review unit) or whether the problem lies with Windows 8, but we’re looking into it now. Brightness aside they looked pretty impressive with vibrant colours and wide viewing angles.

It’s cleverly designed, and its specifications are impressive, but the Taichi doesn’t quite deliver for us – its battery life is a small let for starters. More importantly, while the two screens are an interesting idea, we’d rather have a single touchscreen with a pivot (such as on the Lenovo Yoga). You may not get the niche bonus of two displays, such as giving ad-hoc presentations, but at least you’ll always have a touchscreen to hand. In this respect the Taichi feels like a compromise and at this price it’s simply not good enough.

To put it in perspective, you could buy one of Asus’s own VivoBook S200E touchscreen laptops, plus a Microsoft Surface tablet, and still have £400 to spare. The Taichi is a nice laptop, but it’s not nice enough to justify its price.