ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 Reviews

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ASUS Transformer Pad TF300
ASUS Pad Transformer TF300 is the latest from ASUS tablet issued to challenge the iPad 2. Pad Transformer TF300 has a quad-core processor Nvidia Tegra 3 and a better camera. ASUS has also added added a few tweaks to the OS Ice Cream Sandwich and 8GB of free online storage bundle. You can even add a keyboard, making it like a mini laptop.

A 10.1-inch screen wrapped in a glossy black bezel in front Pad Transformer TF300. ASUS logo and a 1.2 MP camera above the screen. A power button is on the atars tablet, while the headphone jack / microphone on the right sole. On the left side of the Transformer Pad terda [at volume rocker, a mini-HDMI port, and microSD slot. Port charges are among the docking port on the bottom.

Transformer Pad 300 has a weight of 653 grams with dimensions of 10.4 x 7.1 x 0.38 inches. However, when mounted docking keyboar, TF300 weight to 1.3 Kg.



It does not feel like a year has passed since we last ASUS Transformer original and innovative keyboard dock, but time does fly, and little has happened since then. The company has released a prime, for starters, followed by two other high-end models. And now, Transformer OG be the way of the dodo, as new affordable Transformer Pad 300 (aka TF300) takes place. Although this latest tablet was announced back in February, it only will only be sold in the U.S. this week, ranging from $ 379 for the 16GB version and $ 399 for one with a 32GB built-in storage.

Besides the fact that this product replaces a truly memorable, TF300 is interesting because it is a better deal for consumers: borrow some design cues from high-end prime, and also steps up to the 8-megapixel camera is similar. As Prime unskinned version also running Android 4.0 and packs quad-core chip Tegra 3 - something you do not often see at this price tablet. In short, the main difference between this and the prime is the battery (10 hours vs. 12), and the quality of the screen (10-inch screen offers 350 nits of brightness here instead of 600). They all sound like a reasonable trade-off and, frankly, they are. That's our brief review, over and done with only two verses, but we meet through the rest if you desire a little more detail.


ASUS Pad Transformer TF300 review

Hardware


Think of it as a dilute Prime. Make no mistake: the TF300 shares some of the overall design language with the original, even now that there are some Transformers in the market still feels cohesive lineup. Even so, with prices ranging from $ 379, companies naturally prefer to hold some developing that makes Prime worth the premium. After all, ASUS needs to give some excuse to splurge on top-shelf models, right?

For starters, turning back now made of plastic, not metal, so although it looks like Prime and Zenbook line, the build quality is not quite perfect. Meanwhile, the body itself has been widened to .38 inch (9.7mm), up from 0.33 (8.4mm) on Prime. As for weight, TF300 tip the scales at 1.39 pounds, compared with 1.28 for the original. None of that has much to say, though: even with the dimensions, TF300 which manages to be slimmer than the new Galaxy Tab 2 Tab 10.1 and Acer Iconia A200, two tablets at prices that measure .41 inches thick and .49, respectively one.

As for weight, TF300 heavier than the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 1.29 pounds of two big brothers, the Prime. For what it's worth, though, it offers about the same runtime with the A200, which weighs one-fifth of a pound more. We have not tested the second-gen 10.1, so we have not been able to speak with a battery, but suffice it to say that the lighter weight will not be such a boon if the battery can not last for several of its competitors Hefner.

So what do all these statistics amount to? A very nice mid-range tablet, we say. No, it's not as thin as a rock-solid, or teasing as prime, but if you are willing to spend $ 500 on a tablet, you should have, ya know? Compared to Tab $ 399 $ 350 2 10.1 and A200, the total package here is a little more sophisticated, though we also had good things to say about the finish muted at 10.1, and non-slip support on the A200. Oh, talking about sophisticated, tablets tested had a navy support, and it is the version you'll see sales start this week. Finally, will also be available in red and white color is more fun, but you have to wait until June for them to hit the shelves.



Before we turn to how the tablets actually do, let's do a quick tour around the device, right? 'Round back, of course, you will find that the 8-megapixel auto-focus camera, paired with a 1.2-megapixel one on the front. If you're looking for the power / lock, you'll find it on the edge of the landscape, leaving it easy to press even when the tablet is located on the keyboard dock. The volume rocker and micro-HDMI connector sitting on the top left side (assuming you hold it in landscape), with a microSD slot is located further down on the left edge. On the right, but required no 3.5mm headphone / mic jack. The bottom edge - one that connects to an optional keyboard dock - is home to three connectors, including a 40-pin charging slot that works with the included AC adapter.

Inside, the device is home to all the usual radio and sensors, including Bluetooth 3.0, a gyroscope, e-compass, aGPS, an ambient light sensor and G-sensor, either a 16GB or 32GB of internal storage. And no, for those of you who are wondering, we did not encounter any problems with WiFi or GPS, as some owners of Prime, although it is recognized types of real-world problems the owner may stumble in after the honeymoon period is extended.

ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 Reviews

The look and sound

As Prime that came before it (and most other 10-inch tablet on the market), this person has a number of pixels 1280 x 800. The difference, though, is that while the original Primary has 600-nit super + IPS screen, the TF300 has a brightness level of 350 nits and a "just" IPS. (We know, right?) If you work indoors, with a tablet connected to a keyboard dock, the decrease in brightness should not bother you, even if you are parked outside the room you might find a more narrow perspective than what you otherwise would get on Prime. However, the brightness is pushed to the max (a luxury you can afford, given the strong battery life), you should have little problem glance your email while traveling or framing shots in the camera app.

Even if you do not end up buying the dock, while the movie is simple to follow the tablet is resting flat on a table (or airplane tray) in front of you. (. Keep in mind, though, that the speaker is located on the back side, which means it is otherwise hard tablet, balanced audio will sound muffled if you rest it face-up) Indeed, the major drawback seems to be that these 350 - nit panel did not do as good job as a 600-nit against the glare of the sun.

Performance and graphics

A quad-core chip is not necessarily a shortcut to a perfect performance - and not the Ice Cream Sandwich.
As Prime, the TF300 package of 1GB of RAM and a quad-core processor Tegra 3, although this chip is clocked at a slightly lower speed (1.2GHz vs 1.3). If you care, this type of DDR3 memory now - an improvement over the Transformer OG. Once again, ASUS has programmed three different power modes (balanced, power saving and performance), and depending on where you choose the chip can be overclocked to 1.3GHz or throttled down to 600MHz level (see table below for a quick performance comparison). So what are feeds and speeds to translate, anyway? Superlative benchmark scores, for starters. While not quite the best big brother (and why would anyone expect it to?), Was steamrolled its similarly priced, similarly sized competitors in every benchmark we threw at it.

Note also, that the TF300 is leading the broad notch in graphics tests as NenaMark. NVIDIA is putting a lot of marketing muscle into demoing the game on Tegra 3, and has seen to it that the tab like the TF300 comes pre-loaded with a title or two is designed to showcase rendering skills. Indeed, we saw nary a hiccup when we escaped monkey in Run Temple, and the screen is also responsive as we swiped up to jump and slide down to the overgrown trees. And if we say so, that allows speakers to some crunchy sound effects (ie, until the person next to you on the train-scent into your eyes they turn off the screaming monkey).

However, quad-core chip is not necessarily a shortcut to a perfect performance - and not the Ice Cream Sandwich, in this case. Especially when we start playing with it, we see the delay as we knocked on the application, and the screen does not always seem to hear us call the radius. (For what it's worth, we never had an accident app.) All of this increases quite a bit after we reboot the device for the first time, but even then we waited patiently through the lag here and there. In particular, web browsing is a bit disappointing: when you zoom in on text or images, you'll almost always see some white tiles before the scale of things as they should. Even hinted that the benchmark values: although TF300 took the gold medal in SunSpider and Vellamo, was won by a much narrower margin than he did in the other categories.

Power saver

(600MHz-1GHz)

Balanced

(1.2GHz)

Performance

(1.2-1.3GHz)


Rest assured that if you are satisfied that the average performance mode you will not take a lot of performance hit, if any. Our graphics and the balance between modes of performance were similar across the board, which means there is no incentive to many to switch to the maximum setting, especially if the balanced mode holds the promise of longer battery life.

Battery

According to ASUS, 22Wh juicepack the TF300 can last through up to 10 hours of active use. In our standard rundown test, we had eight and a half hours of video playback before the tablet finally gave out. Overall, it's not as impressive a show as Prime Transformer, 25Wh battery that lasts 10-plus hours on the same test - and that's despite the fact that Prime has the overhead of a brighter screen. It is, of course, our video playback test weight, not least because we fix the brightness at 50 percent. With the use of less intensive (read: more idle time) we eked out close to 12 hours, and even some video playback.

This time, the pier, also has a smaller battery than you'd get with Premier (16.5Wh than 22Wh), which should amount to an extra five hours of runtime. We have not completed the test with full dock, but rest assured we are on it. We will update this review after we get the final value.

Update: And the results are in! With the help of keyboard docking station, which extends battery life TF300 to 12 hours and four minutes.
ASUS Transformer Pad TF300 Specification Reviews
Dock

Some things have not changed. Transformer is, like any other we've last worked with the keyboard dock that serves as a battery, adding an extra five hours of runtime, in this case. This pier also houses two full-size port - USB 2.0 socket and SD slot - gives you two more ways to shuttle files between tablet and computer. The most important note, though, if you're new around these parts is that the Transformer is not exactly living out of the box with his name: the dock is sold separately for $ 150.

For better and worse, engineering here has not really changed, so if you already have a first-gen Transformer and wondering whether you should upgrade, you can probably get away with embezzling part of this. For newcomers, though, we'll say this: the useful, but we do not recommend buying a tablet and dock and expect them to add up to a laptop replacement. The keys have the feel of the thin, dangerous for them, and are on a weakness that has been shrunk to accommodate 10-inch screen. We also found that the speed is limited by the tablet word entries, so even though your hands may fly over the keyboard, you'll still see a slight delay as the letters began to appear on the screen. In terms of typing experience, then, we would recommend it around as much as we would a netbook: it's very useful to peck out the URL, web search and a short message, but we would not recommend writing a 15-page term paper (or even a 4,000-word review) on it.



This dock is useful to peck out the URL, but we would not suggest you write a paper on it.
The truth is, though, even a netbook might have a keyboard panel is stronger than this - not to mention, better ergonomics. ASUS has not done anything to improve the weight distribution of off-kilter, so that when the tablet is docked still can tilt back if you're not careful (this is especially true if you work with it on your lap). For what it's worth, the tablet fits into the dock by clicking and setup combined convince feels quite durable, even if the bottom of the dock are prone to surface scratches.

Ironically, though, we enjoy a small dock, multitouch trackpad is more than our laptop touchpads on many test. Paging up and down or side to side is a no-hassle, and the buttons are tactile, if a little noisy. Pad is not wide enough enough to pinch-to-zoom, however, and the trackpad does not support it, you have to click twice to enlarge, or just reach and perform movements on the screen. Once you get over the feeling that you are "supposed" to use the trackpad for scrolling and zooming, can actually be very liberating to mix the input keyboard, mouse and touch screen, depending on what is comfortable.

For the first time buyer, there is no reason to consider other than this one pier, one of the fine-tuned to fit the dimensions of that particular TF300. But people think of their retirement OG Transformers may be curious to see if they can save that $ 150 to slip their new, state-of-the-art tablet to the pier is quite old, but still good. ASUS has a ready answer for you, and we were afraid that's not what you want to hear: TF300 is not compatible with the original dock or USB cable. It should go without saying that the new dock is not 100 percent sympathetic with OG of Prime Transformer or both, because the pier TF300 is specifically designed to cradle 300.

Software


Although manufacturers like Samsung and HTC have a field day customizing Ice Cream Sandwich, ASUS attach different strategy: load Android tablet with the stock version 4.0.3, and peppering it with some additional applications and widgets (all uninstallable, thankfully).

As for those pre-installed applications, the list includes the Amazon Kindle reader; Backup App (along with a separate App Backup & Restore); App Locker to password-protect the application, a shortcut to get Glowball; ASUS MyCloud, My Library and MyNet; Netflix ; Photoshop Express, SuperNote; Temple Run; Zinio magazine store, and a shortcut to the game TegraZone (we be dead-serious about NVIDIA marketing influence, people). Users also get free lifetime 8GB ASUS WebStorage, a twist on the way ASUS treated Transformer OG (in this case, the customer receives unlimited storage, which is only free for the first year).

Update: Turns out Photoshop Express and the Temple Run will not come pre-loaded on the TF300 when it hits the shelves after all; the application is installed on the unit recently issued for review.

Camera

In addition to industrial design, another key way in which the TF300 taking after Prime is the picture quality. Now, the tablet Transformer base has an8-megapixel camera, backlit-illuminated CMOS sensor with a lens f.2.2. That is not very different from the 8-megapixel sensor and f/2.4 prime lens, but Prime also has an LED flash for low-light shots. Even so, this makes for a welcome improvement over the 5-megapixel camera is included in the model year. And though the megapixels are not everything, it also has the potential to beat the 3-megapixel shooter Galaxy Tab 2 at 10.1, which also has no flash. And we are certainly comfortable saying this is a better deal than the $ 350 Acer Iconia Tab A200, which for the same price do not have the rear camera at all, and not even always be thinner or lighter because it is not that extra hardware.

For better and worse, the cameras do the same as the one on Prime. Here, too, you can press to focus, and the camera does the job (though not necessarily fast) awesome honing in on the details of your choice. We do take some issue with rendering color: some colors looked undersaturated (see the apples in our gallery above), while other nuances get lost in translation. Some red begonia, for instance, is actually magenta, if the resulting image we can trust. On the bright side, the camera flash-less holding its own in a dimly lit (but not necessarily darker) setting.

Transformer Generation also noted 1080p video at 30 fps. Fortunately, we experienced no dropped frames that we did when we first tested the original: here is relatively light on the quality of image blur, and audio capture smart enough to capture the subtle sound of the camera, such as talking on it. Watch the compilation below, for example: you can hear the stranger outside the camera to express amusement (or horror!) In the mannequins in store windows - kind of detail that might have been drowned by the sound of the wind that we had recorded with a lower device.

Laptop ASUS


Configurations, accessories and competition


It seems clear that the quad-core chip TF300 provides a real advantage in terms of game speed, and overall longevity.
The TF300 begins at $ 379 for 16GB of storage, with taking $ 399 32GB model. (Side note: why can not all manufacturers charge only a small premium to double the internal storage) In addition, ASUS sells some accessories (no, we do not really count here namesake pier): VersaSleeve (it is what it sounds like), dongle micro-HDMI-to-VGA adapter and an external USB card reader 4-in-1 memory - you know, if you want an SD reader, but do not want to buy the pier $ 150 to get it.

Of course, we're a little ahead of ourselves. We are assuming you choose a particular tablet. And if you do not know, we really would agree with your decision if you do, though for anyone who has been holding out for Android 4.0 that is not too expensive tablet, there is no reason to not see what else is on the menu. Beautiful things for the right people shopping right now is that there seems to be an uptick affordable 10-inch tablet. We would like Galaxy Tab 2 10.1, which at $ 399 is not quite over-the-shelf products first-gen is 10.1. Ditto for Acer Iconia $ 350, A200 Tab one of the first ICS affordable tablet we saw this year. Even iPad 2 has seen a price cut to $ 400, but we still maintain the best first-time buyers from paying extra iPad $ 100 for a new iPad, if only to get a crisp Retina. If the iPad is your speed, then, you probably do not seriously consider an Android tablet as well, not all buyers want to marry the Apple ecosystem.

However, for those of you who prefer Android, you've got at least three solid options at the ready. And actually, we enjoyed our time with them all, though TF300 offers faster performance and longer battery life than either of the two candidates, both of which make do with dual-core SoC Tegra 2 years ago. For what it's worth, Acer Iconia Tab A510 will have a Tegra 3 when it ships, but at $ 450 for the 32GB model, it will cost you fifty dollars more than 32GB TF300, and also will have a lower camera and screen specifications. Biggest saving grace, though, maybe that battery life is rated for 12 hours, which, if accurate, would beat almost everything else in the size and price range.

Although we do not normally inclined to make recommendations based purely on the benchmark, it seems clear that the quad-core chip TF300 provides a real advantage in terms of game speed, and overall longevity. Factor in a decent camera, a slightly less smooth, clean Android experience, a good selection of applications and the dock is useful, and once again you've got yourself a lot.

Wrap-up


Although the price is low enough TF300, there is fortunately not that big of a catch. Even as more mid-range, 10-inch tablet Android starting to hit the market, both genes Transformer still feels like the best deal, with a smooth, Tegra 3-powered game, good durability and understated design that calls to mind 'the other ASUS Transformer Prime $ 500.

Apart from the fact that the battery life is not quite as epic as the prime, we are the most serious complaints had nothing to do with ASUS, and more with Android: even with a chip-of-the-art running the latest version of the OS, the tablet is sometimes hiccup when launching the application and the size of web pages. There is no reason for a product with the technology as a powerful mandate to stumble on earthly things. However, this tablet really useful, and ultimately fun to live with. In addition, the performance is a clear improvement over what you would get from similarly priced 10-inch tab, many of which runs on dual-core chip Tegra 2 years ago. So if you feel at home in Android, and has about $ 400 to spend, this, friends, is a tablet that we recommend.

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