Asus' Eee Pad Transformer Prime is a tablet that will have a lot of publicity in the run up to its expected December release. In the Uk we will only get one version over here, which is a 32GB SKU bundled with the keyboard,a charger, cleaning cloth, USB cable and earbuds.
Power Engine
The Transformer Prime, Asus has ramped things up a bit, it’s still using NVidia technology but this time it’s the new Tegra 3 ‘Kal El’ chipset, which means a quad core processor clocked slightly faster at 1.3GHz Quad-core (Means the tablet comes with four processors) compare to the best Tablet currently comes with dual core (means two processors), giving it a huge advantage over any other tablet on the market, and many laptops too.
As you would expect apps run at full-tilt on the device, and games are handled perfectly thanks to the cutting edge graphics technology.
The Display
The Asus Eee Transformer Prime ships with a 10.1-inch Super IPS+ LCD display with a resolution of 1280x800 and a pixel density of 149PPI, which is well above average in the current market. The Asus' Eee Transformer Prime's more modern screen tech easily takes the tape ahead of Sony's good, but unspectacular display.
Software
The Asus' Eee Transformer Prime's run on Google's very capable Android operating system, specifically version 3.2 (Honeycomb) which has been optimised to provide a solid experience on tablets.
The good news is Asus says it's compatible with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, if you wish to upgrade when the update becomes available next year.
Camera
The camera is pretty good for the tablet but when comes to Asus with 8-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging and 1080P video capture, as well as a secondary 1.2-megapixel snapper for video calling.
Images and videos produced by the Asus are way above our expectation and, in our opinion, the best quality that we've seen on any Android tablet to date.
Although its auto-focus sometimes may took a bit too long to make up its mind and the resulting pictures occasionally seemed under-saturated, but the camera took more than acceptable looking images even in less than optimal conditions.
The Design
The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is slimmer and slight. The chassis is made from spun aluminium, giving it an interesting texture and the build quality is second to none. The nicely sized and spaced bezel around the screen, elegantly shaped corners and a svelte 8.3mm thin profile.
Asus is very minimalist in style which goes well with the futuristic-looking metallic finish. The attachable keyboard dock is as thin as the main tablet and equally stylish.
The 263 x 180.8 x 8.3mm tablet is wider than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, although the screen, at 1280 x 800p resolution and 10.1 inches, is the same size.
At 586g, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is lighter than the iPad 2 but a touch heavier than the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, although nobody will notice a few grams.
The Dock/keyboard
There is a second battery inside the dock and it nobly sacrifices its own juice so that the tablet can live on. So, plug a nearly dead tablet into a full dock and, after some time, you'll have a full tablet and a dead dock.
Even with the dock attached, the tablet is thinner and lighter than a netbook and better-built than most were.
That trackpad is a bit small but it is at least reasonably responsive, letting you use gestures for scrolling webpages and even for navigating around the tablet's myriad home screens.
The keyboard isnt the best but it will do the job than not having it all. The keys are tiny and have a very light touch to them, Asus could have put more room as everything is cramped.
When mounted in the dock, the whole contraption is disconcertingly top-heavy, the Transformer itself weighing considerably more than the lid of your average laptop. This made it very prone to tipping over backward.
Storage
The Asus’ Transformer Prime is much more handsomely equipped on internal storage with options for 32GB or 64GB onboard plus it has a card slot with support for microSD up to 32GB,making it easily the most powerful tablet on the planet right now. Both have 1GB of RAM.
Connectivity
Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 2.1, a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right and a micro HDMI port (also on the left) for connecting to an HD TV as well as SD card slot.
Battery Life
According to ASUS, the Prime's 22Wh pack should last a maximum of 12 hours without the dock and indeed, it squeezed out an impressive 10 hours and 17 minutes in our battery rundown test, which involves looping a video with the brightness fixed at 50 percent and WiFi on but not connected.
ASUS promises a further six hours of dependability when docked with the keyboard and we're happy to report that figure is right on the mark. You can get up to 16 hours and 34 minutes when running with the keyboard dock.
Price
This bundle will cost you £499, which is £70 more than the 16GB tablet-keyboard bundle that the original Eee Pad Transformer came in when it launched earlier in 2011.
Conclusion
With the processor like the one in the Asus Eee Transformer Prime this is a beast of a tablet, a nicely designed device, with a decent weight, and luxuriously thin at just 8mm too.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 has had a long run as the top-tier Android tablet in the 10-inch size, but now a big boy is in town and has snach that position sorry Samsung and Apple we cant help falling inlove with Asus.
The original Transformer was a very good tablet and it successor steps up another notch. The Transformer Prime is thinner and lighter than the rest and, with 32GB of storage available for a dollar under $500, it's a better deal than most of the top-tier contenders.
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