Tablets make fun multimedia devices but when it comes down to real
work, like typing out this review for instance, there’s no replacing the
good ol’ physical keyboard. You could always buy a bluetooth keyboard
as an add-on but that’s just one more thing to carry around. This has
always caused a huge dilemma for first time buyers who are left with the
painful choice of deciding between a tablet and a netbook. A hybrid
device was needed to give us the best of both worlds. Lenovo teased us
with the LePad but never actually got to putting it into production.
Thankfully, Asus saw a window of opportunity and capitalized on it by
creating, quite frankly, the best hybrid device seen to date. We give
you the Transformer TF101G - a tablet for leisure and a netbook for
work, just what the doctor ordered.
Design and Build
The
Transformer comes in two parts, there’s the tablet itself and the
keyboard dock which further expands its functionality. Let’s start with
the tablet. Measuring just 12.9mm in thickness, it’s really slim and
light too, at just 695g. The Galaxy Tab 750 still remains the slimmest
and lightest 10.1-inch tablet though. The TF101G is built extremely well
and it just feels like it costs a premium (which is does). Instead of a
plain, boring back, Asus have gone with a nice patterned design and the
colour is very eye catching as well. The tablet sports an IPS panel and
a scratch-resistant glass for added protection.
Connectivity wise, we have a 3.5mm headphone jack with support
for a microphone as well, mini-HDMI (Type C) connector, microSD card
slot while the left side houses the SIM card slot (For the TF101G model
only) and the volume rocker and power/sleep button. The fit and finish
of all the ports and buttons are well done giving you a sense of quality
and attention to detail.
The proprietary connector is at the bottom and is used for
charging, data transfer or to connect to the dock. In the rear, we also
have a 5MP camera without flash and a front facing 1.3MP camera for
video chat. While the TF101G does accept SIM cards, it does not support
telephony functions. It does however come with 16GB memory, Gyroscope
and E-compass and stereo speakers with SRS. Now, let’s turn our
attention to the dock.The dock can be charged separately as well.
Features
Other apps include MyLibrary which lets you
read Ebooks and popular news publications. Kindle app also comes
bundled. There’s MovieStudio for editing your captured videos, Polaris
Office for working on Office documents and spreadsheets.
SuperNote lets you scribble notes, embed images, etc. Since this
is a Tegra-powered device, we get TegraZone allowing you to purchase and
download games optimized for this hardware. Sadly, Asus doesn’t bundle
along any games with the Transformer.
Camera
The
5MP autofocus camera fails to impress with very basic functionality and
poor options. The sensor fairs strictly average when it comes to
snapping indoor pictures.
Camera interface is extremely basic
Since you don't have much control over the autofocus as there’s
no grid or focus point for your reference, you simply point at your
subject and hope for a well focused shot.
The video recording isn’t too impressive either. The recorded
video is very jittery even if you move the tablet around slowly.
Overall, Asus fails to impress us in this department.
Battery Life
In our video drain test, the SIM was set to 2G mode, Wi-Fi was off and
brightness was set to medium. We first started the test with the tablet
disconnected from the dock. Here, we managed to get 7hrs and 40min of
battery life before the tablet refused to boot up. This is pretty good
given the slim form factor. But it doesn't end there. Once docked, we
managed squeeze out another 4hrs from the Transformer which gives us a
total battery life of almost 11hrs. Asus claims 14hrs which I’m sure is
achievable if you tone down the brightness further and perhaps put it in
Airplane mode. Nevertheless, this is more than you will ever get on
most netbooks without having to deal with the ugly bulge from higher
capacity battery packs. Next, we managed to get 8hrs in our loops tests
which included a video loop, audio loop and streaming radio over Wi-Fi.
Conclusion
So should you buy the Transformer TF101G? Well, The Price is Little Higher as compared to Features.You can Buy this if You have Lot of Money.For Others, at least we can
expect a nice price drop for the current one..
Enjoy...