Asus Transformers

Asus have been the surprise package of the Honeycomb tablet race. Motorola may have got their tablet out first but Asus is the one that has stolen our hearts. We take a more in-depth look at the the top selling Honeycomb tablet on the market right now – can it give the iPad 2 a run for its money ?

Build Quality

The build quality of the Asus is very good considering despite its bargain bin price. The Asus comes in at a very reasonable £360 (tablet only)  – but we have seen it for as little as £330 on some online retailers, so make sure you shop around.

The bulk of the tab is made up of a bronze pimpled plastic. Sure it not as svelte or smooth as the iPad – but you’ll find that you won’t be worried about scratches and means you can live with it much better. Overall it’s not a patch on the iPad – but you’ll be less concerned about knocking or putting it down on surface that would usually scratch a iPad – so it’s a fair compromise.

Screen

The Screen on the Asus is one the best capacitive touchscreen of any tablet that is priced under the iPad. And it’s not a surprise as it’s essentially a widescreen version of the iPad 2 screen.

It’s brighter than the Zoom and can be viewed from an array of different angles. The only downside is the 1200 x 800 widescreen resolution – compared to the iPad – we prefer the slightly squarer choice that Applehas made.

The Asus tablet isn’t ideal for vertical web reading, but it’s not something that will affect you that much. But overall it’s a matter of personal preference, and you won’t be disappointed by the colour and performance of it at all.

Android Honeycomb

Taking quite a risk with its own brew of Honeycomb 3.0 – Asus have decided the sport a custom look for their own version of Honeycomb and have pulled off a nice surprise – by actually improving upon the operating system.

Changes include the use widgets, redesigned navigation icons and its own set of in-house apps. Asus has twigged that a tablet of this size could easily accommodate a full set of number keys on their qwerty keyboard – the result is an extremely fast typing experience for a slate of this size.

There is a welcome set of customer apps including DNLA, cloud storage, remote desktop, email, and their own version of Office. Flash works really well and the BBC iPlayer app, which uses Flash, does now work since the tablet was upgraded to 3.2 last week.

The number of Honeycomb tablet apps is not brilliant – but each week it’s getting a lot better. The first port of call would be the Tegra Zone for gaming aficionados.

Battery and performance

The battery is clearly not up to the level of the iPad, but having said that you will get a good 8 hour of tablet time from a full charge. It definitely won’t last a month on standby like the iPad.

If you can change some of the setting and turn off email synching while it’s on standby the length of time will improve. Turning Wi-Fi off when it’s on standby seems to help a lot too.

When we first got the Asus there was a little bit chugging when switching screen and apps. But since the 3.1 and 3.2 upgrade to honeycomb all of these niggles have just melted away – games are now running 25% faster and the general speed of the tablet is superb – it’s great to see Asus beavering away on improving responsiveness and snappiness.

The Transformer

The Transform part of the Asus Eee pad is the first tablet to offer a keyboard docking station that extends the battery life to 16 hours, comes with the screen mouse cursor, traditional USB ports and essentially turns your tab into a notebook.

It’s certainly a nice idea, and the best attempt yet at it, but truth be told, we still don’t see ourselves using this accessory enough to make it worth it, but at just £50 more for the bundle, it’s still remarkable value.

Verdict

Asus has had a lot of success in the notebook and laptop market and their managed to take all their expertise to create one of the best Honeycomb offerings we’ve come across – considering the price you won’t find a better tablet. If you know you don’t want iOS, it’s still the next best thing