ASUS EEE Pad Transformer Prime Reviews Are Here

After talking so much about the EEE Transformer prime tablet (read our articles) I’m glad to see that ASUS kept its promise and will start shipping the tablet before Christmas, on December 9th online and 12th in retail to be exact. As expected, reviews have started to pop up a few days earlier, so I have a pretty good idea about what to expect from Asus’ first quad core tablet.

I didn’t get to test the tablet myself, so here are the impressions gathered from the many online reviews that have been published today. I’ll update AllTouchTablet with a complete review article one I get my hands on one.

Pros

Excellent build quality – this is a no-brainer, as we’ve already seen the same excellent design borrowed from the Zenbook ultrabook line. The slimmer and lighter body, when compared to the iPad 2, helps with everyday handling.

Bright and good colors for the Super IPS+ screen – the 600 nit display can be activated in the settings menu, so outdoor visibility increases drastically. If you work indoors you might want to preserve battery life by turning off the SuperIPS mode. Viewing angles are excellent and colors don’t get distorted anyway you look at the screen.

Excellent design and construction for the Transformer Prime

Good camera –  as expected from yesterday’s photo and video samples, the ASUS EEE Transformer Prime seems to be the first tablet that takes photography seriously, so that’s something you might want to keep in mind if you’re looking for strength in this sector.

Battery life - The Prime doesn’t get nowhere near the promised 18 hours (12 + 6 from the dock), but it gets more like 5 + 5, which is still great, but does feel like ASUS did lied to us a little bit. A new firmware update is in works and ASUS says it will improve on battery life.

Docking keyboard - this is by far the strongest selling point of the Transformer line of tablets, and it doesn’t disappoint in its second apparition, providing excellent tactile feedback, being extremely similar to the netbook keyboards produced by ASUS. The construction feel solid, including the docking hinge. The trackpad works well, but we all know Android was not build with mouse and keyboard support in mind, so it’s even more surprising what ASUS has achieved with the docking keyboard.

Gaming performance - the few optimized games for Tegra 3 run smoothly and offer some nice visual effects. It’s clear the Tegra 3 is much improved in terms of graphics performance than the previous version. The problem with limited titles still persists, but maybe this time developers will try harder, given the power found inside the new chip.

Transformer Prime docking keyboard - top view

Cons

The software – As with all previous Android versions for tablets, Honeycomb 3.2 still feels unpolished, even sluggish in some instances, despite the tremendous amount of computing power packed inside the very thin body of the Transformer Prime. Plus the problem with lack of apps designed especially for the high resolution screen of Android tablets persists.

Sluggish performance sometimes – yeap, even with a quad core processor under the hood there are moments (especially when browsing the web) when performance seems insufficient. I attribute the problem with insufficient hardware optimizations, and hope Asus will solve all these problems when the Ice Cream Sandwich update will arrive, but don’t expect miracles, as the three version of Honeycomb from this year (3.0, 3.1 and 3.2) didn’t necessarily solve the problems found in the previous version.

Speaker placement – this is a design flaw, as the back facing speaker is placed right where you would hold the tablet in hand, and it’s easier to muffle the sound (volume is not that powerful either), so you’ll constantly find yourself rotating the tablet or alternating hands just to keep the speaker unobstructed.

ASUS EEE Pad Transformer Prime - full specs and purchasing options

Conclusion

The EEE Pad Transformer is a must have tablet for Android lovers, but if you look at the entire package, the software is the one letting down the tablet (not necessarily ASUS’ fault) so those looking for the perfect tablet should still look at the Apple iPad 2, if the don’t already own one. There are plenty of keyboard cases for the iPad 2 to mimic the functionality of the Transformer Prime Dock, even cheaper, but won’t offer the same level of integration as the solution provided by ASUS.

If you feel the $500 + $150 for the dock price is too high just wait a few months until everyone else catches up with ASUS and launches quad-core tablets based on Tegra 3.