Gadgetory

what's up everyone John rhett endure from TechnoBuffalo here back with another tablet Wars Smackdown this time we've got Apple's iPad 2 and the Asus built EEP Pad Transformer sound effects and fire and all that business is gonna be popping up we are going to put these two head-to-head in a six round test if you read or saw my review on the e Pad Transformer you'll know that I thought it was hands-down the best Android tablet on the market and if you saw my review on the iPad 2 you'll know that it is Mike's have a choice so as you'll be looking forward to putting these two guys head-to-head and see which one has a permanent place in my bag or on my couch or sometimes the car or anywhere else that I or you might use a tablet let's go ahead and get started so there are obviously a ton of different categories that we can cover but I picked the six that were most important to me we're gonna cover screen speed browser apps OS and some intangibles now if this has been a 40 minute video I would have covered things like camera and keyboard those are things unfortunately you're going to have to experience for yourself I will touch on them a little bit throughout the comparison alright so let's start with screens this is what you're going to be looking at when you are using your tablet the iPad 2 has a nine point seven inch diagonal screen with a resolution of 1024 by 768 and it is an IPS display which can show 132 PPI or pixels per inch it's a beautiful display if you've ever seen it graphics look beautiful on it images are very pretty and stunning the screen itself is really really gorgeous you're gonna have some problem in your X unlit as a problem with most tablets you're gonna get a bit of that tablet glare you can't sort of see it right there I've got some sunlight coming in but such is life with IPS displays next let's take a look at the Asus Eee Pad Transformer now usually when I compare screens to Apple devices it is always a blowout the screens of the resolution on the Apple devices are generally higher than what the competition has to offer not true with the e Pad Transformer this guy has a 10.1 inch so that's going to be widescreen IPS display with a resolution of 1280 by 800 so a higher resolution and a viewing angle of 178 degrees now you're gonna have that same problem in direct sunlight unfortunately but the screen here is absolutely beautiful it looks wonderful pictures pop images are bright text is extremely crisp the screen is just outstanding one of the things that I really do like about the e Pad Transformer is the fact that since it is a 10.1 inch screen so it's technically widescreen it changes the aspect ratio meaning the big black bars that you get when you viewing videos on the iPad - you're not going to get while viewing them on the EP transformer at least not generally so that was something that I really enjoyed a screen is perfect in landscape mode for watching video or in portrait for reading text so if this is something that was interesting to you and the screen is important the screen on the transformer is absolutely wonderful and was an absolute pleasure to use and this round clearly has to go to the transformer alright so next up is raw speed and both these guys are packing similar horsepower apples a5 chip dual-core 1 gigahertz on each core just about seems to be clocked at the transformer is using NVIDIA Tegra 2 of one gigahertz on each core it's got a gig of ram really is represents probably the pinnacle at least for right now of what tablets can offer from a hardware perspective and you'll be happy to know that both of these tablets are absolute screamers so I read the comments almost all of my videos when I do speed tests often times people are telling me that I've got applications running in the background when it clear applications then I'm told that perhaps applications that were cleared should still be running so this is just going to be a general usage test of how fast both of these are while leaving things open I've got a live wallpaper here in the background which I really kind of like as you guys might have when using the tablet both of these things really are absolute screamers let's go ahead and look at the browser for example so I've got TechnoBuffalo open up on opened on each and I will say the flash has been turned off for right now on the e pad transformer so plugins have been disabled so if it's a browser speed is very quick while scrolling no problem I'm not getting any sort of checkerboard pattern which you get on some other devices and it pulls up the content right away same thing here on the iPad no issues pinch-to-zoom very fast attention to zoom here which is really one of those things where I think Android has been a little bit laggy not a problem at all really works just as fast as anywhere else go ahead and can imagine okay bad people saying push 7 look what he's doing but definitely works just as quickly application launch also just Sam safar would go ahead and launch to applications again there are things running in the background this is just general processes like if you were sitting on your couch watching application you're not going to close everything before you open something things here are both very quick so go ahead and try and launch Angry Birds Rio or there's close to at the same time both of them kicked up pretty fast they were both running suspended in the background you can see boot up time was very fast let's go ahead and watch two different applications just for sort of speed and giggles I'll go ahead and launch let's say will earth here I can get a sense of the speed and Google Earth is a very processor intensive application very process and process of intensive and you can see how quickly something like this works on the transformer I mean very very very quick go ahead and close that and even if you look at something like say I'm moving another graphically intensive application on the iPad it looks just as quickly as well and in all honesty in everyday usage I know a lot of people that are in the Android camp or the Apple camp want to see their side be faster and they want the metrics that are going to show about prove it but in all actuality in everyday usage just people use the tablets both of these are very fast very very very quick it's hard to believe even you guys have heard me probably talk about this in my review that the transformer shares the same components pretty much as a Motorola Xoom the zoom I found slow and laggy even after software updates where's the transformer is very quick and really enjoyable to use all ugh printed by that beautiful screen so you can see even if I like grabbing a camera you can see it tracks my finger very quickly as I go ahead and move around and all this is with live wallpapers running in the background so both are very very fast and I am extremely happy to say that this round is going to be a tie so whether or not you want and iPad 2 or they're not looking for a knee pad transformer both of your options are going to be very very speedy so we just touched on a little bit but our next category is going to be the browser I web browsers are more than anything on tablets just a bigger rousing experience for me as necessary and this is one of the ways that I really liked using both of these so let's start the transformer first I've got Flash content turned off and that means I've got the option term Flash content back on with Flash content turned off everything as bad as quick as you would expect from any other device out there works very nicely content loads extremely quickly I'll go ahead and refresh TechnoBuffalo you can see what that looks like it's just a nice pleasant experience so if I wanted to go ahead and turn flash content back on let me show you what the difference is so we'll go ahead and go back into settings we'll go ahead and go to advanced I'm doing all this on camera so you can see it we'll go ahead and enable plugins will touch those always on that also enables a few other things we'll go back I'm going to refresh the page so I like the option of having a choice to have Flash content shown or not certainly no secret a lot of the web is coded now in html5 which is going to be fully compatible with the iPad and most other web browsers but I like the choice if I wanna see Flash content if I want to watch a video on YouTube that isn't in a YouTube player hasn't been converted I like having that choice my wife and I love to watch Animal Planet videos and a lot of their stuff for example isn't converted over yet so I can go right to the Animal Planet's site and I can watch the videos right from here now you do get a little bit of speed decrease when you have flash can't flash popped it on you can see that there but it's not bad and does work and attempts to zooming is still there so generally I leave flash off unless I need it having flash on definitely hurts a battery so what's the point about talking about flash you guess you guys can guess this is all about consumer choice so if you choose to turn flash off you're gonna have almost exactly the same browsing experience on both you turn to hat or you choose to have flash on you're going to have a choice on the transformer I'll go ahead and show you something with flash looks like we got some flash content living here we'll go to youtube you can see what that looks like so it'll probably pull up the mobile version at least you can get a chance to check out you know what a flash video would look like so let's go ahead and launch one and go ahead and play through it something look likes and I was loading the video this is actually not even launching flash so here's this guy no he is let's go a little go to my youtube channel you can see what that looks like it's a little back out of here back there we go now let's check out youtube.com slash John for Lakers there we go came up right below John Stuart which is kind of neat so this is going to take you to the mobile version we'll go ahead and show the desktop version which is kind of nice and then this will show you what Flash content is going to look like at long last despite my ramblings you'll be able to see it here now on video it's not the most pleasant experience it's gonna drain your battery it can be a little bit choppy but the video is definitely viewable so we're gonna go ahead and play you can see you get an option I'm on a relatively fast Wi-Fi connection and I are playing here's my unboxing of the Xperia Play and it is playing it see my finger you could definitely watch a video you could export it to your TV with the HDMI out if you have the cable it just works and I like having the choice whether or not I want to have flash calling for off and that factor it was a very long explanation but that's why this round is going to go to the e Pad Transformer alright so next let's talk about applications apps are often the things that make the device have additional functionality apps or what I use quite a bit outside of the browser and something that I really am happy to have very vibrant at ecosystems on Android or on iOS certainly Apple's App Store is tremendous is probably no point rehashing it there are thousands of applications available not only for the tablet but also for the iPhone which can be scaled up to double the resolution and viewed or at least blown up rather and played on the iPad or used on the iPad to the Android Market has been around for quite a bit but the tablets out of Android Market has not been around for that much longer or that long so there are tablet apps but there aren't that many and there aren't that many applications in addition to tablets that are meant to take advantage of the processing power the Tegra 2 so there's aren't that many applications now certainly something that's going to be rectified as developers continue to develop applications they get their hands on the SDK a little bit longer and they bring some of those things that maybe we loved from an Android device or from an iOS device get ported and recoated over for tablets but at least for right now there not that many applications here unfortunately that's one of the big downsides of honeycomb it's a great operating system but you're not going to get the app support that you get with Android so you can run older Android applications but they scale a little bit funny and the menu systems don't always work so the Twitter application for example can look a little bit weird you have another App Store you've gotten NVIDIA Tegra zone here which is going to download applications or give you the choice to download applications that are meant to be optimized for the Tegra 2 processor and you were going to see some gorgeous applications with really immersive 3d X graphics that are running at incredible clock speeds at frame rates that just look really good so that's gonna be another choice that you're gonna have the NVIDIA Tegra zone however just due to glut of applications and this will change I'm sure as honeycomb matures as a tablet OS but for right now Apple definitely has the edge with their App Store when it comes to applications so this round is going to swing right on back to Apple now it's time for the rounds that the fanboys love we're going to talk about the operating system so I'm gonna give you guys full disclosure I make no secret VATS iOS and Apple devices are generally what I choose to carry with me the iPad 2 is my tablet of choice and generally I find myself using an Apple iPhone I have been extremely encouraged with Android I like that there is user customization I like that you can make it your own you can tweak it if you want to you don't have you don't have to necessarily but there are all kinds of things you can do with Android that you can't do with iOS iOS is very easy to learn pelican to use it's very simple you could give it to 30 year old to know how to use it give it to a five year old or an eight year old the chances are they'd be able to figure it out I really don't like the notification system I've sort of ranted on this quite a bit it's a truce if it pops up with what you're doing I think that Apple could do a much better job I would like to have the consumer choice to customize and conferences and with a stock obviously non-jailbroken iOS you don't have that options I can change the background sure I can make folders if I want to but I'm really limiting what I can do and right on the other hand give you the flexibility to do all those different things that I like I've got live wallpaper choices and this is one from Asus that I don't know why forever reason I really like if I don't like the way things are looking here at the icons I can change it if you're using an Android phone you can change the launcher very easily without any hacking you can just download stuff from the marketplace install them and suddenly things are looking very different uh honeycomb particular has an awesome notification system it pops up in sort of a growl esque style right in the bottom right you can exit them out and they are extremely unobtrusive again you can customize whatever you want of course you've got the widget choices so here I've got some of the Asus widgets that are being shown which I believe is called the weight share UI which is some nice tweaks I know you like having them you can have this from a widget options is in the background this one though is all about consumer choice oftentimes people prefer the ease and elegance of the Apple iPad and some people like just want a tablet that's gonna browse the web and do what they needed to do some people are gonna like to be able to change the experience and customize it for them and that's where honeycomb is gonna offer a really nice experience honeycomb definitely has a bit of a higher learning curve I have never used Android in the past or you not familiar with it as you might be for other operating systems there definitely is going to be a little bit learning curve but give it a day or two you won't have any problems the OS round is most definitely a tie-breaking very unique things for very different people alright so now let's talk about intangibles because each of these guys bring some very different things to the table let's go ahead and start with the iPad first it comes in 3G versions now isus is said 3G versions of the transformer will be available at least for right now all you can get is a Wi-Fi version you can get smart covers which are sort of a fun option to have there are a ton of accessories available for the iPad - you can get full Apple store support if you're in Iran Apple store can happen shirt advisor you can just go walk it in and say fix it and they will fix it or give you a new one if you're still in warranty there are a ton of Bluetooth Keyboard choices that you can get the price point ranges from $4.99 all the way up to 830 you can connect now to HDMI within a separate cable and you have sort of a lot of choices you can also customize color between black and white and decide to go 3d versions you have your choice of carriers either eat EMT or Verizon from an intangible standpoint there's also a lot to like about the transformer first is this dock that gives it the transformer name as a keyboard dock and I didn't mention this in the review it's a hundred and forty nine dollar accessory so it does add a bit of a price premium to it you are gonna get two USB ports and one on each side which is going to be expandable you can go ahead and plug in a USB thumb drive to get access to those files if you have a full size SD card slot you can almost double your battery life up to 16 hours there's the other USB port that we talked about it's a little bit bulky and it weighs quite a bit and I didn't mention this as part of the review because it's a separate cost and there are Bluetooth keyboard options for the iPad this is going to give you track support however when you use the mouse so you are gonna get a cursor on the screen any decent sized keyboard so that is one of the cannibals and things you can get with the Asus Eee Pad Transformer if you want to see this in action be sure to check out my transformer review so one of the intangibles with this transformer definitely has is price is going to come in at 399 for the 16 gig model but you're also going to have micro SD card expansion which is quite nice go ahead and plug in a card and suddenly you can up that 16 gigabyte storage the keyboard dock we talked about certainly is really nice you're going to get Mouse support as well so you will get that cursor as I mentioned you get the openness of Android which is a really nice and tangible for a lot of people see me rotating things around if you want to tweak and customize your going to have capability to do so cameras as well it's certainly something that's another intangible the 5 megapixel camera on back and the 1.2 shooter on the front conveniently located where your fingers are not going to touch them you're also going to have a Seuss's my cloud support if you want to store files up in the cloud this one as well it's going to be whether or not you're counting six or a half-dozen both offer a lot of intangibles and a really nice solid devices of course the transformer also has HDMI out a separate cable and really is gonna come down to personal preference this round once again is a tough so we covered a lot of tablet action let me recap it for you screen went to the transformer for its larger size higher resolution and just all around pretty viewing angle speed both were very quick and that was at I browser went to the transformer for its ability to play flash whether you want it or not and when it's turned off you get the same browser experience as the iPad apps went to the iPad 2 for the app store the operating system was most definitely a tie and the intangibles were most definitely a tie this is the tablet that I think Android folks have been waiting for and deserving in the past whenever anybody asked me what tablet they should buy my answer was always the iPad 2 now I knew they wouldn't be able to customize it or tweak it but I knew they'd get an experience that was quick and would work for them however now I cannot say pick up the iPad to think that I owe it to everyone to give an honest opinion I gotta say you need to look at the e Pad Transformer if you are looking to get a new tablet regardless of whether or not you consider yourself Android or Apple again it really doesn't matter I'm an Apple guy I use an apple to edit my videos doesn't mean I can't like Android and I really really do like what they do here and what Asus has done in particular with their customized sedation's and tweaks just at a really nice job so the transformer won this head-to-head battle they had two victories - the iPads won but moral is you can't go wrong with either they're two of the best tablets on the market I'm John Rhett enger' from TechnoBuffalo and in the next video so do you agree disagree am i way off I know a lot of you guys like to have your opinions on Apple or Android backed up but the end of the day you really do have two wonderful choices for devices and in the world just about and have a choice and finding what's best for you so am i off am i not off is something that you would have liked to see me cover for next one I got to sort of keep the categories limited but I love to hear your feedback I am going to be reading the comments video got to be a little bit long but I thought I deserved it I'm John Rhett endure from TechnoBuffalo and I'm going to see you finally or if mate see you what you guys will see me I'll talk to you at least in the next video goodbye