Gadgetory

what's up everyone John retinue from TechnoBuffalo here with a full review for you of the newest Android tablet this is the Asus Eee Pad Transformer let's go ahead dig in and see if there's more than meets the eye I'm sure I'm the first one to ever make that joke all right so let me get through the specs very quickly and we'll talk about the transformer itself it's got a 10.1 inch diagonal IPS screen at the resolution of 1280 by 800 the operating system is quite obviously Android 3 Oh honeycomb it's using Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor is becoming quite ubiquitous in tablets so you're going to get one gigahertz of power on each of its two cores it's going to be sitting on top of one gig of ram which are gonna help it with its speed it's gonna come in 16 or 32 gig configurations ranging in price from 399 to $4.99 on the front you've got a 1.2 megapixel camera located right in the middle and on its backside we've got a 5 megapixel sensor capable of shooting HD video let's go ahead this guy back over oh so I wrote a written review of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer I don't write that many written reviews but I thought this one really merited it why came out last week on TechnoBuffalo since today is the official launch day the 26 of the e Pad Transformer I thought of a video review would be quite fitting as you guys watch this you'll see why so I'm gonna break this video review into the same sections I did for their written if you want to read the full written review links going to be down below I'm gonna break out the DES pros cons design performance talk about the keyboard dock that gives us its transformer name and then give a bit of a conclusion so I want to give some frame of reference and a perspective into this review from a specs standpoint this is very similar to the Motorola Xoom a save for the 4G radio so I was expecting very similar performance from the Motorola Xoom which I've got on the record is saying I was very disappointed with there aren't that many Android tablets out right now there's certainly many more coming but my experience with Android 3.0 was largely dictated by my experience with the zoom so I came in with tempered expectations I would say I tried to put those at bay and be as objective as I could and I have to say the e pad transformer blew me away even though they share similar DNA never seen the movie twins zoom would be DeVito the epad transformer is by far the Schwarzenegger first let's start at the screen it has an absolutely gorgeous IPS display you're going to get a hundred and seventy eight degree viewing angle which is really impressive colors pop blacks look very black you can have a bit of trouble in direct sunlight but the screen here is absolutely beautiful or something like the soom looks washed out this is going to look nice and a vibrant also most importantly it's extremely responsive responds very quickly to your touch whether or not you're scrolling through a website or whether or not you're pinching and zooming whatever it might be it just works very well even with Flash content being shown we go ahead and move things around and see it tracks my finger very very very well it's also very lightweight clocking in at just about one point four nine pounds one of the other really nice things about the transformer are uses custom widgets nothing that you have to use but they really are a nice addition you can see I've got the date here I've got a custom male one that's being shown and the weather and location they show up on every home screen you can see right there at the bottom right on each nothing that you have to have you can certainly turn it off but I found it to be very welcome so some of the collins battery life most of my testing was done on pre-production operating system software so what was running Android 3.0 and the East just tweaks that they had and battery life wasn't outstanding cases was claiming nine and a half hours since the final firmware is pushed to the device I've actually seen the battery life improve and have gotten close to that nine and a half hour mark not quite there yet but if you have the brightness set to about sixty to seventy and you're doing general computing they're looking at websites watching some videos you'll have no problem getting close to hitting that mark some of the cons that I've seen as well initiative battery life has been the audio fidelity and in all candor these cons are really nitpicky I could just extremely impressed you can hear a bit of the audio so I got queued up it's not gonna do it justice here coming from the speakers to the camera and then getting upload to YouTube but nice to say you're not gonna want to deejay a party just with the built-in speakers here on the transformer one of the other sort of nice things about the design it will move on to that category again it's 10.1 inch IPS display with 178 degree viewing angle is really impressive so you can say goodbye pretty much to black bars when you're watching a video in full screen which if that matters to you is kind of nice I was happy to to not have it be there go ahead and close out of this so you get a true sort of widescreen angle here it's point 5-1 inches thick go ahead and see the thickness right there and weighs 1.49 pounds it's certainly not the thinnest tablet in the world of the iPad for example is 0.34 inches and weighs 1.33 pounds but it's not going to be embarrassed in a bikini on the beach this is definitely a thin tablet it feels very very light in the hands that's a good time to talk about the feel of a tablet the bezel is just thick enough that you have room to rest your thumbs tablets that sort of come out to the edge your problem when you're holding it this one I did not have any trouble with that as well I didn't have any trouble with that rather not as well I felt really really nice in the hands the back while not necessarily the sexiest looking I just provide a nice grip so you're not gonna worry about dropping the tablet I also really like the camera placement so as I'm holding the device I'm not worried about popping my finger go over that camera sensor which is a concern with some other tablets particularly the iPad 2 and this seems like a no-brainer thing to say but I was so happy to have that home and power button featured on the left hand side and be very easy to access having used a black gray playbooks miniscule option on the top or the zooms backward facing power and lock button it was really really welcome and nice to have so let's talk about performance and I want to show you my notes that I've got here for performance I have one word awesome the performance here is really really good and you guys are gonna have to take my word for it when you're browsing for example things look really fast even if you're using flash contact there really isn't any worry it works very well and pinching and zooming is all very very very quick if you see this flash contact loading there and it's even faster with the Flash content turned off and you have the option which is quite nice for android games like Angry Birds worked very very well if you want to even launch some Tegra 2 dedicated games and go ahead and jump into NVIDIA Tegra zone which you can download from the marketplace and you can get a con stun of custom Tegra 2 games and are a lot to like here the Android Marketplace is something that's growing there aren't that many choices in there quite yet but certainly as developers get more time to spend develop they're going to you know improve that as we go so overall with the risk of making this a 30-minute long video I've just been really happy with the poor performance of the e Pad Transformer it's just a tablet whenever anybody would ask me what tablet I recommended whether it was Android or the iPad my answer was always the iPad 2 because I didn't think it's performance for people I just wanted to browse the web was matched anywhere else I haven't used a pet transformer I can definitely say that anybody who's looking to get a tablet and looking at an iPad owes it to themselves to look at the e Pad Transformer and if you're in the market for an Android tablet a particular look no farther than the e Pad Transformer it is hands-down the best Android tablet I have ever tested and it's certainly in the running for the best tablet I have ever used the best endorsement I could give it is that I could use this as my everyday tablet on a regular basis really is absolutely outstanding alright so now let's talk about what gives the transformer its name and that is this guy right here the keyboard now so the doc does bring some interesting things to the table first and foremost it brings an almost full sized QWERTY keyboard to the transformer if you've ever used a standard netbook keyboard this is going to be very reminiscent especially an Asus netbook keyboard you've got your standard Android buttons including your menu button your home button you can see those right here you've got some additional functionality across the top including why five volume and media playback interestingly though you've got a trackpad here with a single button sir is it a left and right click once you have the Asus Transformer dolphin you got to do is just push it in you are going to have a cursor it's going to move around as you track this and hopefully it's gonna be picking up on camera now you can see it right there that moves around go ahead and hit home so you can select things if you'd like you don't get that much additional functionality that right clicking doesn't always give you stuff that there's a particular menu option you can select it if you do a lot of word processing or some excel documentation it's a nice feature to have at a $149 you may be better suited with just a Bluetooth keyboard it does bring some interesting functionality though with it sweet this guy over to the side we're going to see that it actually has two USB ports one lives right on the left hand side one lives on the other side of the guy right there under those doors and that's gonna give you actually storage access so if you plug in a USB thumb drive I'd be able to drag files to and from it's really nice to sort of have that functionality it's just a really nice implementation of that you're also gonna have a full-size SD card right there as well you can see the bulk that this is adding it's gonna add an extra 1.4 pounds that's also gonna give you an extra seven hours of battery life this has an internal battery it's going to charge it when it's in use kind of interesting I don't know if I would use this on an everyday basis carrying it around the months I'm sure I see the value versus carrying a regular netbook or laptop but if you're the kind of person that only wants to carry one thing you don't want to carry a tablet you don't want to carry a laptop this may be a nice choice for you hello for me I'd probably just use a Bluetooth keyboard and go on my way the cursor is novel but sir-- defeats the purpose of having a tablet especially one that relies on a touchscreen interface when you just want to go ahead and touch the device so if I haven't heaped enough compliments on to the e Pad Transformer you're definitely going to know that this is hands-down the best Android on the market it is hard to believe that this shares internals with the Motorola Xoom as I mentioned earlier if you are in the market for your tablet you're looking for any tablet particular especially Android you really owe it yourself to look at the e Pad Transformer it just works well it's quick its responsive the screen is finally beautiful this is the tablet that Android lovers and Android users deserve the Motorola Xoom was a nice first try by Motorola this is the one worth waiting for if you've been holding out for any tablet or an Android one in particular you definitely need to give the e patch back to former look definitely gives it a TechnoBuffalo seal of approval I am John retina from TechnoBuffalo and I will see you guys in the next video