Gadgetory

well this is Joanna for the verge and this is Susie's eat pad transformer prime which is one of the most exciting tablets to hit this holiday season and that's because it's got a brand-new design but is also the first tablet to have a quad-core Tegra 3 processor so the transformer prime actually is a lot like the original transformer in that it has an external keyboard dock which turns it into a laptop of sorts a sous has done a really nice job redesigning the entire tablet they've not only slimmed it down but they've also created sort of a nicer look and feel here the back now is made out of aluminum and has a concentric circle pattern just like a seuss's ultrabook on top of that they've actually added an eight megapixel camera to the back it actually takes some of the best shots I've seen yet on a tablet and that's not exactly saying much but the pictures really do come out quite clear but my favorite new thing about the design of the tablet itself is actually it's 10.1 super IPS plus display not only is it more readable outdoors but inside the viewing angles are great and it is really really bright and crisp but of course the standout speck of the transformer prime is its Tegra 3 quad-core processor this is the first tablet to have this processor which promises three times the graphics performance of the Tegra 2 processor overall I've found performance to be pretty snappy you'll see that menu transitions are really fast however other things like browser performance doesn't really seem to be all that much better it's with gaming though that the performance increase can really be seen there are some new games that have been optimized for tegra 3 including shadowgun and glow ball and with those you can really see new lighting effects and water effects also Tegra 2 games look pretty great on the system and when you out put it to a 1080p TV things look even better Nvidia and a sous have also added USB host support to the tablet so you can actually add a game controller which is pretty cool still software is the real issue with the transformer prime well as sous is promising an update to ice cream sandwich or android 4.0 before the end of the year it's launching right now with honeycomb and the biggest problem with honeycomb continues to be that it isn't all that polished and there just aren't that many Android tablet apps my complaints about honeycomb aside the software actually works really well with the keyboard dock the keyboard dock you can pick up for an extra one hundred and fifty dollars and actually adds a lot of functionality to the tab not only is there the keyboard but there's also a touchpad which supports multi-touch gestures as well as a USB port and an SD card slot there's actually also an internal battery which adds about 10 hours of battery life when paired to the unit for six hundred and fifty dollars for the tablet and the keyboard dock the transformer prime is a pretty great piece of hardware you get a quad-core processor really fast gaming performance a beautiful 10 inch display and a great keyboard dock that adds a totally new dimension to your tablet that being said the software is still the major issue for this platform for those that want the better app experience and the better software experience the iPad is the way to go however the transformer prime definitely provides something totally unique in a new package