Gadgetory

this is David of the verge and this is the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity it's the top of the line asu's tablet the update to the transformer prime which is actually still one of the best android tablets we've seen yet this is a really good looking device it has a metallic build in the same concentric circle design on the back which kind of looks like rings on a tree trunk ways one point three pounds and it's just about a third of an inch thick which is right in line with the iPad but with the metallic and kind of solid build it definitely feels like it would win in a fight with apple's tablet the best advantage that a Seuss's tablets have always had including the Infinity is its keyboard dock which adds a full qwerty keyboard and a trackpad and really makes the whole thing feel like a laptop it works pretty well you get two finger scrolling typing is much faster than using the on-screen keyboard but it makes the whole tablet kind of cumbersome and heavy plus it's clunky to get in and out you really have to jam the tablet into the keyboard on the tablet itself you get a surprisingly decent 8 megapixel camera microSD card slot and micro HDMI out but the best hardware feature by far is the display it's a 1920 x 1200 screen and looks really good it's the biggest update over a Seuss's other tablets which have been lower res and this is a huge reason to get the Infinity it's insanely bright has really good viewing angles and everything is sharp though as you've seen with some tablets colors can be a tiny bit over contrasted and saturated the one speaker on the device is really nothing special it's just a single mono speaker and it sounds good but it never really gets very loud starting this week the transformer infinity comes with Android 4.1 jelly bean it's now the only tablet other than the nexus 7 to have Google's latest operating system and it really is a nice upgrade you get features like Google now and the expandable notifications and everything is faster and smoother from scrolling to launching and closing apps but unfortunately it's not quite as good as the nexus 7 oddly there are still lags and stutters when you're scrolling through web pages are pinching and zooming that just don't exist on the pure jelly bean on the Nexus 7 and unfortunately the big problem that still hasn't been solved on Android is the tablet app problem there just aren't very many apps designed for the bigger screen it's also hard to find 1080p streaming content so the screen is just really not as useful as it could be if you have your own local content it looks great but finding things that really take advantage of this screen is tough in general performance is pretty solid the Tegra 3 processor is really good for gaming and as we've seen with a lot of other tablets is perfectly useful overall and with jelly bean upgrade you definitely do get a smoother overall experience even though it's not the game changer we'd hoped the Tegra 3 is clocked at 1.6 gigahertz but you can use different power modes to move the clock speed up or down to trying it more battery life or better performance better life incidentally is really good you only need to charge it about every three days with normal use though a lot of high def movie streaming or gaming kills it faster there's also a huge battery inside the dock which nearly doubles the capacity which is pretty great overall the transformer pad infinity is kind of a hard product to review it's great for watching movies or anything else that takes advantage of the 1920 x 1200 screen and Google now is great but the rest of the jelly bean upgrade isn't quite as impressive as I had hoped it's also a 499 dollar tablet at which point it's competing with the iPad and basically every other tablet on the market and even if you want the best Android experience that's still the nexus 7 you'll have to get a smaller lower res screen but it really seems to take better advantage of what jelly bean is doing but if you want a big HD android tablet you really can't beat the transformer pad infinity