ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Review

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Review

The Asus Eee Pad Transformer is what we've been waiting for - a tablet
that can truly replace a netbook or ultra-portable laptop. With the
keyboard disengaged, it's a slim, fairly light tablet with a great
screen and touchscreen. With the dock in-tow, it's a typing demon whose
battery will outlast almost any laptop you can find.

The Transformer has dual front and rear facing cameras (1.2MP and 5MP,
respectively), 1GB of on board memory, mini-HDMI output, a microSD card
slot and a head phone/mic combo jack.  Drop it into its $150 keyboard
dock and you pick up a full-sized flash card reader slot, a pair of USB
ports and, of course, keyboard and trackpad functionality.  It's a total
ultra-portable computing solution as a result, which makes the Transformer
unique versus other Honeycomb-based tablets currently.

All of which means we dropped just everything when a 32GB Prime showed up
on our doorstep earlier this week, and soon enough, you'll have your
chance to nab one too. ASUS announced today that the WiFi-only models will
be available through online sellers the week of December 19th, and in retail
the week after. (No word yet on 3G versions for the US just yet.) It'll
start at $499 for the 32GB model -- not bad considering five hundred bucks
is the going rate for a high-end tablet with 16GB of storage. From there
you can get a 64GB number for $599, while that signature keyboard dock will
set you back a further $149. Worth it? Read on to find out.

The Eee Pad's TF101 docking station with keyboard and built-in battery cost
an additional $120, making the total cost for a complete Eee Pad Transformer
netbook more like ~$500. Still, given the added usability the docking station
brings, it makes for an excellent value package. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer
comes with a 10.1" screen and is powered by Nvidia’s dual-core Tegra 2 1GHz
processor with 1GB of RAM, typical of today's Honeycomb tablets.

So it makes perfect sense that Asus - the company that gave birth to the
netbook - would seek to position its first Android tablet in a niche it
knows well.