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ASUS Eee Pad Transformer TF101-A1 Review

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Ranked #15,115 in Computers & Electronics, #305,688 overall

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer TF101-B1 32GB 10.1-Inch Tablet

Recently I bought a Transformer with a keyboard from Amazon. Before I bought it, I'm on the fence between tablets, Ipad2 and Android tablet. I find it hard to decide between getting Ipad2 and Transformer tablets because I already have some investments with my Apple. But the ability to run the program flash, a built in GPS on the base unit, with an external micro SD storage and larger screens with higher resolution is a factor that influenced me to buy it.

Video playback at 1080p is not great either. I've tried streaming from DLNA source and on the microSD of some 1080p movies and the frame rates are very choppy. You'll get one second of video and about 2 seconds of freezing. Playback on DVD definition video is adequate but not great. No freezing but doesn't seem very smooth. With the recent update to 3.1 Honeycomb did improve video playback, but it didn't fix the video playback problem. I will have to try some movies at 720p to see if that helps.

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ASUS Eee Pad Transformer TF101-B1

First, the display unit is very nice and sharp. It is a bit glossy and it will reflect quite a bit and it's also a finger print magnet. It's also has a tackiness as you finger will not glide as easy as you might expect but these are minor quibbles. I don't mind the back shell of unit as well as some others have commented that it feels cheap. It feels fine to me.

It's major disadvantage seems to be weak wifi performance. I have a Dlink N router and none of my laptops or iphone have any performance issues around my house. The tablet frequently registers fair to poor signal strength with wifi dropping off sporadically. I've altered my router to use a different channel which seemed to help the reliability of the connection but data rate is poor overall. But with wifi being it's only lifeline, you'd expect it to perform better.

It's major disadvantage seems to be weak wifi performance. I have a Dlink N router and none of my laptops or iphone have any performance issues around my house. The tablet frequently registers fair to poor signal strength with wifi dropping off sporadically. I've altered my router to use a different channel which seemed to help the reliability of the connection but data rate is poor overall. But with wifi being it's only lifeline, you'd expect it to perform better.

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This is my first experience with Google Android. On some things like the browser or Google Earth the system works great with the touch interface and provides a near seamless experience. But it still needs a lot more polishing all around. When I pinch and zoom in Google Earth, it won't zoom in or out in the area I'm pinching in, just the center of the screen. You can't pinch and zoom in an email either. The browser has flash support, some sites won't recognize it as a full fledged browser and redirects you to the mobile version of their website so you can't access the flash version of their sites. When you do get a site with flash, it seems slow. The other thing that's a nuisance is that some apps prefer to run in either portrait or landscape mode and you can't switch seamlessly around from both for certain apps. It is a pain to switch to portrait mode with keyboard attached. I still have other glitches where my keyboard would disappear and become non functional until I take the tablet off and plug it back in and I've gotten a few lock ups with video playback. Switching the wifi off/on seems to put it in a quandary sometimes. Overall, 3.1 Android still feels unfinished.

It's a bit disappointing in the end, I took one star off for unfinished Android experience and another star off for awful wifi performance/range and 1080p playback which is important to me. The only glimmer of hope is that these issues may get resolved with a future update. Then again, maybe I got a bad unit or my expectations were too high.