[Asus  Eee Pad Transformer Prime] JC0406:
After having the Prime for slightly over two weeks, I can give you my first impressions, review, and overview of this hyped up tablet. I must say, finding one of these really was hell for me. It took me almost 3 months for a local shop to get stock for reasons unknown. And oh, I'll also be doing a slight comparison between the Prime and the iPad(chill iPad and Android fan boys). Now I must apologize if this is a rather long winded. :P I'm no professional reviewer. I'm just here to voice out how I feel and to help whoever that is deciding whether or not to buy this tablet. If you disagree with me, it's alright. :)

First Impressions

Screen

One of the the concerns I had for the tablet was the screen. You might wondering, why I had this concern. After using a Galaxy Note, I was accustomed to the really vibrant and saturated screen known as Super AMOLED. And I had quite a hard time deciding between this or the next Samsung Galaxy tablet(probably a successor to the Galaxy Tab 10.1?). But in the end, I chose this over the latter. I'm glad to say that the screen is actually quite okay. You won't get the crazy saturation and vibrance levels of any Super AMOLED screen, but instead you'll get natural and frankly quite vibrant colours. If you already have or used an iPhone, this screen should be quite similar other than the high pixel density. Talking about pixel density, when I first looked at the screen, I could(almost) see the individual pixels. Uh oh. As I used it, I sort of got used to it. I often wondered why Asus couldn't have used a higher pixel density especially because it's a 10.1 inch screen we're talking about. Visibility under sunlight is rather; disappointing. You can try using Asus's 'Super IPS+ mode' for outdoor viewing but it only makes it slightly more visible. I'm not sure whether Super AMOLED Plus suffers from this too so I can't say much about it. Compared to the Prime, iPad 3's retina display isn't as sharp as I thought it would be. It could be due to the matte screen protector that I applied on it, but the same screen protector on my iPod 4th gen. still looks sharper and more crisp.

Performance

I'll give you a head's up whoever that is not so familiar with the specs of the Prime - it's running on an Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad Core processor chip clocked at 1.4GHz(yes, you read that correctly), a more than sufficient 1GB of RAM and a choice of 32GB or 64GB of storage space expendable up to 128GB with an SD card. Oh, and it comes with a keyboard dock as well. Seeing all those specs, it's definitely an iPad killer, right? No, not really. Until apps and the right software comes, it'll perform like any other dual-core tablet. What a shame. And that's what I felt when I first used it. Ice Cream Sandwich, Google's latest Android operating system performed rather well. I'll be honest and say, that everything wasn't exactly snappy. Even when set to 'Performance mode', the browser crashed every now and then. I downloaded and used Dolphin Browser HD too, same thing happened. I actually came to a point of thinking of selling it for something else since I was so disappointed. I tried searching for solutions and ended up doing a cold boot. That partly solved the performance issues. I guess I'll just have to wait until the next update. Until that update comes or I just feel like flashing a ROM on this, iPad just seems like a faster tablet to me even though it's only the GPU that is quad core.

Battery Life

Advertised of having 18 hours of battery life docked to the keyboard, battery life isn't exactly as impressive as I thought it would be. First off, after using the tablet for internet browsing, Facebook, Instagram checking every now and then for a mere hour and a half, the tablet consumed almost 70% of the tablet's battery. But after using it for a couple of days, it improved significantly. Last night I tested Asphalt 6 for about an hour plus, the battery went down by 18%. As I'm typing this review from my Prime, it has drained about a good 35% in an hour and a half. After reading several forums, I'm pretty sure it's because of the latest update by Asus that caused this, not the tablet itself. iPad has a similar battery consumption rate.

Apps

As we all know, Apple's App Store was the king of all application stores/markets when compared to Google's Play Market(formerly called Android Market) when it started. As of now, the tables have turned. Day by day, I see the number of apps and games for Android tablets increasing steadily. Of course, some might think generally Apple's apps are more robust and premium. And while that is true, I also personally think that Android developers improve over time and learn from mistakes. Comparing the preinstalled applications, I say Android owns the YouTube app hands down. But when comparing browsers, I think Apple's Safari has a slight edge when it comes to the looks and feel of both browsers. Generally, I'd say Google's Apps like GMail, YouTube and Google Play are better on Android.

Overview

I think this is a great tablet despite the flaws I mentioned. It's all just a matter of getting used to. Battery life, the bloat ware and performance issues can be taken care of with future updates or flashing a custom ROM. As for the speakers, investing in a pair of compact speakers or headphones will take care of that. The keyboard dock feature is actually one of the main reasons for getting this tablet. And support for mice and flash drives mean this might be a replacement for your Windows device. Of course, not everything can be done on it but for casual users this is more than sufficient to take care of your browsing, gaming and socializing needs.

And oh, the comparison with the iPad 3. I would say they both have their own flaws. The more apparent question you should ask yourself is not the specs of the tablet, but the operating system they are running on. Is it the open source that Android offers? Or is it the closed, but simpler, but more refined that Apple offers?

Pros

killer hardware

Ice Cream Sandwich

comes with a keyboard dock

good viewing angles

able to hook up a mouse and external flash drives and hard disks! Solves my problems with a tablet :D

SD card and micro SD card slots

HDMI ports

Cons

battery life

surprisingly sluggish despite hardware

weak speakers

ergonomics were a little weird at first

quad core doesn't really mean a thing until apps support it.

has a fair bit of bloat ware

Here are some pics:

Yeah, they're all on Instagram :p more pics coming soon.

Click here for the official product page.