[Asus Transformer TF700] Blairware:
I have been considering posting this for some time, and a couple of posts I saw in the past few days convinced me it's time. After seeing Asus CEO Jonny Shih showing off a "Pre-Production" Transformer Prime to Walt Mossberg last fall, I was one of the customers... scratch that... "suckers" who sold my Asus Transformer - the original, and waited patiently for the Prime. After the horrendous "roll out" wherein Best Buy oversold their pre-orders, Amazon dropped pre-orders and canceled hundreds more, I finally got my Prime. You know the rest, so I won't go into what a huge disappointment and letdown that became, but the worst part? Asus showing off the "fixed" product 3 weeks later, in the form of the Infinity. Then lying and claiming it was NOT the replacement for the Prime, but another BETTER Flagship. I challenge ANYONE to show me where I can still order or by a Prime in the US. (and don't bother showing me URL's with old stock for sale.)

Fast forward almost 1 year from when I sold my TF101, 8 months from the arrival of my sub-Prime and now I actually HAVE an Infinity (some of us are just gluttons for punishment, it seems) Anyway, I FINALLY found out what is at the root of the issues with this polarizing piece of hardware. How is it that something can have such an aura and presence and "quality" in terms of materials, and yet have defects, (light bleed, screen creak & separation etc. ) performance issues (I/O)

If you got to Asus Web Site and visit the section dedicated to the Transformer Pad Infinity. there are a couple of stylistic videos along the lines of "The making of the Transformer Infinity" showing some of the concepts, and engineering that contributed to the design. First, here is the "shpeel"

"While the specs of the tablet are hardly a surprise, it is the level of craftsmanship which impresses. An aluminum forging process, normally found in the aviation industry has been used to compress the metal of the tablet. A molding of the plastic parts with the metal at nano level has lead to the lack of any screws on the slate’s body. And of course, Corning Gorilla Glass 2 is protecting that precious screen at the device’s front."

In the second of two videos on this page: http://eee.asus.com/en/eeepad/transformer-infinity/features/

Titled: "The Next Transformation", one of the engineers says Asus CEO Jonny came up with the concept of "The Hard Way" - THIS is the root of the evil that inflicts ASUS tablets. The concept is to "come up with something that is worth doing, but challenging to accomplish, instead of choosing the easy path to success"

As noble as that sounds, it's plain stupid. WHY would atech company want to do things, build things, design things "The hard way" The build quality of the Infinity is the number one example of how this concept just DOES NOT WORK. The design is too difficult to build

consistently

. Sure they look awesome, feel solid, and are thin as insert your favorite anorexic chick here, but witness the defect rate. Oh wait... we don't KNOW what the defect rate is. Guess what? I believe It's pretty high. Samsung, with all their plasticiky products, that often look and feel cheap at least has a very good record of build consistency and few defective units.

Witness, I exchanged my Infinity 8 times. Yes, I know that's a ridiculous number, and I know you are thinking: this guy is all OCD, and picking on every tiny little quirk or issue. Maybe. I will grant that I am somewhat OCD, a bit of a perfectionist, but I still consider myself a reasonable person, and not over the top insanely picky. Here's why I returned 7 tablets, so you can decide for yourself:

First, every single one had a defect of some type, some minor, some cosmetic, but NOT ONE was defect free. At first I thought it was bad luck, but by exchange number 4 I KNEW there was some underlying issue; based on serial #'s it was NOTa particular "run" - In fact, I am now100% convinced that these are so difficult to build, that Asus is basically INCAPABLE of building even ONE without some issue. Over the 8 Tablets, I saw (sometime in combinations, but usually one issue per tablet. Ultimately, I ended up keeping one that had an "acceptable level" of issues. You know, like the Dead Pixel" policies companies use? This was "defect issues that are acceptable.

* Screen Back-light Bleed 6 of 8 tablets had noticeable and significant Light-bleed.

* Scratches, dents etc. Only 2 affected, one VERY minor (I almost kept it, until I saw the screen was also coming out of the frame mid-way across the top in landscape orientation) It had a tiny dent, and a tiny "shiny spot" where the anodized gray coating was missing- about the size of a pin head. The other one had a noticeable scratch from the plastic strip on a diagonal, about 1.5 inches long, and had chips out of the plastic strip where it joins to the metal back. Asus claims to us some type of Nano-molding technology to bind plastic and metal. I guess it failed on that one.

* Glass seperating or "Coming out" of the frame. This took the form of the glass being extremely warped, so much so, that I was concerned it would ultimately crack or shatter, as Gorilla Glass 2 is suppossedly thinner than the original, and just as strong, but under a constant stress, and temperature changes? I suspect that is how the "mystery screen breakage" occurs, when people have them docked, then open the tablet to see a broken screen. (Prime had a bunch of these stories, i have only seen a couple on the Infinity, but I suspect it could be worse, as there is no bonded strip around the outside, just a metal back with bent edges to hold the screen, and Lots of reports of screen separation.

TWICE along the way, I though I was all set. The first time, it was the screen warped and coming out of the fram I described above. Even though it worked perfectly, I was seriously afraid it would get worse, or shatter. If it got worse, i would have to shudder RMA the tablet. I went through that once. Never again, is all i can say on the subject. The other one was also really good... cosmetically very nice (by the way, the brushed circular pattern they apply to these is VERY inconsistent. I have seen huge variation on this, with some looking really nice, and some having inconsistent (there's that WORD AGAIN!) finishes, with deeper brush marks in "stripes" across the back, and others being smooth and super shiny.

The LOGO Cut - Done with a Laser? That's the only way I could conceive that they could precisely cut the back in a pattern to fit the Asus logo and have it inset into the aluminum. 2 of my exchanges had a ridiculously mis-cut back, and the logo was coming up, and the cut out was so sharp it would cut your hand easily - my daughter ended up bleeding onto the tablet, so that one went back. They other I was keeping, but failed some other way- I forget how now after all these tablets.

Number 7 was a keeper... I thought. It koooked PERFECT. Beautiful, They pretiest Infinity I ever had. But the Wifi was all over the place, and slow. I was seing 10 Mbit, maybe 12 Mbit speeds. then dropping to 3-5 Mbit. (Others I had would do 20+ Mbit every time, no matter when or how often you tested them. Some hit 30+ Anyway, all of a sudden I remembered the infamous "Pogo Pins" from the Prime, and I sueezed the tablet along the top edge. Not only did it IMEDIATELY shoot straight up to 30 Mbit, but the top left where I squeezed made a super loud creaking, and the screen deviated by a whole lot. You could SEE it moving in relation to the frame, with a loud creak and a clicking sound... great... there goes another one! (#7 - the last one I returned. And Best Buy had to pass it around so they could ALL give it a nice squeeze. Thanks Mr. Whipple!

Ripple effect (I would NOT return a tablet for this, but when it is present, but it looks noticeably less quality than ones that do not display this issue. It looks like several dozen tiny ripples running the length of the tablet, and in bright light it is obvious if you have this. Not all do, and some have no ripples at all.

Volume and power buttons are total crap. Some click and have a detent, others just "mush"

I mean, is this the price we must pay for all that sexy aluminum? This kind of "Delorean Motors build quality"? Hey! They DO sort of look like the Delorean, now that I think about it!

So this is my list. Do you have any of these:

1 Dents, divots or chips out of the metal.

2. Chips out of the plactic strip.

3. Spots where the anodized color is missing.

4. Glass that is rising above the frame, is notably warped (hold it level under some light, and look across the top. If it looks like a brezzy day on the lake, I would not feel too good about it.)

5. Poor application of the "Circular" pattern.

6. Poor laser cut of recessed Logo area. (including sharp metal edges)

7. Poor or failing Power buttons and Volume buttons.

8. Scratches of all types (on a factory sealed box)

9. Creeks, squeaks, Clucking, Clunking, Popping sounds when you squeeze the glass at the border.

That's mostly it for the Physical stuff on the tablet... It IS a beautiful tablet. I just think it's too difficult to build consistently well.

One final gripe: The Power Supply, same design since TF101, and really poor.

Poor grounding of power supply - feel that nice "tickle" when you run your fingers along the metal while on the charger? The Prime would only do this when the plug as oriented one way, switch it around and it stopped. The infinity does it on both polarities. How can they sell it like that? By the way, some are worse than others, I know, I have sampled enough. This is unacceptable.

If they could make these consistently well, there is a very short wishlist I would like to see filled:

* Better memory bus design. I am not sure this is entirely Asus fault, or if some falls on Nvidia, with the single channel memory controller, or whatever it is about Asus Tablet memory architecture ALL Asus tablets have some degree of IO issues - I know the Nexus 7 has I/O issues, though not as bad, but there ARE other Tegra 3 designs that are not plagued with this issue.

* Separate Bluetooth / Wifi chips. or at LEAST a 5 Ghz WiFi...Come ON! The iPAD 1 had 5 Ghz, as does EVERY Samsung Tablet.

* Better Buttons

* Micro USB Port on Tablet

* Real Stereo Speakers, preferably pointing at the user, on Keyboard would be the logical place (if that proves difficult, PERFECT: Jonny Shih's people will be ecstatic!)

Finally: STOP saying: "Dock attached: Use Keyboard to type WORDS" What the heck else are you going to use it for, sending morse code?

Poor I/O - Design of memory bus

Combined (cheap) WiFi/Bluetooth chipset - Thus the poor wifi when Bluetooth streaming.

No 5 Ghz Wifi (

Poor fit of the Primes Dock - Oh yeah, Asus has a blurb saying the TF201 dock is incompatible with TF700, but not the opposite. meanwhile, those videos I mentioned on Asus site? One of the goes on about how they spent a lot of time balancing the tablet to "make it work better in the TF201 Dock" Then they go and repackage Prime docks and charge a premium for them.

There... now I got all that off my chest. Can't WAIT for Jelly Bean!