The Transformer is well named. If you’re using it to answer email in a local cafe, it looks like a netbook or ultraportable laptop. But if you want to tweet in front of the TV or catch up with the news in bed, you can just pluck out the screen, and what you have in your hand is an Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) tablet. It’s a real two-for-one deal, limited only by the operating system’s current — and, we hope, temporary — deficiencies. It would be a killer product if only it ran Microsoft Windows 8, which smoothly integrates both the full laptop PC and multi-touch tablet experiences in a single unified operating system.
Tablet manufacturers have a tough time competing with Apple’s brand power, TV advertising budget and rich ecosystem of shops, apps, iTunes etc, but they can do two things in response. First, they can offer more innovative hardware, which Apple helps by leaving out cheap and obviously useful things such as cameras (in the first iPad), SD card slots and USB ports. Second, they can target buyers with practical needs. They can’t compete when people are buying iPads as toys and fashion accessories, but they can if they shift the argument to features and functions, traditionally known as “bangs per buck”. This has led to a stream of interesting tablet designs, including the Asus Transformer and Padfone, Acer Iconia, and Motorola Xoom.
The Transformer TF101 comprises a thin iPad-like tablet and a dedicated docking station that transforms it into a netbook or smartbook. Note that it’s not just an external keyboard of the sort you could buy anywhere. The dock provides the tablet with an integrated keyboard, touchpad and mouse buttons, two USB ports, a full-size SD card slot, and a second battery that roughly doubles the system’s working life from eight to about 16 hours. Of course, you can still use the touch screen with the tablet docked. However, having a real keyboard complete with Tab and arrow keys makes web browsing and using the Polaris application suite — word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package — dramatically more productive.
Unfortunately, hardware is only half the story. Tablet manufacturers also need software to match Apple’s iOS and its vast store of applications. That’s not easy. Hewlett-Packard and RIM are having a go with WebOS (sourced from Palm) and a new BlackBerry operating system respectively, and while Windows 8 looks better than iOS at the moment, it’s probably 15 months away. That leaves most tablet manufacturers with Google’s Linux-based Android, which was written for small-screen smartphones and is still learning to cope with 10-inch or larger screens. Worse, although Android has plenty of smartphone apps, very few have been optimised for tablets. What you gain on the hardware swings, you lose on the software roundabouts.
Still, Android smartphones now outsell Apple iPhones, so there must be lots of people who own Android phones and would prefer an Android tablet.
The tablet part of the Transformer is much like most other Android tablets, and feels nicely made. It’s 13mm thick and has a 10.1-inch glossy IPS widescreen fronted by Gorilla glass. The screen is sharp and bright, and delivers a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Inside, there’s a 1GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor with 1GB of memory. There are front- and back-facing cameras, which are 1.2MP and 5MP respectively — both much better than the iPad 2 — and stereo loudspeakers. On the tablet’s edges are the 3.5mm audio jack, Mini-HDMI port and a microSD card slot. On the bottom, there’s a proprietary Apple-style connector that handles both power and data. It’s used for charging the tablet, and for connecting to the separate keyboard/docking station.
The keyboard/dock has a couple of hooks that latch into slots on the bottom edge of the tablet, which is easy to do once you’ve had a bit of practice. How well it will stand up to years of use (and abuse) remains to be seen. You’re also dependent on the dedicated charging cable, which I mention because mine went wrong, and I had to ask Asus for a spare.
The Android 3.0 software has its good and bad points, but Asus has added a nice front end with better icons. The browser is fast, supports tabs, and plays Adobe Flash content, which means the Transformer actually delivers the full web experience that the iPad does not. However, I found its video playback wasn’t always smooth, with dropped frames on the BBC iPlayer site spoiling the experience. Also, websites designed for mouse operation are not as easy to use as tablet apps, and in tablet mode, the Transformer’s YouTube and Gmail apps both provide a better experience than the websites.
This is where the Transformer wins out. You simply slot the tablet into the docking station and use the touchpad and keyboard instead.
The Transformer isn’t for everyone, but it does work well both as a handheld tablet and a fold-up netbook. If you’re a happy Android smartphone user, it’s good value at £429.99, for a 16GB model including the dock. You’d be missing the point if you bought one without.
