The new Eee Pad Transformer Prime is mind-blowingly slim and light weight and with a beautiful metallic spun finished design. In fact, it is the slimmest tablet on the market yet, only 0.33" thin and 1.29lbs light. You can easily carry it with you no matter where you go.
Key Features
- 10.1-inch WXGA Super IPS+ capacitive pressure-sensing multi touch display made with Corning® Gorilla® Glass for brilliant HD entertainment and intuitive navigation. 178° viewing angle (1280 x 800)
- Ultra-slim and light (.33" thin and 1.29lbs light) with metallic spun finish design
- Powered by NVIDIA® Tegra® 3 Quad-core CPU for excellent multitasking, 1080p HD video output playback and 3D games for SUPERB performance
- 1.2MP front camera and 8MP auto-focus rear camera with flash, back-illuminated CMOS sensor, and large aperture design to clearly capture every moment.
- Android™ 3.2 Honeycomb (Upgradable to Android™ 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich) OS with Adobe® Flash® support and over 500,000 downloadable applications on the Android ™ Market.1
- Optional Docking station with Full QWERTY keyboard adds additional 6 hours of battery life, to instantly turn the Eee Pad Transformer Prime into PC mode with up to 18 hours of battery life.2
Customer Reviews
"OK, so I will start by saying that my Amazon order was not canceled, and I received my tablet on Tuesday December 20th. So there was no problem for me as far as my order goes. However, my docking keyboard still has yet to arrive. Amazon says it should arrive around January 6th.
Please note that I had the original Transformer, but I sold it to a friend and bought this one. So I will do my best to compare, but it has only been several hours that I got to play around with the new one so far.
Am I glad I updated to this one, yes. Are there major noticeable differences? Some, but not drastic. Obviously some new Tegra games cannot be played on the original Transformer, so there are the obvious hardware updates to this Prime model.
The new operating system, due later, may make this tablet act completely different. So I will update once that comes out also.
Pros:
* Tegra 3 chip makes for more powerful gaming with games that are designed for it, as well as overall performance improvements.
* The enhancements on Honeycomb OS are subtle, but nice. Hopefully ICS will be a HUGE improvement.
* The screen has that special coating that they talked about, and although it does fingerprint up like crazy as with any touch screen tablet, it is SO much easier to clean off the prints. Wow, it is nice.
* The rear camera is a huge improvement over the previous model. Perfect? no, but incredibly improved? yes. The auto focus is nice, although sometimes jittery when making a movie. But overall it is great.
* The rear camera has an LED flash now, which is very nice to have.
* I like the gold color a lot more than I thought I would. It is very subtle.
* For only having one speaker this time around, I was impressed by the sound for both music and games and general sound bites.
* They included a longer charging cable than the original 3 footer. Looks to be about 5 foot this time around. Thanks for that Asus. The extra 2 feet seriously helps.
* The overall-design looks and feels better than the original.
* When I opened it, and booted up, I had 2 Asus updates ready for me.
* Wifi speeds seemed the same as the previous model. I didn't test it, just from using it and judging by memory.
* The screen looks much improved from the original, even though it is the same resolution, the brightness helps and the colors look better.
* Movies look amazing on this screen.
* Adobe Flash sites work on this tablet.
* Not sure why we need it, but there are 2 microphones this time around.
* Asus implemented a new file manager which is really nice and easy to navigate.
* Headphones connected sound amazing, and are in stereo. (I read others questioning if headphones would sound good or not)
* HDMI port is not the same as the original Transformer. This is Micro HDMI and the original was Mini HDMI. But it looks great on my HD TV.
Cons:
* The biggest complaint I have is that the power button is hard to press because it doesn't stick out far enough. You have to try to press it to truly understand. Took my a while the first few tries.
* If you use it, the MicroSD card sticks out more than it did in the original. Probably due to the Prime's curved edges. Not a major flaw, but noticeable if you had the original Prime.
* As per usual, the more apps you install, the longer the start-up boot time. Not Asus' fault, but this is with any Android Tablet. I have quite a few apps installed (I installed 107 apps myself), and while it still shuts down very quickly, it went from taking 30 seconds to boot, all the way up to 4 minutes and 10 seconds now. That is a LONG boot up. Like I said, before I installed my apps, it was only 30 seconds. Anyone else experience this?
* There have been a few glitches in some apps that I've used. I will try to take note as to which ones and update on here.
* Some movies that I had were not able to be played on the default player. I downloaded MoboPlayer and the codecs and no problems now.
* There is only one speaker. Granted, it is great sound, but still only one speaker? WTF? I guess it was a design limitation.
Let me tell you that this one, compared to the original model, does not feel that different as far as noticing performance improvements. As I stated before, this may (or may not) change when we get the new ICS operating system later. I don't want to sound biased and say that it will be amazing with ICS, but logically it makes sense that it will run smoother and faster overall, with the exception of older apps that aren't designed around the quad core, etc.
So don't expect to see an astonishingly noticeable difference if you played with the original Transformer.
I plan to upload some videos to youtube soon that show the use of the front and rear camera as well as some still photos.
If I notice anything else, positive or negative about the Prime, I will post as soon as I get the chance.
My overall review: This was worth the extra money in my opinion. I like to keep my gadgets up to date, and I loved the specs on this tablet. If you have the extra money, I say go for it, or at least wait until ICS operating system comes out to hear if it really makes a big impact on performance, or to see if it is all hype. I hope that everyone gets theirs soon also."
"Pros:
-Bright Screen with Super IPS.
-Faster than any tablet that I've used! Response time from scrolling is very quick even with the animations.
-Tegra games look very nice and works with my controller.
-Long battery life, not a disappointment.
-The custom interface graphics are well done. Love the dolphin live wallpaper!
-Camera, 8mp back and front camera is good enough for face time.
-Was able to playback 1080p videos pretty smoothly. Never have to convert a movie again!
-Supernotes - seems handy for school. Hand write, draw, type.
Cons:
-had wifi connection timeouts while my other prime tablet doesn't.
-Random clicks (sometimes happen, but locking it again will fix it).
Overall, this tablet is great buy for $499! There's not a lot of bloatware, so I don't need to deal with that. I've played games on it for about 8 hours on balanced mode and the battery still shows 20-25%. I'm still waiting for my keyboard however. I would recommend this tablet to anyone. "
"This is not a review, but a notice to other buyers: The new transformer prime is sleeker than the original ASUS Transformer tablet, and those new dimensions mean that it will NOT fit in the old keyboard dock.
If you want the keyboard dock, make sure you get one for the "Transformer Prime" or "TF201", not the plain-jane "Eee Pad Transformer Docking Keyboard".
Like so many of you early purchasers, I'm currently waiting to get my hands on what looks to be a lovely android tablet. However, the associated keyboard dock is not yet available for pre-purchase. Hopefully, this will stem some of the complaints and mispurchases just because Amazon's (somewhat reasonable) "Other Great Products from Asus" suggestions wants to list a popular older model instead of a item they don't yet sell.
[Giving it a star rating because I have to, chose four stars because this note isn't a criticism.] "
