Asus EEE Pad Transformer tablet – a first look and preview

I do however have to mention the device I got to play with is an early test model and although my friends at Asus assured me it is close to what we’ll see in stores in the next days, I’ve encountered quite a couple of nasty bugs I am willing to put on the fact the the device is a sample, like I said. You’ll see what I’m talking about below. Also, I did not receive the docking station with integrated keyboard and extended battery as well, only the actual 10 inch touch tablet.

Asus EEE pad Transformer landed on our test bench

Here are some of my first impressions on it:

• definitely feels solid and looks nice, with a textured back finish and the wide 10.1 inch display on top
• not too heavy or bulky for comfortable everyday use, despite the fact that it’s nearly 50% thicker than the new iPad 2 (13 mm for the EEE, 9 mm for the new Apple tablet)
• display is glossy so using it outside will be painful, like you can see in the clip
• the IPS matrix used for the screen offers good viewing angles, but according to some of my coleagues, not that good as on the iPad. Personaly I compared the Transformer with the first gen iPad and can’t really say there’s a gap between the screens used on these two. Still, colors and viewing angles on the iPad seemed a tad more natural, but just a tad.
• definitely loved the big resolution (1280 x 800 px) on this one when compared to the smaller 1024 x 768 px on the iPad
• good speakers, oferring solid quality and nice punch
• decent cameras, although didn’t really had the time to play much with those

Overall the EEE Trasnformer ain’t bad, especially since it packs powerful hardware as well, with a Tegra2 heart. However, there’s one more thing to talk about and boy how important it is: the OS. As you probably know this EEE Pad runs on Android’s HoneyComb operating system, one specially designed for touchscreen tablets and only launched a couple of months ago. Thus, a pretty young and immature OS, and you’ll see why. And despite the fact that is snappy and comes with some well designed basic apps and interface, it still has a long way to go before becoming a competitive tablet OS.

Now, since this is a sample model like I said, most of the problems I got on the device will probably go away by the time the product gets on the market. Still, here’s what happened:

• the OS freezes quite often in even the most basic apps like camera, browser, etc.
• although the EEE Pad has access to the Android Market, you’ve got limited options on Apps specially made for the big display. In fact, you can’t say there are more than a couple of dozens of interesting ones. Most of the apps available in the Market Store right now are designed for smaller displays and will look hilarious at least on the 10 inch screen, if not completely unusable. Plus, quite a bunch of apps are malfunctioning on HoneyComb. A friend of mine tried posting on a WordPress blog using only the tablet and had problems inserting any kind of multimedia content, video or photo, simply because the WordPress App did not recognize the content stored on the tablet’s storage card. And this is just one of the examples.
• device had serious problems running self stored HD content and even HD content from Youtube but like I said, only had limited time with it so will look more into this aspect in the near future, once I get the tablet again

HoneyComb still needs a bunch of work before becoming what it was promised: a reliable and easy to use tablet OS

It is undoubtful though that the EEE Pad does have great potential. It’s a solid built tablet with powerful guts and finally comes at a price that can compete with the iPad 2. It was expected to start from $499, with the docking station going for an extra hundred bucks, but recent rumors claim it will go for as low as $399 (for the 16GB version).  So could be versatile as a multimedia and business tablet as well.

However, having a good powerful tablet won’t be any good without a proper interface and operating system, and the HoneyComb I saw today is far away from what it should be (or from iOS for that mater). It’s still too complicated and too unstable for the everyday user. And lacks the support of much needed apps, as there’s little you can do with a tablet without them.

See the clip below for more details.

And a couple of extra pictures.

Also, here’s another clip from my friend Bogdan who spent more time with the Transformer these last days, but be aware it’s not in English.

I for one will get to play more with this tablet next week and will give it a proper review (if you’re curious on any particular aspects you would like to see tested, please don’t hesitate and leave a reply and I’ll do my best to satisfy each of you).

That’s it for now with the Transformer, but stay tuned, a bunch more details will follow soon.