ASUS Transformer Prime

The original Transformer was a unique concept put forth by ASUS in an effort to gain ground against the then-ubiquitous iPad. With its attachable keyboard, the tablet gained a fair amount of attention and performed well sales-wise to boot. But, although it had a “wow” factor with its keyboard accessory, some felt it lacked the build quality and style of its competition. So, ASUS went back to the drawing board, and the sequel device has all the advantages of the original with its detachable keyboard. It's wrapped in a thinner, lighter, better-looking case that's every bit as stylish as anything else on the market, and it adds kick-butt performance to boot.

Figure 1. The Prime, in All Its Glory

The specs of the tablet portion of the Prime are, in most ways, common to a number of other devices on the market, including the following:

Connecting to the keyboard adds the additional features:

The main thing setting the Prime apart is its processor: the 1.2GHz Tegra 3—a Quad-core processor that impressed the tech media when NVIDIA first demonstrated it. The Prime has been the only mainstream tablet to feature this chip, and it provides the Prime with a nice boost under the hood.

Before even cutting the plastic wrap on the Prime's box, one thing you notice is how svelte even its packaging is. The box also is blissfully uncluttered within, as the only things it contains are the tablet itself, a quick-start guide, the warranty form, a screen-cleaner cloth, and the power cable and plug block. You notice at once when you lift the tablet out of the box how solid it feels, to the point where it almost feels heavier than it is. The casing, which features the same circular brushed-aluminum design with more-recent ASUS ultrabooks and other machines, feels smooth. There is a little flex to the tablet's casing, but only if you squeeze it harder than most people are likely to do.

Figure 2. When you look this good, you don't need a lot of packaging.

Although the initial boot of the Prime puts you into a fairly stock version of Android 3.2 (Honeycomb), ASUS thankfully has not gone the route of heavy customizations to the interface. But, due to the arrival date of my device, I spent so little time with it, it was difficult to give the software platform a thorough walk-through. I received the tablet on a Thursday, and it was upgraded to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) the following Wednesday. This review focuses on that version of the operating system, as anyone purchasing a new Prime will be upgraded in short order.

Figure 3. One of the Prime's live wallpapers—it spins so smoothly it'll make you dizzy.

As you start to use the Prime, you'll notice its responsiveness. Swiping through screens is pleasantly smooth, and apps pop open with little hesitation. If you own another Android device, you also may be surprised to see any apps you've installed begin showing up on the Prime as well. This is a nice touch, as I have more than 60 apps on my Motorola Droid, and after a few moments, I had them on my Prime too. ASUS preloaded a few of its own apps too, including ones to handle file management, media and cloud storage, although with my old, familiar apps installed automatically, I haven't used them much.

I spent a fun week or so with the tablet on its own, during which time I got all the justification I needed for my purchase. Having used an iPad I received at work for a brief period, I did gain an appreciation for the form factor, which was perfect for media consumption. Google Reader isn't quite so easy or pleasant to use on either of my previous two main devices (the aforementioned Droid and an MSI Wind Netbook). And forget about video—although I had watched YouTube videos or shows on Netflix on the Droid, but not on my Kubuntu-powered Netbook (more on this in the Transformer Prime vs. a Netbook sidebar), it paled in comparison to the nice, bright, crisp screen of the Prime. The first few weeks with the Prime highlighted a number of this device's other strengths.

When considering the tablet half of the Prime, reading and watching video are really the activities that make you appreciate it. The ability to have two panes on-screen in something like Google Reader or Gmail felt like a huge upgrade from the tap-item-list-view-back-to-previous that's so common on smartphones. Video playback that didn't skip and that also didn't have to sit three inches from my face in order to see everything was just gravy. Within these activities, a few specific examples stand out:

Figure 4. In the Gmail Spam folder view—no spam here, hooray!

The experience with the tablet portion of the Prime on its own is quite good, and the polish Ice Cream Sandwich brings to the tablet form factor is readily apparent. Swiping through multiple apps; clicking on common links, such as e-mail addresses (which presents an option to open with Gmail or Mail, if the latter is configured), URLs (which open the Browser by default) and addresses (which open Google Maps); and opening common file types (which open the appropriate app or apps) all work as expected. I was able to multitask easily, and with the help of some must-have apps like Google Reader, GTasks, Evernote and Epistle (which were installed following my first boot, as mentioned above), I was putting together draft blog posts in no time. In this regard, actually creating content was a productive enough exercise, which is to say it was no easier or more difficult than on any other tablet.

That is, until my next delivery a week or so later. This is the best part of the Transformer experience: the keyboard dock. After removing the keyboard from its minimal packaging, I popped the Prime into the slot at the top, and following a firmware update, I was happily tippity-tapping away in about five seconds. It was that easy. I never tried hooking up the original Transformer to its keyboard, but I've read some complaints about the mechanism. I can report that the tablet clicks smoothly into place, and there is no hint of flimsiness or difficulty getting it to slot together with the keyboard.

Figure 5. The missing link—the Prime's keyboard dock.

You can't imagine how much more useful the two pieces become until you have them both. I tend to spend time flipping through Web pages or RSS feeds with the tablet alone. But if I have an idea for, well, anything, I can have it captured before it evaporates (which happens faster and faster these days). The keyboard is every bit as usable for longer typing sessions as the Netbook this tablet-combo is meant to replace. Although I haven't had the opportunity to try any other tablets with any other types of keyboards (such as Bluetooth models to pair with the iPad or Galaxy Tab, both of which I've spent some time using), I can't imagine any of them are as convenient and easy to use as the Prime and its keyboard dock. Highlights of the tablet/keyboard combination include:

The keyboard does add a lot to the tablet experience, but it also highlights some shortcomings as well.

The keyboard is a huge benefit, and the experience using it with OS functions and many of the built-in apps is really tight. But, support of the keyboard by some other apps isn't quite so good. For example, the stock Android Browser app responds to many of the keyboard shortcuts you'd expect (Ctrl-T for a new tab, Ctrl-W to close current tab, Ctrl-Left to go back and so on). But some other apps don't support them at all, requiring significant trackpad usage. This doesn't sound like a lot, but after one evening of replacing images on a Joomla site using only the built-in Browser (which, as correctly pointed out by many early reviews of the Prime, is no speed demon) and the Astro file manager, I can tell you that performing the same task on a desktop would have taken one-tenth the time (no exaggeration, I did the math when I finished it at work the next day). Worse are some of the apps that support keyboard shortcuts, but only inconsistently. For example, in the Gmail app, pressing the C key will open a new mail (Compose, I imagine, an uncommon choice but I've seen it), but no combination of other keys with the letter R will allow you to Reply.

Figure 6. In Browser, opening these tabs via the keyboard was nearly instantaneous. Not so with other apps.

And just as the keyboard support is at the moment somewhat half-baked, the availability of apps in the Market optimized for tablets is still behind the curve. Although an icon in the notification bar will tell you if you're using a smartphone app that's “scaled-up” for use on bigger screens, you don't really need it—it's painfully obvious. Take the Facebook app for instance, in which nearly the entire right side of the app is empty space when in landscape orientation, or one of my favorites, ConnectBot, which refuses to sit in landscape orientation unless the keyboard is attached. Some of these apps just need a bit of thought given to typical tablet use cases, but for the time being, there are enough idiosyncrasies that it warrants more than just a shrug and a “meh”.

Last, and least, for the time being, is that as someone who's doing the business/document thing during the day, the pre-installed Polaris office just doesn't hold up to most documents. It's fine for jotting down meeting notes or doing a quick spreadsheet to sum up some numbers, and the Google Docs integration is pretty neat. But for anything that involves heavy formatting, what you open is not going to look like what was sent to you, and what you send won't look like what the person you sent it to opens. Hopefully, the upcoming LibreOffice port (people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-02-04.html) will give Android tablets, and especially a business-savvy model like the Prime, something to combat the likes of iWork on the iPad (which is a great example of what a slimmed-down office package can be).

Other minor nags include:

As someone who entered the mobile development field last year, I still held out for more than six months before spending some cheddar on this device. Now that I've done so, I have a hard time picturing what it would be like to go back. If I could get a full-blown, reasonably performing Linux build on this machine, it would make me think closely about whether I actually need a real notebook. But as it is, the ASUS Transformer Prime is certainly best in class among Android tablets currently on the market: a cutting-edge processor, the latest-and-greatest Android OS and the flexibility to go from a content-devouring media device to a quick-switching productivity machine (even if the lack of strong apps means you're working in plain text), all in a solid, stylish package. At approximately $650 for the whole kit, it's not the cheapest machine on the block, but I certainly consider it worth the price.