ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700Treview by Jamie Coville
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ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T 32GB version Current Price: $428.00 US / $489.99 CDN on Amazon Colour: Amethyst Gray
I used to use an Acer netbook when going to comic conventions. The netbook was old though and my battery has died twice over the past couple of years. I didn't want to pay to replace it a 3rd time so I decided to buy a tablet instead. My first tablet was the Microsoft Surface RT and I wrote a review of it here. In short, it was not suited for my needs and I returned it. I decided to buy the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity tablet and take it on a test run at C2E2 convention I went to a couple of months ago. The reason I chose this tablet was it's 10.1 size screen, which is great for reading comics. It came with Polaris Office, which works with Microsoft office spreadsheets and documents, which allows me to use my want list spreadsheet and travel information I keep in a word document. This is an Android tablet and I discovered there were already a few apps that would read my comics and play my music without much hassle (a problem I had with the Surface). Of course I checked out a whole bunch of reviews and at the time and this was the best reviewed Android tablet that filled my needs. Some of the drawbacks of the tablet were quickly rectified, with benefits, if you bought the keyboard attachment. This comes separately ($129.99 US) but it's worth buying for 3 reasons. 1) It's a decent sized Qwerty Keyboard that stiffly holds the tablet in place on an angle. 2) It has a full sized USB 2.0 port and 3) It has a 4.5 hour extra battery in it, which extends your total tablet battery life to 15 hours according to the specs. With the keyboard attachment this tablet comes to about as close as a netbook as you can get, but you can still remove it and use it as a handheld tablet, getting the benefits of portability a tablet offers. During my 13 hour train ride to and from Chicago my tablet kept me entertained by listening to music, reading comics and playing games. The apps I used for this was Folder Music Player, Comic Rack (which reads CBRs, can sort comics by series and has a nice bookmark feature) and some puzzle games like Flow Line, Sudoku & Majong. The Transformer had no problems hooking into nearby wifi and I could set up the onboard e-mail to hook up into multiple pop accounts to download my e-mail (something the Microsoft Surface could not do). The tablet does have GPS feature but I don't think it would be practical for use while driving. There is only wifi (no Cell phone) so you aren't online all the time. Unless you have a cell phone that does tethering, which the tablet does hook into okay. I wouldn't recommend doing this unless you absolutely needed a net connection for something simple. Upon start up the tablet gives you 27 gigs of free space. I've already put on about 18 Gigs of music and comics, plus other stuff and I still have over 7 Gigs left. There is an MicroSD card slot in the tablet itself and an SD slot in the keyboard. From what I read online from Asus Infinity tablet users, it can take 128 GB cards in both (and possibly more when they come out). So there is no danger of running out of space if you really need it. There is also a 64GB version of the tablet out now. I could have also played movies if I wanted to, just I just didn't feel up to it. The tablet does have 1920x1200 LED display so I'm pretty sure the video quality would be great. The NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad core processor and 1GB DDR3 RAM seems to be up to what other tablets are at in terms of speed specs at the time I bought it. When I go to San Diego I'll be bringing along some videos to watch while on the airplane. While on the convention floor I had no problem taking out my tablet and quickly using it to bring up my want list spreadsheet as I went through boxes. The only 'slow' part was marking off the books I had bought. I'm used to just scratching off the issue # with a pen on a piece of paper and because of the extra time it takes I often didn't bother to delete/gray out the issue # of the book I just bought. Realistically I didn't really need to scratch it off as I didn't do a whole lot of buying. I knew which books I just bought and took some time later to mark off the day's purchases all at once. The only problem I had with the tablet was trying to write while on a bumpy train ride. Occasionally the tablet would move the cursor to a different spot on the screen, making writing difficult. There might be some sensitivity settings that could resolve this but I didn't look into it yet. Another minor drawbacks was finger print smudge and sun glare when used outside. This is common with all tablets and can be rectified with an anti-glare screen protector. The tablet does come with it's own cloth to remove smudges from the screen. I've read elsewhere people aren't happy with the 1 speaker the tablet has and how it doesn't respond well to high end gaming, but I always use headphones and don't play high end games so those things don't really affect me. The tablet has a bunch of other features I haven't gone through, mainly because I don't use them (eg a mini HDMI port). I had hoped the tablet would be lighter than my netbook, but with the keyboard it's about the same weight. The tablet is a sleek in it's design, which looks nice but I'm now afraid of it slipping out of my hands and dropping it. I just bought (but have not yet received) a protector/case for it. That will make it heavier than my netbook but I'll have to deal with that. Overall I was very happy with the tablet and will be using it regularly from now on. I also recently took the tablet itself with me on a business trip to use for entertainment on a train ride. It was again a nice companion to keep me entertained. Now that summer is here I'm also taking it out and about to do some reading/music listening outside. I do recommend the ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity for both personal and comic convention use.
Regards, http://www.TheGraphicNovels.com News and discussion on a free, Delphi like forum.
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E-mail: jcoville@kingston.net
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