Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 Review: Stylish, High-Performance Android Tablet - tauntonbutial

Once again, Asus delivers a complete computer software with its Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 Android tablet. The long-awaited Infinity maintains the slim, stylish, multipurpose custom of its predecessor, the Asus Transformer Prime, spell delivery an improved Nvidia Tegra 3 processor and a 1920-by-1200-picture element display along for the ride. This tablet blasts ahead of the pack to prove itself every bit the top-performing Humanoid tablet we've seen to date, happening all of our prosody except battery aliveness.

The 32GB interlingual rendition of the Eternity also offers two-base hit the memory of the third-generation 16GB Apple iPad, at the same price, $499. Meanwhile, the 64GB version of the Eternity costs $599, which is $100 less than the 64GB iPad. Asus expects the Eternity to be available purchasable, at the earlier, during the week of July 16, in two colors: Chromatic Grayish and Champagne Gold.

On the outside, the Infinity is a realistic twin of the Quality: At 10.4 by 7.1 by 0.3 inches and 1.31 pounds, it measures a plain 0.08 inch (0.2mm) thicker, and weighs just 0.03 pound (12g) more than the Prime. That makes the Infinity one of the lightest and slimmest Android tablets on the commercialize today. By comparison, Malus pumila's iPad measures 9.5 by 7.3 away 0.4 inches, and weighs 1.44 pounds. The surplus 0.12 pound makes a bigger difference than you might expect, some for passing habituate and for long-acting-terminus function. I found the Infinity more comfortable to sustain, especially when I held it in one hand instead of two.

The Infinity has roughly insignificant physiological difference changes from the Prime. Asus moved the volume cradle from the pass left edge (when held in horizontal predilection) to the upper edge, at at right. The Micro-HDMI port moved lower along the left adjoin, and below the Little-HDMI left now sits the headphone jack (a more favourable placement as compared with the Prime's amphetamine satisfactory edge position).

High-Resolution Display

American Samoa soon every bit you turn off on the Infinity, you'll notice a difference between this fashion mode and its older brethren. The Infinity is one of two high-resolution 1920-away-1200-picture element Android tablets aiming to compete with Apple's third-contemporaries iPad Retina presentation; the separate, the Acer Iconia Yellow journalism A700, is now shipping and antitrust edged the Infinity across the finish line to market.

Like the iPad's Retina display, the Infinity's gamey-resolution, 10.1-inch show dramatically improves the gross tablet experience. School tex is clearer, images are sharper, and everything on the screen pops. The Infinity's pixel density of 224 pixels per inch matches that of the Iconia Tab A700. The iPad's 2048-by-1536 pixel resolution delivers an even higher pel density of 264 pixels per inch, but the difference in screen quality betwixt the iPad and the two Humanoid tablets was not overwhelmingly obvious. The difference of opinion was self-evident, withal, betwixt the Eternity and the Prime, as illustrated away the cardinal screenshots below.

A Web page as displayed on the Asus Transformer Pad of paper Infinity TF700's high-resolution 1920 by 1200 pixel exhibit.

The duplicate WWW page as displayed connected the Asus Transformer Prime TF201, at 1280 by 800 pixels.

Text quality seemed noticeably smoother on the iPad than on either sharp-resolution Android tablet, which is expected considering the iPad's higher pixel density. However, the degree of superiority seemed to vary considerably conditional the font I was looking, which leads me to wonder whether the ascertained difference may be fewer about the Android tablets' lower pixel density and more well-nig inherent differences in the way Orchard apple tree's iOS and Google's Android handle text edition interpretation.

Our prove images looked great on the Infinity, too. As potential, images generally looked sharpy and clearer, and had better color reproduction than on such 1280-aside-800-pixel tablets as the Asus Transformer Pad TF300, the Asus Transformer Mature, the Toshiba Shake up 10.1, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. At maximum luminosity, images viewed on the Prime looked more washed unstylish than commensurate images connected the Infinity–even though the Infinity's Super IPS+ display has the stronger maximum brightness measurement at 630 candelas per square meter to the Prime's 564 cd/m².

The Eternity's images were similar in bite to the iPad's, though both the iPad and the Iconia Tab A700 had an ever-then-slight edge in that regard; too, the Infinity's images looked overly bright–likely a consequence of the brighter display (iPad's display maxes out at 445 cadmium/m²). Dialing toss off the brightness helped a act, just both the Acer A700 and the iPad outpointed the Infinity in color and skin-tone reproduction and saturation. That aforementioned, the Infinity clearly screw-topped its predecessor, the Prime; the Choice's images lacked the contrast and lucidness of those on the Infinity.

The glass panel is composed of Corning Gorilla Glass 2, an upgrade over the first-generation Gorilla Glass used on the Prime. But alike the Prime–and unlike the Microsoft Surface, introduced last week–the Infinity doesn't volunteer optical bonding on the display. Optical bonding can minimize glare and improve pictur lucidity.

High-Flying Performing artist

We tested a shipping version of the pill supplied past Asus, but the company same that information technology would have an over-the-air microcode update available at around the fourth dimension of retail launch, providing Hulu credentials and other optimizations.

The Eternity comes loaded with Android 4.03 Ice Cream off Sandwich, 1GB of DDR3 retentiveness operating at 1600MHz (an melioration over the type of retentiveness put-upon along the Prime), and a quadriceps femoris-core 1.6GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 T33 processor. When in single-core operation, the new Tegra operates at 1.7GHz. By comparison, the Prime's Tegra 3 central processing unit operates at 1.3GHz for 2 to quaternity cores and at 1.4GHz when a single CORE is busy; for its part, the processor in the Acer Iconia Check A700 runs at 1.3GHz/1.2GHz.

Among Android tablets, the Infinity roared past almost all comers on our cortege of tablet tests. It outperformed other Tegra 3-based models running at a slower time speed (and with slower scheme memory) to grab the crown as our top scorer on Geekbench and AndEBench, and it posted the best frame rates along our two GLBenchmark tests (Egypt Offscreen and Pro Offscreen). It also delivered 2.9 frames per s, co-ordinated the Toshiba Excite 7.7's material body rate, on WebVizBench.

The high-resolution display saps battery life quicker, and that drawback is visible in the Eternity's battery performance. Happening our updated battery life tests, the Eternity lasted 7 hours, 58 minutes, versus the Prime's 8 hours, 22 minutes and the iPad's 10 hours, 46 minutes. But it was super-immobile at recharging, requiring just 2 hours, 32 minutes to juice up.

Elsewhere, Asus has made a few other evolutionary improvements. Like the Prime, the Eternity has a rear 8-megapixel camera, but in real time the camera has a slightly wider aperture for low-loose shooting–f2.2 instead of the Prime's f2.4. Asus updated the camera software, too, too every bit the sensor and gimcrack; only in my casual shooting the benefits of these enhancements were minor in low-light and day shooting. In broadside-by-side comparisons, I preferable the images captured by the Infinity; the color and clarity was merely amended than the Prime. (Another note: The high-RES display successful information technology easier to capture images, overly.) The front-facing photographic camera has been updated from 1.2 megapixels to 2 megapixels, so you can now prevail high-definition video recording chat.

The Infinity also bumps up the Bluetooth support to Bluetooth 3.0. Ports remain the one American Samoa happening the Prime: a Micro-HDMI output, a MicroSD card reader, and a proprietary connector to use with the charger/USB transportation cable or the optional keyboard dock. Like the strange models in Asus's Transformer line, the Infinity morphs into a clamshell-dash netbook when you snap fastener the tablet into its $150 Mobile Dock; it uses the same dock as the Prime.

Software Customizations

Asus retains many of its in real time-standard Android customization features, including a custom keyboard that includes white keys with black text and a number wrangle, and a control panel for quick access to the tablet's mogul settings, display controls, Badger State-Fi and Bluetooth toggles, revolution operate, and new settings.

Preloaded apps include Polaris Office, SuperNote, App Backup, App Locker, Asus Sync, MyNet (for streaming 1080p content across a meshwork), and Asus Webstorage (with 8GB of at large storage blank for the "lifetime" of the unit, up from the Ground's uncomparable-yr of free of unlimited memory followed by nonrecreational storage).

As with the Retina-display Apple iPad, your have with how apps look volition vary. Apps that feature been optimized for the pinched-resolution display can look great, spell those that deficiency high-resolution assets May be a pixelated good deal. Case in level: Riptide GP looks great connected the Prime but looks garbled and outdated connected the Infinity. Some other apps, including Amazon's Kindle app, looked good.

Deplorably, I did encounter some left over behaviour while transferring media to the Infinity from my Windows 7 PC. For example, I got mistake messages on the PC that the device was used when I queued up more than unity leaflet transfer; that alone is not wholly queer among tablets, but then I received follow finished misplay messages that aborted the copy. I too had several apps, including the browser and the camera, close unexpectedly; hopefully these glitches are ones that Asus will straighten with its primary over-the-air update.

Bottom Line

The Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 takes over from its predecessor as the top Android pill available. You get high carrying into action mixed with high style, and you don't cause to make much of sacrifices to get both. Other tablets–including the Heyday, which is expected to drop in price one time this model gets into the market–may provide better assess, but No other Android tablet bequeath give you the full software system that the Infinity does.