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Decent screen, good battery life, low price
Chunky, touchpad could be more sensitive
Taiwanese manufacturer Asus has been adopting an increasingly aggressive pricing strategy to carve out a place for itself in the
tablet and laptop market recently, and the Asus Transformer Book T100 hybrid design is no exception. It's good to see an affordable Windows 8.1 device, but are the tech compromises a bit too much to make it worthwhile?
It's on sale now for around £350.
Design
It's a solidly built device. Perhaps a bit too solidly built -- it looks like a sturdy workhorse with little in the way of fancy styling, and weighs a over a kilogramme with the tablet docked into the keyboard.
It's available in both 32GB and 64GB versions, plus you can add a further 64GB via the microSD card slot in the side (incidentally, you get 1,000GB of free web storage from Asus too, which can't be bad). There's also a micro HDMI out on the tablet port and a full-size USB port on the keyboard.
Windows 8.1 and features
As a full Windows 8.1 device it's running the latest version of the rapidly evolving operating system. The new version has brought back the Start button which was much missed by seasoned Windows users (i.e. most people). And this is the full Windows experience, rather than the RT version, so you're not just limited to installing apps from the Windows Marketplace, and you also get a full version of Office as standard. Yes, there's still a bit of a learning curve to find your way around, but it's a slick, fast and easy-to-use operating system for the most part, that makes the most of the touch-sensitive screen.
As a hybrid device it works pretty well. Both screen and keyboard weigh the same amount, though it's still prone to tipping if you place the screen beyond about 45 degrees. The dock is nicely robust and the screen clips into it and releases very easily via an outsize button just above the keyboard. The keyboard itself feels pretty good for the most part, though the touchpad feels a little cramped and isn't the most sensitive we've come across.
Screen and hardware
The 10.1-inch screen offers a resolution of 1,366x768 pixels -- not the very highest of res, but good enough for a screen of this size. It's nicely sensitive too, and we didn't have any problems skipping around the touchy, slidy interface.
The quad-core Intel Atom processor is clocked at 1.3GHz, backed by 2GB of RAM and does a pretty decent job in general use, fast and efficient with browsing and movie watching. Standard gaming seemed to be okay too, but it clearly has its limits, and we couldn't get it to run our usual test HD game of Portal (which isn't exactly a demanding game these days either).
The battery held up very well though, running for a solid 11 hours in our test, which is just as well, since it takes a surprisingly long time to charge up.
Conclusion
Yes, you can get Microsoft's Surface 2 for a tenner more, but that model only runs the limited RT version of Windows 8.1 and you'll still need to shell out another £100 for the accompanying keyboard. The T100 may not be the best looking hybrid out there, but it's solidly built, offers a decent screen and processor, plus the latest Windows 8.1 at an extremely reasonable price.
Software: Windows 8.1 32-bit
Processor: Quad-core 1.3GHz Intel Atom
Memory: 64GB storage, 2GB RAM 533MHz
Display: 10.1in, LED backlit IPS, 1,366x768 pixels
Hard Drive: 32/64GB
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics
Webcam: 1.2 megapixel 1080p HD, 8 megapixel rear-mounted camera
Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, wireless LAN, Bluetooth, NFC
Ports: 1x USB 2.0, 1x micro HDMI, 1x microUSB, headphone/microphone jack, power connector, microSD card slot
Blu-ray player: No
Size: Tablet: 264x170x10mm; Dock: 264x170x13mm
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
