Asus Eee Pad Transformer review

There were people who laughed when Apple launched the iPad. Firstly, the idea seemed ludicrous: the form factor hadn't existed previously and was not one in which anyone had shown any interest.

Secondly, the name was subject to much derision. Now, though, the market is aware of tablets and has accepted them in varying degrees, even when they have ludicrous names.

Well, no name we've seen yet is as bad as Asus' Eee Pad Transformer. But no product has caused as much excitement either. It's an Android Honeycomb tablet with dimensions similar to the iPad's, but with features that could make your laptop redundant.

The Eee Pad does this by offering a two-part solution. The main component is a tablet with a 10.1in screen and the usual features that come with the latest version of Android.

The second component - a keyboard with additional battery - costs around £90 extra but aims to allow the Eee Pad to compete with a PC. So does this system work, or will your compact laptop still triumph?

Laptop replacement
To dive straight in, we don't honestly think the Asus system can replace a Windows, Mac OS X or a Linux laptop. Honeycomb is a good mobile operating system, but there are several things about it that don't work as a serious computing platform.

Take, for example, copy and paste. This has never been the strong suit of most smartphones (although Nokia has never had a problem making this feature work). It took ages for Apple to introduce it and, while it does work on a phone, it's nowhere near as slick as on a desktop PC.

To use the Eee Pad like a laptop, you're going to need to copy and paste into and out of documents from time to time. This seems to involve transferring your hands from the keyboard onto the touchscreen. The way the docked tablet is angled makes this monstrously difficult and a very poor user experience.

Indeed, attaching the keyboard seemed to affect how we thought of the device. We have no problem using a tablet, but the addition of a dock with a decent keypad seemed to confuse us slightly, as if we were battling against the muscle memory of using a Windows laptop.

We found ourselves hardly using the touch screen, and tried to do everything with the mouse and keyboard. In the same way that Windows isn't designed for touch-screen displays, Android isn't really designed for keyboards and mouse inputs.

And then there's the keyboard shortcuts, which we're used to on all desktop operating systems. On Android, the likes of control+v don't work, and people who use PCs will find this frustrating. To be fair, these are early days for Honeycomb and future updates should improve all these concerns.

We also found that that the trackpad and arrow keys on the Transformer keyboard enticed us to do stupid things quite often. Several times we found our cursor jumping up the screen as we typed (because we leaned on the wrong bit of the keyboard). The good news is that you can switch off the trackpad. The bad news is that you can't turn of the arrow keys.

So far, you could be forgiven for thinking we don't much like the Asus. In fact, the truth is that we have loved every moment we've spent with it. The typing quirks are an irritation, but using the device as a laptop is still plausible.

SD card sockets on the tablet section and a full sized socket on the keyboard dock means that you can add storage, read and manipulate files from a digital camera (Adobe offers a mobile version of Photoshop for free on Android) as well as upload them to the internet.

Office replacement
For office users Polaris provides some simple, but functional, software that enables you to use documents and spreadsheets on the go. We found this a nice environment to work in, and tested it on the train with great success.

The only glitch we found was when the full stop seemed to get stuck. We think this might have been because the keypad wasn't docked properly. It happened only once, though, and we're satisfied it's not a major bug.

File management is also possible via an included application. You can browse either the tablet's micro SD card socket or the keyboard's SD card. The only problem here is that the Android file system is Linux-based.

This might present navigational difficulties for users who aren't familiar with the way Linux is laid out, and finding the keyboard SD card had us puzzling for a few minutes.

Typing on the built-in keyboard is pleasant. The raised keys feel sturdy and very nice to type on. There are shortcut buttons that take you to common functions in Android and can help with the Transformer's other options, like the ability to switch off the trackpad.

There is no wired ethernet, so you'll be stuck on Wi-Fi all the time, something that will no doubt make it a difficult sell for many IT departments. However, wireless performance is great and we had no problems getting it to join our test network.

It's worth pointing out that a version of the Eee Pad will feature 3G at some point soon. We really missed having 3G, and we'd say it's well worth paying the extra to get an Eee Pad with that feature.

Display highlights
One of the highlights, for us, is the fantastic 10.1in screen. It's crisp and clear which makes typing and reading a real pleasure.

Asus has also managed to tread the line between useful Android customisation and a complete mess really well. The few widgets provided with the Transformer are beautiful and provide useful information. On the initial home screen you'll see an email counter and a weather widget. These are both useful enough to keep around.

If you want to stay in touch with work, family and friends while out on the road, the front-facing webcam will help you to do that. Google's own Talk application supports video chat and there are other apps on the Android market that can perform similar functions. Skype has yet to include support for video on Android, but it's fair to assume that's on its way soon.

The rear camera is, in our view, much less useful. It can perform as well as those on a mobile phone, but wielding a tablet around as a still or video camera makes no sense at all. You may disagree, so it's good that Asus provides the option should you want to make use of it.

Battery life
One of our favourite features of the Eee Pad is its long battery life. We don't think the tablet alone can quite match the 10 hours of the iPad, but it's impressive nonetheless.

Certainly the processors used in these tablets mean that power use, and thus battery life, are much more impressive than on any laptop. But with the optional keyboard attached, the power is increased again, and the battery life further improved.

It's always hard to pin down real-world battery life on these devices but, with the keyboard dock attached, you'll see somewhere between 10 and 15 hours. Without it, we'd guess at somewhere around eight hours, but this will all depend on what you use it for.

We loved the Eee Pad Transformer. We don't see it replacing your work PC or a serious notebook PC, but what it can do is give you an internet tablet that offers more than enough to keep you connected and entertained while you're away. If you work in the cloud a lot, you'll find the excellent browser a formidable ally.

For entertainment and something to make notes on while at a trade show, meeting or traveling from office to office, it's a truly fantastic piece of kit that's as desirable as an iPad and easily more useful.

Android 3.0 Honeycomb, 10.1in 1,280x800 screen, dual-core 1GHz NVidia Tegra 2 processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB or 32GB storage, MicroSD card reader (SD card reader on Keyboard dock), 2xUSB (on keyboard)