Asus Transformer Prime First Impressions/Reviews

[Cyber Warrior]

Hello everyone,

The purpose of this thread, is to hear members thoughts & opinions on how the Asus Transformer Prime stacks up amongst a suggested list of attributes:

• Aesthetics
• Screen
• Hardware
• Overall User Interface
• Widgets
• Signal quality (Compared to other devices)
• GPS
• Social Networking
• Email/Calendar
• Battery Life
• Performance
• Media (music, movies, DLNA)
• Keyboard's
• Camera (both still & video)
• How the Transformer Prime compares to your previous tablet (if applicable)
• Disappointments (if any)

Feel free to provide as little or as much detail as possible, while trying to make it as useful as possible. Hopefully this will help others who are considering the Transformer Prime, but would like to hear some user feedback first. Also, please do not review the Transformer Prime prior to having one

And if you read a review that you found helpful, please use the Thanks button to show them your appreciation!

 

[leeshor]

I've had my Prime for a week now and love it. It was an upgrade from my TF101 because I found someone to sell the TF101 too.

Everything is working fine except the signal strength on the WiFi. Honestly I not certain it's worth an RMA. On my TF101 I can see 6-7 different WiFi spots and at the very same location only 2 on the TF201 but it works everywhere in my home, even three floors up and outside so no real complaints.

There are a ton more options for things that would use more or less battery not to mention the haptic feedback which can chew a batter up and spit it out as badly as BT and WiFi in combination. I suggest turning it off for most everything. If you put the TF101 and TF201 side-by-side with no logo and picked them both up you would be hard pressed to say they were the same tablet. Thin and weight are instantly noticeably better.

GPS Great
Performance in general apps About the same
In games, much better.

 

[sectachrome]

Got mine last night from Best Buy (Ordered 12/23). Here are my first impressions.
Ill preface this by saying Ive never had a tablet and dont even know if Ive ever even used one for more than 5 seconds. I had been thinking about getting one, and when I saw that Best Buy was taking orders, I jumped on it figuring I could always return it. I was a little worried reading about all the issues on the forums before I got it.

Build quality is nice, Im impressed. I havent had any ports fall out or cables breaking. The thing just looks nice, and feels quality in your hands. I did notice people complaining that the screen was coming off in the top left. Mine has this "issue", though I dont think its really an issue. The little gap that seems "unglued" is directly above the volume rocker and HDMI port. The screen isnt coming up here if you look at it from the side, but if you push on it theres a little give. I think this is just the way its built, there probably isnt anything to adhere the screen to in that little spot where the buttons are. No big deal to me, I think everyones overreacting about it. I havent seen any backlight bleeding issues either, and I was looking for it. Another issue people have been talking about is the Asus logo "glitching" on the boot screen. I looked for this too and it doesnt happen on mine.

The screen is amazing. Not much else to say about it. Its super clear and bright.

My wifi works fine. I get a crappy signal because I live in a basement, but the speeds were very close to what I was getting on my HTC Incredible and Macbook Pro all side by side. I tried using the GPS for about 1 minute, unsurprisingly I didnt get a signal because Im in a basement. Ill test it more later, but honestly if this thing didnt come with GPS at all I wouldnt really care.

I played some GTA III on it, it was awesome. The controls are much better than I would have expected, though I think it would still suck on a small phone screen. Really badass that a full game like this can be played on a tablet, I hope more stuff like this comes out.

I only briefly toyed with the camera, seems more than adequate. Pretty quick shutter speed.

Asus gives you a little microfiber in the box, and it wiped off all finger prints and smudges quickly and easily.

The keyboard is pretty annoying to use in landscape as you might expect. I picked up SwiftKey Tablet X for like $5, and its a big improvement. The split keyboard is great, and visually the keyboard is much nicer looking than the stock stuff.

As far as speed and performance, it seems nice to me but as I mentioned before this is the first tablet Ive ever used. Its a little laggy at times, but nothing terrible at all and could just be the nature of Honeycomb. I cant wait to get ICS on this thing, its only going to get better!

Overall Im really impressed. This is a badass gadget. I dont think Ill be returning mine

 

[dalvik]

posted in another thread.

 

[strudel#AC]

My previous tablet was a Motorola Xoom which I found a new home for when my Prime arrived. Between the Xoom and the Prime, the differences are massive in virtually every way, especially since my Prime is now running Ice Cream Sandwhich.

The keyboard dock
A USB port is a wonderful, wonderful thing to have. I plugged in a USB powered hard drive and it worked great, a USB key worked fine and right now I also tried plugging in my phone, a Sprint Epic 4G. Right off the bat my tablet started charging my phone (which could be helpful for tethering without killing the phone's battery by doing it). I tried to access the SD card on my phone but didn't have any luck. I have noticed that sometimes the USB port is a little flaky about recognizing USB devices and requires a reboot. For the wealth of possibilities this adds to the tablet I consider that a small price to pay that will most likely improve with time and future updates.

Battery life with the keyboard dock is insane. I had the tablet and dock both fully charged at 5:00 pm and basically used the tablet nonstop until 2 am. I have used it for another 5 hours today and still have 40% left So basically I am looking at 14 hours of heavy-the-screen-is-almost-always-on usage and it still has plenty of life left in it.

The Screen
The display is beautiful, viewing angles rival my phone, colors are nice and vivid and blacks are nice and deep. It isn't quite as nice as the Super AMOLED screen on my phone but it isn't too far behind.

Web browser performance
Flash content did a good job of severely degrading performance on my Xoom so I was eager to test it on my Prime. In a nutshell, it runs flawless, whether it is standard def, high def, full screen or embedded in a webpage. I am watching a HD video embedded in an Engadget post and I can continue to surf with no drop in performance whatsoever while the video is playing.

Signal Quality (wifi)
From my experience wifi works fine, no better or worse then my Xoom did. I would call that a plus from what some people have been experiencing but YMMV.

GPS
Worthless. I tethered my Prime to my phone and tried to use Google Maps Navigation. It never got a GPS lock for even a second. Epic fail but I never intended to mount it in my car so it isn't a big deal for me. With some additional work I may be able to get it to function in some capacity but I don't need it and mostly tried it out of curiosity.

Media
With a little help of a video player or two in the Market I have been unable to find a video format that does not play flawlessly. I will do more testing tonight but as of right now it exceeds my expectations from this perspective

Cameras
It has two cameras that I will probably never use so they are bullet points on a spec sheet to me. I guess it is a plus that they aren't garbage like they are on the iPad.

Overall system performance and user experience
I have played with an iPad2 extensively and honestly, I believe the performance gap between iOS and Android is eliminated with the Prime and ICS. Everything on the Prime is so smooth and responsive, live wallpaper or not. The flexibility and customization ability of Android wins for me any day of the week versus iOS so when the performance difference is eliminated that is icing on the cake.

IMHO, if you want a giant iPod Touch, get an iPad. If you want an OS that can trully take advantage of the capabilities a tablet provides, get an Android tablet. If you want the current cream of the crop for Android tablets, look no further then the Transformer Prime

 

[anon(15438)]

Had mine for a week returned it.

wifi bad

speaker bad

browser choppy

Returned and got money back today!!!

 

[frellingfrakker]

I got mine today and set it up with no issues. The wifi is fine(I'm downstairs with a router upstairs and getting 3 of 4 bars), the screen is great, Netflix works great and the dock is awesome. I haven't tested the GPS yet, but that's not what I bought it for. Overall my first impression is that I love it and don't regret the purchase at all. I'm still adjusting to ICS though.

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

 

[jrz5024]

Just picked up my Prime from Best Buy. Having played with it for about an hour and not done much other than update to ICS, here are my first impressions.

Hardware
In a word: gorgeous. The featureless face emphasizes the screen above all else, like it should. Spun aluminum back is both attractive and appears scratch resistant. The unibody construction gives it a solid, premium feel that doesn't allow for any give or pliability when stressed. It's a fingerprint magnet, but you already knew that, it's a tablet - all you do is touch the thing.

Only complaint would be the speaker. Not having stereo speakers is bad enough, but placing the sole speaker directly underneath the spot where your hand goes seems a silly design choice to me.

My other minor gripe - a proprietary charging cable, Asus? Really? It also feels a bit loose, which worries me slightly down the road.

The Screen
Very, very nice. Arguably the best I've seen on a tablet. It's bright, crisp and clean. While it's plenty bright normally, Super IPS+ mode really kicks it up to another level, and I've no doubt I could use this outside comfortably. Viewing angles are as wide as you could hope for (or plausibly require). Color reproduction is as good as can be expected on an LCD, with mostly accurate tones (although it tends a bit on the warm / yellow side). Blacks are decently black, although I've been spoiled from the Super AMOLED on my Epic 4G. No noticeable pixelation unless you look for it or are browsing text-heavy websites up close.

Web browser performance
The best I've seen on a tablet, no question. Fast, responsive and NO CHECKERBOARDING! Flash content plays well and integrates almost seamlessly into browser. Some minor hiccups when first loading a page but overall very impressively done. This is how an internet tablet should feel when surfing the web. Additionally, I LOVE the thumb controls implemented in ICS. They're a great addition and make browsing on a large screen feel more comfortable.

EDIT: Upon putting it through its paces a little more, it's apparent that the browser isn't yet perfect. Once a page is fully loaded it flows like butter, but until then expect heavy stuttering for the first few seconds. Additionally, pinch-zooming appears to force the browser to re-draw the whole page, which can feel clunky on image or flash-heavy websites and cause further stuttering. The hardware should definitely be able to handle it, so my theory is that this is software-related and can therefore be improved upon.

EDIT2: Definitely software related. I downloaded ICS Browser+ and many of the issues described above appear to be fixed entirely. Scrolling and pinch-zooming is still a bit choppy as the page is first loading, but it's very usable and comparable to what I've seen on iOS and the iPad2.

Signal Quality
So far, so good. Getting about 3-4 bars at work, with about 5-6Mb p/s up and down, but I'm on my crappy work's wifi. Will run more tests when I get back home.

EDIT: Wi-Fi is fast and stable. Consistent speeds of ~20MB /down and 10MB/up, ~10ms latency on Verizon's FIOS network in NYC. However, my apartment is tiny so I'm always close to my router. FWIW, my experience with Wi-Fi has been positive so far.

GPS
As useless as everyone says it is. But, who cares? It's a tablet. You aren't using this for navigation anyway. Moving on.

Cameras
Surprisingly decent. Still pictures won't win any awards but the video mode is pretty quality, and certainly good enough for webcam. Loving the interface and video options - Asus and Google did a great job on this, can't wait to see a similar implementation in phones.

Overall system performance
This is a bit premature to rate, since I just installed ICS and haven't let it get bogged down with dozens of apps and widgets yet. But, so far? Swiping through homescreens, apps and menus is instantaneous, with nary a hiccup or stutter to be found. It took 4 cores (plus a helper) to do it, but it seems like Android is finally smooth enough to be truly compared to iOS.

One thing I'd like to point out is the responsiveness of the accelerometer. For the first time - on any device I've ever used, including an iPod touch and iPad - the accelerometer feels like it works as it should and is helpful rather than an annoyance. The screen transitions smoothly and quickly, without having to slowly refresh as is so common on older devices. Even inside of apps, rotating the screen is quick and works as you'd expect.

I'll add more to this later once I've had a chance to really dive in and play around. For now, though, I'm pretty impressed with the TP so far.

 

[Fordy Boy]

completely agree.

 

[scottysize]

Aesthetics - Wow! Beautiful piece of machinery. I love the look of it.

Screen - Bright and perfect. I can see it outdoors easily. I actually wish it would dim a little more when reading in bed at night.

Hardware - Runs like a champ. No issues. No Wifi problems on mine. As for GPS, I haven't even tried it. I have a Droid phone for GPS.

Overall User Interface - I can't see a difference between ICS and Honeycomb. It's fine.

Widgets - It's a little lacking in this department, but ICS is new, so I'd expect to see more options later. So far no problems though.

Signal quality (Compared to other devices) - I have both the 101 and the 201. The Wifi signal is the same on both tablets.

GPS - Haven't tested and could care less. Didn't buy it for GPS.

Social Networking - Since Facebook locked me out, I have't been able to test FB, but Twitter seams to work well.

Email/Calendar - It's OK, but I'm a Touchdown guy. I do like the TD tablet interface. I'm sure there's a way to set it up so that it defaults to all of my email accounts. Right now I have to select all accounts in the view mode. No big deal.

Battery Life - It's good. I'd like to see maybe an hour more. I lost it the other night with 30 minutes left. Of course I watched videos all night long, so that's still pretty good. About 8 hours of video play back.

Performance - This thing is fast. I mean. Wow.

Media (music, movies, DLNA) - Need more codacs for it. I thought ICS would allow for more, but so far I'm still pretty limited on what I can watch on it. I'm sure in time...
EDIT: (I left the above in so that you can still see my initial impressions.) Install BSPlayer Lite. It works great on every file that I've thrown at it so far. Now this really is the greatest tablet ever in the history of tablets!

Keyboard's - (Virtual one) I hate it. I've tried many different apps and they all suck. How do I turn off the stupid blue line. Every time I try and type faster than 5 words per minute, the stupid blue line comes up and it puts in spaces, wrong words, and stupid lettering. I've tried several other keyboards, but they are really made for phones and not tablets. If I was a "hunt and pecker", I'd be fine with it, but I'm a "self-taught", "can't type for crap" typer and I can't stand the keyboard. It's my only real complaint about the entire thing.

Camera (both still & video) - They seem fine. Once again, I have a phone for this. I do plan on using the video portion to talk trash during my fantasy football season next year, so we'll see. I might try a test video this week.

How the Transformer Prime compares to your previous tablet (if applicable) - Comparing it to the 101 other than being lighter and a bit smaller, I'd say they are really similar. In fact, if I didn't really want the quad-core, I would have been happy just purchasing another 101.

Disappointments (if any) - Keyboard. But then again, I hate all tablet screen keyboards.

 

[louiejimbax]

1st off I would like to say this is my first big tablet (10.1.)

I just got my ICS TF201 a few days ago and I got to say I am not very impressed. The navigation on this thing isn't smooth at all..full of glitches among other things. All of these issues might be able to be addressed if I get a little help from you guys.

Prime problems:
-Occasional youtube glitch ( makes me unable to do text searches and have to do voice command. Then the youtube vid spazzes out and makes the Prime restart.
-Frequent Google+ glitch (when minimized it crashes)
- Faulty GPS (Google sky maps directions are completely wrong as well.)
- Emulators performances lacking (for a quad core tablet I expected it to run smooth.
-splash top Remote desktop cumbersome( auto feature doesn't work so I have to manually put in the constantly changing IP address [dhcp].)
- When the tablet is plugged in and on it still drains the battery (at a slower rate.
- takes forever to charge
- general buffering problems on youtube
- Laggy video playback


Now I expected a lot more of this tablet ...I think I hyped my self up for t too much. If anyone could address any of these issues that would be splendid. I also have a rooted gingerbread Kindle Fire with go laucher ex which I am much happier with the results.

Lastly... can it connect to a bluetooth ps3 controller unwired?

 

[frellingfrakker]

1st off I would like to say this is my first big tablet (10.1.)

I just got my ICS TF201 a few days ago and I got to say I am not very impressed. The navigation on this thing isn't smooth at all..full of glitches among other things. All of these issues might be able to be addressed if I get a little help from you guys.

Prime problems:
-Occasional youtube glitch ( makes me unable to do text searches and have to do voice command. Then the youtube vid spazzes out and makes the Prime restart.
I don't have this issue.
-Frequent Google+ glitch (when minimized it crashes)
I don't use Google+, but it may be an ICS issue.
- Faulty GPS (Google sky maps directions are completely wrong as well.)
I still haven't tried the GPS
- Emulators performances lacking (for a quad core tablet I expected it to run smooth.
I think the current emulators were built for phone screens so they may need to come up with "HD" or tablet versions to work better instead of being stretched for the bigger screen. That being said, I was
able to use NESoid without any issues.
-splash top Remote desktop cumbersome( auto feature doesn't work so I have to manually put in the constantly changing IP address [dhcp].)
No problems here, works great for me. Auto does work. Are you using the ASUS myCloud version?
- When the tablet is plugged in and on it still drains the battery (at a slower rate.
Not sure about this one
- takes forever to charge
You may have a dud. Mine charges very fast. Keep in mind it will charge very slowly over USB only because of the power requirements so you should be using the wall charger.
- general buffering problems on youtube
Probably slow connection or you have one with wifi issues.
- Laggy video playback
Haven't seen this.

Now I expected a lot more of this tablet ...I think I hyped my self up for t too much. If anyone could address any of these issues that would be splendid. I also have a rooted gingerbread Kindle Fire with go laucher ex which I am much happier with the results.

Lastly... can it connect to a bluetooth ps3 controller unwired?

 

[halmo20#AC]

Unfortunately, my GPS barely works and wifi speed is not even half of what my GS2 phone is from same spot in the house... Such a high hopes but it's returning to Best Buy...

 

[Pandawg]

After a week with my first ever Android device, I am in love. ICS is really nice, and the Transformer Prime makes everything run so smooth with it's 5 cores

 

[ajonesma]

just got my Transformer Prime yesterday, and I absolutely love it. Just wished the bezzle wasn't so wide :-(

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

 

[badbrad17]

Had mine for a week returned it.

wifi bad

speaker bad

browser choppy

Returned and got money back today!!!

Really? This makes no sense. Sounds like you got a bad unit.

 

[enthuz]

just got my Transformer Prime yesterday, and I absolutely love it. Just wished the bezzle wasn't so wide :-(

Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk

Does anyone know why the bezel is so wide. I am thinking it is due to the GPS, WiFi and sensors so they just made it uniformed all around. There isn't anything on the sides and bottom.

 

[cparker5]

I have owned; iPad, Xoom, Galaxy, iPad2, Transformer and Transformer Prime.

Currently the only tablets still in the house are the Xoom (wife), Galaxy (daughter 1), Transformer (daughter 2) and Prime (me). We are not an Apple household and thus these were parted with (ebay ;-) )

Anyway as a Day 1 Xoom adopter things were rough, that tablet was nice but had issues, but when I moved to the Galaxy I realized it didn't offer too much more (small/lighter) but essentially the same. Until I got the Transformer TF101 (used the iPad 2 in there) I didn't really love any of these tablets, but the Transformer changed that. I loved how I could make it a netbook with the dock and treat it as such, but still have the benefits of the tablet and touchscreen. The iPad 2 couldn't live up to what i had grown to love about the Transformer, so it make a quick (3 week) exit to the resale market.

That brings us to the Prime. The Prime (now ICS enabled) has all the benfits of the TF101 and more. The Prime is easily an improvement on the TF101. I have not experienced any WiFi issues, this thing has worked flawlessly (home, hotel and work networks), This is easily my favorite of the tablets I have had. And damn is it a nice looking piece of hardware.

 

[enthuz]

I must say that you have some good experience with tablets over the past generations of iOS and Android. I will be the first in my immediate family with a tablet. We are a combined iOS, Android and Windows family with phones and laptops though. How does your daughters like the tablets? I have a 12yr old who wants one badly.

 

[jammer1963]

I've had my prime for about a Month now and I have to say I'm falling more and more OUT of love with it as time goes by. I have to say that it is a fast tablet. But I've never owned another tablet so I really can't make an honest comparison. When I first started looking for a tablet to buy, I was considering an IPAD. I owned an iphone for a couple years so I was familiar with Apple and it's level of controlling every aspect from purchases to installing music on the device. I got tired of that control, and besides, the IPAD looks like a giant iphone and I wanted to get away from that look.

I changed from the iphone last summer. I went with the Samsung Infuse. It was the largest phone at the time, and for an older guy who's eyesight is getting weaker, a larger screen was much appreciated. One of the reasons I chose the Prime was the larger screen. 10.1 inches is a nice feature. The screen is very clear which makes it nice for viewing email, reading books or watching a movie.

Speaking of watching movies, this is where the love affair began to fade. I recently went on vacation and left the laptop behind. I hate lugging around a laptop especially when the Prime is so light and easty to tote around. So I loaded up some movies on the Prime before we left. The first night we sat down to watch a movie, I tired using an app which crashed every 10-minute into the movie, I download another app and it gave me different results but not favorable ones. I can't remember which apps I used because as they gave me problems I removed them. Needless to say, watching movies wasn't the best experience. Which is dissapointing because using it as a movie player was the main reason I brought the Prime for. I was hoping to replace an older, ailing laptop which I used mainly to watch movies but I'm thinking twice about that option.

Getting my hands on the keyboard/dock has been a nightmare!!! Everytime I try to get one, they are backordered with either unrealistic delivery dates, or they are just plain out of stock. I was REALLY hoping to use the Prime with the dock because it sounded like such a sweet deal. Bumping the battery life up to 18-hrs, and have the ability to use USB devices with it sounded great! NOTE to people reading this review... If you find a place that says they offer the dock, MAKE SURE they have them in stock! I find this a deceptive practice by some vendors. I place an order with a company which didn't say they didn't have the keyboard in stock and I paid for rush delivery. A few days past when the dock should have been on my door, I called and asked about the status and they said they weren't availble but would be in that week. I said ok, and didn't cancel my order because finding a dock has been almost impossible, so I waited it out. Another week and a half went by and I placed another call, and they said they still weren't available. I canceled my order and told them that if they don't have an item available immediately for shipping, they should inform the buyer before placing a purchase order.

GPS doesn't work at all. I didn't buy it for that feature, but if it's supposed to have it, it should work, Right? I read the issue with the GPS involves the metal enclosure, which makes sense. It also affects the operation with Wifi. Wifi works but it's spotty. At home, I'm typically within 20-ft of my router and I get three out of four bars and my connection is listed as "good". When I was at my hotel, I was as close a 5-ft, and the signal strength was one bar and "Fair". I use the wifi all the time and the strength of the connection in different places drives me nuts! I was in McDonalds which had free wifi and it wouldn't connect at all even though it showed the connection as open and available in the wifi listing.

If your a gamer, this thing is awesome. The games I've downloaded which are featured with Nvidia work flawlessly. I have an Alienware laptop for games though so the games on my Prime are fillers. I didn't buy it for games. It's a shame that one of the main feautres I DIDN'T buy it for, it works the best for.

The Prime does have some pluses, The large, bright and clear screen are very nice. It's fast but sometimes the web browser is slow and then locks up. It does come back but after a few seconds.

I am so dissapointed by my purchase of the Prime. I think when I read the specs I was drawn in. Especially by the quad-core and Nvidia graphics. As each day goes by, I'm wondering why I brought this tablet at all. If your looking for a bargain on a used tablet, look on Ebay, I think this is where my tablet will be heading. It's just not that useful for me. If they fixed the GPS and Wifi issues AND had a great app for watching moves that played them and didn't crash every 10-minutes, it would be my most favorite toy. Most of the time, it just sits in it's expensive case, gathering dust.