Asus T100 Transformer Book (64 GB)

[12860682321]

Note: This is my first review on really anything on this forum so I'll try to make this review as descriptive as possible. Sorry if I have some grammar or sentence structure mistakes, Enlish isn't my strongest subject.

 

The Asus Transformer Book T100 is a evolution and somewhat an revolution to the slow, crappy, cheap netbooks from 4 or 5 years ago. When the introduction of the tablets came to play like the originial Ipad and the Nexus 7. The netbook market share has been quickly losing over the huge popularity of the tablet and ultraportables. Now with Intels new Bay Trail processor and Asus superior netbook and laptop design and manufacture technquies. The netbook has risen from dead to take back its place as a cheap, portable, bloatware free, light workhouse power machine.

 

Asus has been the best manufaures of netbooks for years when they were popular, in fact the reason why netbooks really existed in the first place and known to the pulbic somewhat is because of asus because they make wonderful laptops for all class, from expensive ultraportables to inespensive 400 dollar machines. I'm pretty sure that Asus knew about the fact that the netbook was going down in flames when the first introduction of the tablet came into play, however, all Asus was really needed was a cheap, power effiecent, x86 processor from Intel and Window 8.1 to kickstart the netbook again. This answer came in the package of the Asus T100 that is running a quad core Intel Atom Bay-Trail Z3740D processor, and its pretty snappy for an atom processor. Window 8.1 makes the touch experience more enjoyable and with Window 8.1's tablet sipping battery consumtion, the Asus T100 is somewhat a revolution of the traditional netbook experience.

 

What comes inside the box

 

Inside the somewhat heavy box, you littery get everything needed for the tablet. When I first opened the box the first thing I saw was the tablet itself inside a fingerprint/dust protector bag, with some information about the device. Then below that was the keyboard also in a bag, then below that was a warrenty guide, a quick start manual, and the activation code for your copy of Microsoft Office student edition which includes Word, Powerpoint and Excel. Below that was the USB 2 male to micro USB male connector to charge the device. The power brick to charge the device comes in a seperate tray on the left of the power cable. The device comes defualt uncharged to turn on, however yours could be different, however charging this device isn't really that long considering which the powerbrick charges at 2 amp. The quick start manual said that it takes about 8 hours to charge the device up compleatly on the first charge which is total bulls*it from my experience. It took about 2 to 3 hours to charge complately on the first charge.

 

Sorry for not having photos, didn't have my camera when I open the box.

 

The Tablet

 

The tablet itself is about half a kilogram or one pound which is a lot heavier then the Ipad air and most tablets in this size. The processor is an Intel Baytrail Z3740D with 2 GB of RAM which is good for light productivitiy task. The display is IPS, 1366 x 768 HD, display which has a PPI of 155 which is good enough to read articles on reddit, look at pictures and Youtube videos. The battery life is about 10 to 12 hours depending on the use. The keyboard is ten-keyless with some modifaction. There are a few IO ports like microusb to charge the device, full size USB 3.0 on the removable keyboard, microphone and headphone jack and also a face cam.

 

CPU

 

Intel Atom Baytrail processor is twice as fast and uses twice as less power then the older generation Cloverview of processors. I will also like to mention that these processors are also SOC or System On Chip where literly everything from the CPU, RAM, GPU, and almost every logic is built into the same chip. The processor in the T100 is the Z3740D with a maximum of 2 GB of RAM, you may think that 2GB of RAM isn't enough to do things, however with Window 8 the usage of memory has been dermatically reduced, also you got to consider the fact that your not going to run programs like Blender, Photoshop and After Effects and get production grade performace out of this tablet, believe me I tried, it took too long. However the SOC can run programs like Firefox, Chrome, Minecraft at reduced settings and VLC player at watchable or usable frame rates and quality. Really this Atom has the performace of a Celeron with the power consumtion of an Atom. Its quad core so its much faster processing multi-threading operation and running multiple things more effieicently than older generation of Intel processors, while using twice as less power. This is a radical step of Intel toward more power effiecent processors. Intel's new Broadwell CPUs are going to use less power and perfrom better (slightly) then Haswell, which is good for the mobile market, not the gaming or extream overclocker market, which when you consider the fact that electricity is getting more and more expensive and many business expenditures are on electricty. Maybe Intel is going in the right direction, where you can have the power to make moives on the go on a device that turns into a tablet and laptop have 12 hours or more of battery life and can make movies and edit photos like the my machine Blackjack can at home. (Blackjack is my Battlestation, he is 3 years old and needs a GPU upgrade, but other than that he's find) Of course there are people like me who wants a desktop, but there are other people out their who wants a mobile computer that they can do their work on becuase their job or lifestyle wants them to. For me, I was a tablet/laptop like the Transformer T100 with excellent battery life, and performace. Not like those ARM based processors which really you can't do work in, because they don't support MS Office. In fact with Baytrail, MS has no excuse to make an RT based window tablet again. Cutoff the RT brand of Microsoft Surface 2 becuase the App store isn't mature and I can run legacy apps like my T100 can. The RT line of tablets should die in a fire like the original netbook did. Overall the Asus T100 processor can do a lot of light productivity, medium multimedia, internet consumtion task and light gaming, like watching a Youtube video, Reddit, 2048 and Minecraft at reduced settings.

 

Display

 

The display of the T100 is an IPS 1366 by 768 display with 178 degrees of viewing without hard colour distorsions and white and black balences. The problem with the display isn't really the low resolution because 155 PPI is good enough for me, even thought 1080p screen exist on the market in this size form factors with larger resolution existing on the market as well, its a 400 dollar tablet what do you expect. The big problem I have is the glossy screen which is acually reflective even when its on, it gets less noticable the brigter the screen gets, however when you move your head the reflections gets horribly worst. I also didn't like how the screen doesn't tilt back enough, when I use my T100 I tilt my screen all the way back, and still it isn't really good enough, it great that the screen is IPS which doesn't effect me too much unlike TN panels, however I would like the screen to tilt back a little bit further. Other than that the screen is good overall, the brightness is the best in the world and the colour reproductions is the best either however its a 400 dollar tablet. If I need a colour accerate monitor or higher brightness, I can use my Battlestation Blackjack to do the task. The display is only great for watching movies on a car or plane ride or reading the internet or ebooks.

 

Software

 

With netbooks there very rarely comes with bloatware and the T100 is no exception. In fact it comes with Netfilx which is great, its one of the only bloatware that is good and the rest you can uninstall. The device came with Asus webstorge installed which I uninstalled because I use Bittorrent Sync. Movie and photo editors which is similar to MS stock video and photo software and also Line which is a SMS app that I also don't care. If I'm going to text I rather use my phone. Other than that, its stock windows with a free copy of MS Office Home and Student, which makes window netbook/tablet like this deal breaker when you buy them because right now there isn't an app that is as good as MS Office on Android and IOS. The rest you can download off from Ninite or your website of chosing. Hell I downloaded Mincraft onto my device and played it for about 30 minutes.        

 

Storage

 

The T100 comes in 4 flavors although right now you can buy it two, those are the 32 GB and 64 GB and in some places you can get them with 500 GB HDD. The internal storage of tablet itself isn't really big with the 32 GB version you only get about 15 GB of space, in fact the 32 GB is really a 40 GB with 8 GB seperate eMMC for the recovery, If you get the 64 GB you get 32 GB free which if your only adding a couple of programs like Chrome or Firefox becuase IE just suck, a couple of light games like Minecraft or 2048 and apps from the app store then your pretty good. I will warn you that you may only carry about 8 movies if there are all in full HD on the 64 GB version. So it better to carry them on a seperate memory stick or load them onto a microSD card and inset it into the right side of the tablet. The eMMC type of SSD storage isn't as fast as a real SSD however you got to consider the fact that this is a tablet not really a laptop so all the hardware is in the tablet not the keyboard. Still the eMMC is still pretty quick loading up appication within 5 seconds.

 

Keyboard

 

The keyboard of the Asus T100 is pretty small, considering which that the keyboard is also ten-keyless. However this isn't really the limitation of the price just more of the size of the tablet. In fact most netbook keyboard's in the early age were like the T100 because the area to putting the keys itself was so small due to the screen size, plus many of the keys are slightly modified in size for example the shift key is half the size on the right size then on the left size. it might be difficulte to type if you have big hands, but thankfully my hands are relativly small for me so typing on this is still some what of a challenge in the first few days, however after that I quickly regain 80 percent of my original typing speed. In fact this entire review is typed on the T100 keyboard.

 

Sound

 

Sound from the T100 isn't the best for even a tablet. However they where loud enough to fill a 15 by 10 by 8 room with only half volume. However if you have a file that has quite sound in the first place then good luck filling up a small room. Headphones however was a slightly better story. My KRK 6400 was able to be powered by the tablet itself and was able to produce some good sound. However at some portion of the soundtrack, it seems that there isn't enough power from the capacitors to the headhpone where it was needed, so these portion fo the sound seems flat and weak. However for a 400 dollar tablet its not bad.

 

The Experience

 

The tablet and netbook experience of the T100 is the best it could have been. It could have been a lot better if some improvement have been made like a brighter screen, a proper window screen button, a slightly better processor like the Z3770D instead of the Z3740D to get slightly better performace, and a couple of other things. It could also be 500 dollars instead and I would still buy it. The plastic build quality isn't that horrible, however it would be nice if the T100 was made out of metel instead of plastic, but I thinks that asking to too much. Over the value of the device is justifiable for its cost.

 

 

Overall I think the Asus Transformer Book T100 is a good buy for what its worth. I bought mine for 450 dollars instead of the 400 becasue of supply and demand. However for what I'm using for which is note taking, e-reader, reddit, office work and some light productivity use. Its a great tablet/netbook for what its worth. I hoping microsoft is reading this review because there really no reason why we need Window RT for ARM based processors, the point of having a windows tablet is because of the ability of running legacy windows program and full MS programs like Word, Powerpoint, etc. And with Intel Baytrail processor that has the ability to run Window 8.1, maybe the new Microsoft Surface 3 tablet will run a Atom instead of the an ARM based processor. 

[klotza1]

I want very much... but, windows RT... why...

[ShadowCaptain]

I want very much... but, windows RT... why...

 

The T100 is full windows 8 (also comes with  free office which is awesome)