Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 Review

The 586 gram Prime feels really good in your hands, with emphasis on the plural of hands here. A 10.1 inch tablet is just too large to operate with one hand unless you are holding it to read a book or webpage. It also feels really thin in hand and not just because of its 8.3mm thickness, while this helps greatly, the edges are also tapered off to meet the front of the tablet.

Up front keeping things interesting is the 10.1 inch Super IPS+ display. The capacitive touchscreen is capable of 10 finger multi-touch and has Corning's Gorilla Glass keeping things scratch free. Although the strengthened glass front is rather attracted to fingerprints, the front of the Prime can be cleaned by a microfibre cloth or if you don't have one on hand, a damp tissue will do the trick.

Looking at the 1280 by 800 resolution display's capabilities, colours are vibrant and saturated without being over-saturated at all. Viewing angles are near perfect as well, we did not notice colours inverting at all, even when viewed from extreme and completely unrealistic viewing angles.

Part of the Super IPS+ display benefits is a generous brightness boost to over 600 nits, making the Prime a lot more usable in sunlight. In fact, the only place I can genuinely complain about the Prime's display is it's resolution. While the 1280 x 800 resolution is currently standard compared to most other tablets a whole collection of Full HD tablets are going to flood the market later this year, including Asus' own Pad Infinity.

Where the Transformer Prime has a PPI count of 149, Full HD tablets will step it up to 224 PPI, a marked improvement (assuming 10.1 inch tablets remain standard). While pixelation can be seen if you look close enough, the High Definition resolution and viewing distance really does the trick to avoid any complaints. For comparison's sake a 23 inch 1080p desktop monitor has a PPI count of 96.

Surrounding the four sides of the display is a bezel that is a constant 22mm thick. Along the top edge is where the 1.2 MP front facing webcam is located slightly off-centre. A bit to the left of this is where the light sensor hides. In the top left corner of the display is a simple Asus badge.

If you are wondering where all the hardwired Android buttons are they are non-existent on the vast majority of Android tablets. Instead you have to rely on software buttons which definitely has its own drawbacks.

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