Customer Reviews

Asus EeePad Transformer Prime TF201 10.1 inch Tablet with Keyboard/Dock - Champagne Gold (Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad Core 1.3GHz, RAM 1GB, Storage 32GB eMMC, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Android 4.0)

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I had read a lot about the issues some people are having with the tablet, specifically in regards to Wi-fi and GPS. I can confirm that my tablet matches any of my devices in Wi-fi strength from anywhere in my house. This included taking it into the out-house office, of which the signal has to go through one solid brick wall and two other walls in the house before it gets to my router.

GPS is sadly as reported, so if you can't accept that then this isn't the tablet for you, but honestly I hope you do because it's such a small compromise compared to what you get in return. Build quality is fantastic, it looks and feels like you could take a sledgehammer to it and the hammer would lose(though I wouldn't recommend trying that). The version I went for was the gold unit, mostly because that was the one Amazon had in stock when I ordered it, and I don't regret that decision at all. I'm sure the grey is nice, but I highly doubt that it matches the gold's aesthetics.

Upgrade to ICS Android 4.0 was seemless, and my one and only gripe with that update is that spotify is currently not compatible. Easily fixed in a short amount of time. And that's it for faults. Screen is flawless with no dead pixels or light bleed (though I have read reports that others got slight light bleed around the edges, so keep an eye out for that). I thought when I opened the box that I was going to have a problem with the length of the charging cable, but that was me stuck in laptop mode. This baby is off charge for the majority of the time rather than vice versa so that has never been an issue.

The docking station is easy to use and set up, though as has been said in another review, be sure to take the rubber feet out of the two sockets where the tablet clips to the dock. I'm glad I read about that before trying to ram the two together. Also, after the ICS update, be sure to go into your settings and select your language as English (UK) and the check the docking station is still the same, or your @ and £ will get swapped over on the keyboard to accomadate the american layout.

I'm so happy with my tablet. I'm happy that it's rediculously easy to use. I went round to my parents house and showed my technophobe mother who immediately and intuitively used it with little prior knowledge of touch screen and no prior experience with android. I'm sure the iPad does some things better, but honestly, I could care less. Can they plug a PS3 controller in and play GTA3 with it? Not as far as I know.

If you're thinking of buying, do it. It's a good chunk of money but it's totally worth it.

I was initially very pleased with my TF201; it's top of the line for Android tablets and, for me, having a keyboard option was essential for my usage. Nice, solid build quality, slim and nice looking (not that I really care but some people might!).

However after just over a month of use I noticed a couple of small black marks on the screen, roughly centred horizontally and about 1/3 down vertically. At first I thought they were dead pixels but on closer examination (under a 20X magnifier) it was clear that they were small black dirt/dust, irregular in shape, presumably trapped between the touch panel and the screen. Although they were small due to the placement right in the middle of the field of view they were extremely annoying.

I contacted Amazon who were very good, offering a full refund even though the tablet was out of the 30-day return window (no stock was available to send a replacement). Fortunately (I thought) the TF201 came back in stock so Amazon arranged to ship a replacement, which duly arrived.

Unfortunately the replacement unit had almost exactly the same problem, this time a single defect but once again right in the middle of the screen. I contacted Amazon again, who offered a full refund as they didn't want to risk sending out a third unit.

So I've now gone back to the TF101; I'm very disappointed with Asus as the TF201 is a lovely product and I know plenty of people have had no issues, but to get two defective products six weeks apart indicates there's a manufacturing issue of some sort. My biggest concern was that if there were defects in a month-old product, what would it be like after a year?

So top marks to Amazon for customer service, and a black mark to Asus for quality control.

Having chosen the "silver" model and deciding not to jump ship to the grey version I have had to grit my teeth and wait for delivery. It arrived on the 30th Jan. and having used it for a couple of days these are my impressions.
The colour is not as Amazon describe it i.e silver, but as Asus' description, Champagne Gold and very handsome it is too. The tablet is solidly built and is not only good to look at but well thought out. The keyboard dock fits easily, securely and snugly together. OK the keyboard is more compact than a laptop due to the size of the tablet but I have found it comfortable to use.
It ships with Gingerbread OS but after the initial charge it was just a case of going into settings, selecting firmware update and it downloaded ICS and was running the latest OS in about 10 minutes with no problems. I have had no trouble with Wi-Fi connection and it even picked up my neighbours hubs a few doors away!
The display is clear, with excellent colour saturation and with Ice Cream Sandwich the touch screen is fast, fluid and extremely responsive. Graphics especially on games,(and this is where the quad core shows it's power, with the lighting and shadow, water effects etc in real time), are superb . I have not found any bad pixels either on full white screen or full black. Battery life is excellent. As you can imagine on the first day it took some hammer but after five hours continuous use the battery level was still 56%, connected it to the keyboard dock which immediately started to charge the tablet. In fact after I finally forced myself to put it down and go to bed I found in the morning that the keyboard had continued to charge the tab to full capacity overnight. If Apple had thought of this they would be shouting it from the rooftops.

You get 8G of free cloud storage from Asus, Polaris Office( Word Processor, Spreadsheet etc) which is compatible with Microsoft Office docs, Asus Vibe for downloading and listening to music, video, and also books. It also comes with a good book app. I downloaded some classics from Project Gutenberg in ePub format and these can be read in landscape format but double page with a lovely page turning graphic.Web browsing is great and as this is not an Apple product it plays Flash videos.
The ability to increase memory by a MicroSD card on the tablet and SD card on the dock as well as a USB connection is fantastic.
I chose this tablet after looking at a lot of options and I am not disappointed. This is in my opinion the best tablet on the market at the moment. Reading a lot of threads on Amazon I know some of you don't know whether to wait for the new model in June, but 6 months is long time in computing these days. You could buy that in June and they announce a new model for December with a Tegra 4 chip !
If like me you don't like being tied in to the Apple ethos (i.e Apple control everything) then Android is the way to go. Even Apple are copying things from the Android OS these days. As Android sales continue to increase the future can only get better.

I originally ordered this from another supplier. No names, no packdrill, they're never knowingly undersold - but it also seems that they aren't capable of ensuring that the suppliers that they work with actually have stock before they take your money. Having spent a couple of frustrating weeks trying to get an answer, I noticed that Amazon actually had these in stock, so I cancelled the order with the other supplier, and ordered from Amazon. The Transformer was in my hands within 36 hours of placing the order (the guy from HDNL or YODEL or whatever they call themselves now actually turned up at 8:00 in the evening - quite a change from their previous ropey service, I have to say.

Anyway, now I've got the Transformer, I couldn't be more pleased. It looks fabulous, feels like a really well-engineered piece of kit. I haven't had any of the problems I read about in reviews to do with weak WiFi signals, or non-existent GPS - the first time I turned on Maps, in the house, never having taken the machine outside to let it get a fix on satellites, it had my position located to within 30m - OK, so it's not going to accurate enough for turn-by-turn navigation, but I didn't want it for that and anyway there are more appropriate types of device you can use.

The ICS upgrade ran very smoothly - you need to charge the Transformer up to at least 15% charge, but after that it's an automatic process. The performance is brilliant - if you want to see the capabilities of the Tegra 3 chip, run the Glowball app. (It's a tedious game, which won't occupy you for more than a couple of minutes, but the speed with which the Tegra chip renders a hugely complex scene is very impressive). And the design of the whole package is just really well thought through. The keyboard dock is really useful, and the tablet slots into and out of it very easily. The fact that you have batteries in both the tablet and the dock is very clever, especially when you see that the dock feeds power to the tablet when the two are plugged together. So if you have used your tablet for some time, and then put it back together with the dock after you've finished, when you next start up, there will have been a transfusion of power from the dock to the tablet. (And you could then leave the dock on charge while continuing to use the tablet separately.).

The keyboard on the dock is really useful for doing any more-than-casual typing (like this review) - there is a bit of a tendency to get key bounce so that letters double up when typing fast, but I'm sure that's just matter of getting used to it. The touchpad on the dock has the usual tendency to reposition the cursor when you accidentally brush your thumb against it, but there's a useful function key on the top row of the keyboard which lets you disable and enable the touch pad with one keyclick. Very useful.

Overall, I am really pleased with my purchase - I'm not a fan of Apple, for reasons to do with their lock-in model and "we-know-best" attitude, but when there are machines like this available it's arguable (and I would certainly do so) that you ought to consider this in preference to any iThing.

I nearly forked out for the non-prime version of this in December before neighbour pointed out the Prime. I am very pleased I waited! Having said that I initially thought I had been sold a duffer at first: It looked like the power adaptor was dud (it wasn't - it just needed a *very* firm click to get it in place) and it looked like the keyboard hinge was locked down (it wasn't - it is just still, as it needs to be to stop the display flapping about).

The keyboard is not as good as a laptop's but not by much (I'm thinking of my old works dell).

The display dot-pitch is lower than my iphone 4's but it is still very good indeed. Speed it superb - the 4 (and a bit, if one tech reviewer I read got it right) cores are sooooo much better than my old android phone!

And now to software. The pad comes with Polaris Office pre-installed and although I have not used it much so far (I'm on day 2) I am not terribly impressed with the spreadsheet app; it refuses to accept dates in UK format (which is the pad's locale) and gets terribly confused even with the small selection of US dates available. I will experiment with some of the other offerings on the market place and see - they only cost the same as a round of drinks so not quite up there with MS Office!

The OS upgrade was nice and quick and very simple and it has reminded my of the gulf between the android philosophy and the iOS philosophy (i.e., android lets users make informed decisions about the software they install; apple insists it knows best).
Whilst the android market is different from the iphone market I personally find it better and prefer it.

The biggest problem now is that my 8 year old son, who insisted on me installing Angry Birds immediately, wants one too!

I am not going to conclude that you should "buy one now", as occasional reviewers do; but I will say that so far I am extremely pleased with my purchase and am very glad I did not steer too close to the iPads in John Lewis!

From perspective of middle aged woman - tablet virgin

This is my first ever tablet and I have only recently purchased a smart phone so I'm very new to 'apps' and know nothing about 'ice cream sandwiches' 'nvidia tegra 3' 'quad core' or such things. All I know is I am very happy with this asus eee transformer prime tablet.

I did a little bit of research beforehand, mainly comparing a net book with a tablet and then when I had decided I didn't want a netbook, (tablets so much cooler (!)and I have a lap top anyway) then comparing an ipad with other tablets. The asus seemed like the only contender with the ipad and when I realised that the asus had so much more going for it - usb, sd, hdmi slots, supports flash and not tied in to 'apple'- not to mention the keyboard, it had to be the asus.

I had been looking last year and the prime wasn't out, so I was in a bit of a dilemma as to whether to go for the cheaper basic model or go for the £100 more expensive new prime model. All the 'technical' improvements meant nothing to me - the swinging factor was the gorgeous spun metal casing rather than the hard plastic of its predecessor, plus the fact that asus had addressed pretty much all the negative comments made by reviewers on the previous basic transformer.

I don't have huge demands I just wanted to take this on holiday with me instead of my laptop and be able to answer emails, be able to access and edit word documents and access my home laptop all of which I can do with the help of various apps which is fab.

It looks fantastic - I have the 'champagne' one but its basically silver with a hint of colour in certain lights. Very good looking, stylish and sturdy but light. I can easily put it in my handbag even with the keyboard attached. Attaching the keyboard is really simple (but be warned there are rubber covers on the attaching points which must be removed before trying to 'dock' it into position for the first time. Nothing was mentioned in the very small handbook that comes with it so we were trying to dock it but were actually just pushing the rubber bits further into the holes ! )

Absolutely love the 'live' wallpapers that come with it and also the free apps you can get, particularly the sea view one where the level of the water moves down the screen as you use the battery. Talking of the battery - it's amazing. I fully charged both the pad and the keyboard when I received it and have been using them non stop since. The keyboard, when docked gives charge to the pad so the keyboard will run out before the pad - it's easily 18hrs + although I havn't been watching movies or anything like that yet.

The only slight negative thing so far is that I know nothing about 'cloud storage' and such things and although I have managed to put some documents in my 'cloud' it takes a bit of trial and error working out where to put things so they can show up in the cloud and be accessed by my tablet or vice versa or how to use the supplied apps for 'office like' storage on my tablet - the information given is very 'vague' and assumes you know about such things - definitely not designed for a middle aged woman who's a tablet virgin !

Love it.

I initially cancelled my order out of frustration of the delivery shambles and reports of wifi/gps issues. But soon had a change of heart & ordered it again in the brief window that Amazon had it for sale.

I've been really impressed with it so far - it did have a habit of crashing in the first few days but that seems to have stopped. Anyway, ASUS are issuing a ICS update soon which they say will resolve a few issues.

Wifi appears to work OK & GPS does work eventually if you're out in the open with wifi access.

Don't forget to register with ASUS for your 18 month warranty - phone 0870 1208 340 and quote your serial number. You can only get the extra warranty if you're experiencing problems. I said the GPS wasn't very good & that was enough to qualify.

Everyone I've shown it to have been impressed - with a few going to buy one. ASUS have a real iPad killer on their hands here but they need lots more stock!!

After parting with a considerable amount of money, it is with great disappointment that I write this review. My main issues with it are:

1. Screen goes blank randomly and is often hard to wake up.
2. Tablet takes ages to log in to wifi, and when it does it shows a weak signal even when less than 3 metres away from router.
3. Browsing experience is very poor. Slow to respond, and often the browser freezes in the middle of loading a page.

Basically the experience is so frustrating and the tablet is so unreliable that I hardly use it. My wife is very annoyed with me for buying it.

Unfortunately due to travel and other commitments we did not use it much in the first month. Now that we are outside the Amazon 30 day return policy there is no way to contact Amazon to discuss the problems. I have no idea what to do now.

On the plus side it does look nice.

I won't go into great detail about this item because other 5 star reviewers have already done an excellent job of that. I am more than happy with my TF201 and can't recommend it enough. It does everything I want it to do, it's very responsive and I can't think of anything bad to say about it. I bought mine from Amazon, which was a lot cheaper than what other companies are charging so I would suggest waiting for Amazon to have it back in stock if you're thinking of ordering one. I've had it for over three weeks now and honestly can't find one single fault with it.

got my transformer prime and i love it, i have an iphone 4s and while i really like that i didnt see the point of buying the same thing with just a bigger screen (ipad 3), the hardware and feel of the prime is excellent and i really love the feel of the prime in my hands.
the only thing that isn't quite as good as the apple alternative is the lack of dedicated tablet apps and the app store just isn't as nice to use on the android ics. however this is a great tablet and the docking station is a massive plus.