For my wife’s birthday, I bought her a Nexus 7 (2nd Generation). I got it early, during a “tax free” shopping weekend, because I like to support local businesses when I can. Like my last tablet review, I’ve given it at least a week to get used to it, and see how it works. I got the 32GB model because Asus is notorious for using somewhat questionable parts for storage in their “basic” tier gear. Besides, it can’t hurt to have more storage, now can it?
TL;DR: This tablet is the bee’s knees of 7 inch Android tablets, with an amazing screen and robust software. It has its quirks, but nothing that would prevent someone from using it. Now, for the more detailed review.
First Impressions
The Google branded packaging is pretty nice, and for once it was easy to get open (unlike SOME retail packaging). You don’t get much in the box, just a set of quick start instructions, power cord and wall adapter, and the tablet. The Nexus 7 is surprisingly light and thin, with thicker bezels at the top and bottom than along the edges (when held in portrait orientation). What does this mean? It means I can hold the damn thing one handed, though using the touch screen one handed is much more difficult. It is possible though, which is a plus from my aging Asus Transformer Prime. The back has a really nice surface to touch. Smooth, but with enough uh...grip to mitigate any fears of it slipping easily out of your hand.The tablet feels good in the hand, but it does seem a little fragile, if only because it is very, very thin. It’s a well built piece of technology.
Initial Setup
Initial setup was as straightforward as I remembered it on my other Android tablet, though since I have two factor authentication turned on I needed to use the “web login” to complete the setup. A minor hitch at best. Gmail, G+, Hangouts, etc. all “just worked”. It even came mostly charged, and it connected to my wireless network without issue.
Interface
It comes with stock Android 4.3 and my oh my is this a leap from 4.1 (I haven’t used 4.2). Hands down, my favorite feature is multiple user accounts. I have an account, and Charlotte has an account, and switching between the two is as easy as going ot the lock screen and back. We don’t have any sort of restrictions on the accounts, but there is an option to set up a “limited access” account. I’m sure that will be handy when Sylvia wants to play Angry Birds. The other big change for me is a “favorites” bar kind of area. No matter which “desktop” you are on, this bar exists. No more having to swipe around trying to remember where you put your email app launch icon.
The system settings now swipe down from the top, rather than having to tap a corner, and that’s pretty cool. The settings panel is a bit nicer, but not much has changed here. It’s very workable. The screen is an absolute joy to behold. Seriously it is very sharp, and way outshines the screen on my Transformer Prime.
Software
The default software is what you’d expect: all the Google apps you’d expect (Gmail, G+, Hangouts, etc.), and even Google Keep, which I don’t know if I will use or not. I’m not big on note-taking apps, so probably not, but hey, it’s there. For someone who sold himself to Google years ago, the default software is fine. Web browsing is handled with Chrome. I haven’t bothered with any other browser on this device, but it works good. The new Google Keyboard for screen typing is a nice improvement over the old one and even has some Swype-esque features. Google Play is there in all its glory, and all my previously purchased or downloaded apps were available for me to install.
Performance
I haven’t done a lot of serious work on this tablet, but the responsiveness is really, really solid. I haven’t seen one instance of stutter, slowdown, or other hiccup. It is also nice and bright, and while others have complained of dead pixels, I haven’t seen any. Unlike a lot of tablets, this one actually has stereo speakers, on the “top and bottom”, and they can get surprisingly loud.
The rear facing camera...is certainly a camera. It works about as well as any other tablet camera I’ve used, though the lack of flash is somewhat disappointing. Still, it gets the job done. The 4.3 camera app is weird, but once I got used to it, it works pretty well.
I was excited to test the wireless performance vs. the Transformer Prime, and at first I was pretty disappointed. It was better, but only a tiny bit better rather than the significant performance increase I saw between the Prime and my old Asus netbook. After a little poking around on the Intarwebs, I saw some posts indicating that NFC could be interfering with the wireless reception, so I turned it off. This did improve things to a solid level, but my netbook outshines both tablets for whatever reason. It is much less of an issue now that I’ve bought a powerline Wireless extender, which gives me wireless throughout the entire house, but I can still see a difference between my Prime and the Nexus 7. All in all, it’s perfectly serviceable.
Battery life is pretty good, though I’ve not done any formal testing. If one is good about turning off the wireless, it will go a good while between charges, and even under fairly regular use it only needs charging every 3 to 4 days. Charlotte uses it for reading, browsing, checking email, and watching TED talks and hasn’t complained.
Browsing seems fast, certainly faster than on my Prime for whatever reason, though Flash is no longer a thing without resorting to side loading. Honestly, I haven’t missed it and reading web comics from the comfort of my bed is a fine way to wind down an evening. Apps seem to be quicker to react too, except the Kindle App which has always been slow for whatever reason. Eh, it works.
Overall
I am very impressed with this tablet. The screen is the best one I’ve ever seen, at least as nice as the “Retina” screen on the current generation of iPads, even if it is smaller. I like the 7” form factor a lot more than I thought I would, though I think I still prefer the 10” size for a lot of things. Charlotte can chime in here, but I’m pretty sure she really likes it. Stock Android is a fine experience, and 4.3 is a great way to get into it. The price isn’t bad either ($280 for the 32GB model, $230 for the 16GB model), considering what you get. On a scale of 5 frowny faces to 5 smiley faces, I give this a solid 4 smileys.
So, I purchased a new tablet a couple of weeks ago, and finally received the package last Monday. To give the tablet a fair review. I decided to use it for a week and see what my use patterns would be, as well as get a feeling for day to day usability. That week has now passed. The model tablet I chose to purchase is an Asus Transformer Prime (TF201 model number) with 32GB of storage. I purchased the optional keyboard dock, which adds a keyboard, some additional ports (SD card reader, full USB, etc.) and acts as an additional battery for the tablet. It also can fold down into a netbook-esque profile for carrying.
TL;DR version: I really like the Prime, and while it had a couple of minor issues, it is fantastic and I love it. Now, onto the much more lengthy review…
First Impressions
The box this thing came in was pretty minimalist, containing the tablet, the power cord and wall adapter, the warranty card, and the “manual”. I put it in quotes because the instructions are “here are the ports, this is the power button, here’s how to hook up the charger, good luck!” Still, this is the current trend with modern electronics so I’ll give it a pass. The tablet itself is very cool looking. The metal backing looks really nice and sleek, and the whole product screams “well made”. It feels good in the hand, and can be held with one hand pretty easily, though depending on how you hold it, it might be tiring.
The keyboard comes in a similar, if a bit smaller, box. It also feels pretty solid. One thing they do not tell you about is the tabs that come on the tablet to cover up the connection ports. The one over the “recharging/data connection” plug is pretty obvious, but the two rubber ones that cover the stabilizing tab slots require a pen to remove. I saved them for extended use without the keyboard. Once the plugs are removed, attaching the tablet to the keyboard is easy, and removal is easy too. There are warnings to only pick up the combined device by supporting the keyboard portion, and NOT to pick it up just by the tablet part, so some care must be taken. With the keyboard attached, it looks like a netbook when folded shut (which puts the tablet into a Sleep state).
Initial Setup
When you power on the tablet, it kicks off a little vibrate notification, which surprised me. What also surprised me was the boot time. While it is considerably shorter than my desktop and previous netbook, it’s still about 30 seconds to fully start up from “Off”, which seemed a little long. Waking from sleep is, of course, instantaneous. Upon startup, it sends you right into the Setup Wizard to get everything going. The Wizard will let you skip steps if you want to, but I recommend just following it. It walks you through setting up the wireless connectivity, logging into (or creating) a Google account which is not required, but does ease the setting up of a number of the installed apps, and a few “sharing” settings for the camera, you are all ready to go. Setup was pretty easy, and since I have a Google Account I’d say 90% of everything “just worked” after this. That first night was mostly “charging up the unit to max”.
Interface
The tablet came installed with Android Ice Cream Sandwich (latest version), which was a pleasant surprise, as it was initially supposed to come with Honeycomb and get an update. Asus has received high marks for supporting its Transformer tablets, with frequent updates and so forth. There are 5 “desktops” , and 3 of them come with links to the pre-installed apps. There’s a weather widget (shows the weather at your current location), Date and Time, and several media consumption apps (Browser, G+, Gmail, Kindle, Google Play Store, a Music player, etc) on the first home screen. Other screens have productivity apps (Polaris Office, MyNet, File Manager, etc) and the Tegra Games app all by its lonesome. One screen also had a “Task Manager” widget, which seemed out of place.
The screen seems pretty responsive and desktop transitions were crisp and precise. It is at least as responsive as the IPad 2 (which I’ve played around with), and as sensitive as well. In my usage, I did occasionally get a “mistouch” or two, but I expect any tablet you purchase will have a couple of those due to “user inconsistency in touch”. It took me a little while to figure out what all the “standard Android Buttons” mean, as well as how to do things in ICS, but it was pretty easy to figure out and now I’m navigating the interface like the pros.
Software
The initial software load out is pretty impressive, and I saw little to no “crapware” preinstalled. The browser is the standard ICS browser, and it works. It is nothing fancy, but it is pretty easy to figure out. It comes with most of the Google apps you’d expect: Gmail, G+, Talk and Messenger (though I don’t know anyone who USES Messenger for anything) and some widgets for these. The camera can be set up to automatically upload pictures taken with the camera to your G+/Picasa picture library, though they will not be shared automatically. You can also share various things from these apps. The G+ app got an update recently, and while I like most of the changes, the way it handles “inline” pictures is highly annoying as it stretches them out or cuts them off short. The Gmail app is solid, as is the Talk app. If you want to use any social media outside the Google domain, you’ll need to get the apps from the Store.
The ASUS keyboard is the standard software keyboard and I prefer it over the regular Android one, if only because the keys are slightly bigger and easier to hit. I’ve had an app called “Thumb Keyboard” recommended to me but I have not purchased it.
It comes with two productivity software packages: SuperNote and Polaris Office. I fiddled around with SuperNote (short review: Meh), and it seems usable enough. The handwriting “option” was sort of silly to me, but it probably works better with a stylus than with my fingers. I opened Polaris Office, and it does three things: documents (read: Word), spreadsheets (read: Excel) and presentations (read: Powerpoint). I haven’t really used this app, but it was nice that it was included. EZpdf was recommended to me, but I just pulled the free Adobe app to read PDFs and it works fine.
Of course, you’ll want to use the App Store. Google Play is the app store on Android, and it is…well, it’s okay. The App Store app itself is pretty responsive, and searches do not take a long time. This is good, because you will NEED the search function. You can browse by category, or look at the various “Top” lists: Top Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, etc. The Category browsing is…minimalist. Just one big category, apps listed in some order other than an obvious one. That’s it! I think you can filter by “user rating”, but it was underwhelming. There’s also a “Staff Picks for Tablet” section, which is nice, but I’d really rather there was a separate “tablet” tab to separate all the apps that are really just for phones out from the ones specially designed for tablets. In fact, I downloaded an app (Tablified Marketplace Lite) to do the sorting for me (it’s free, but a lot slower than the Google Play store, but it links to the Play store for downloading/purchasing). Payment is made through a Google Wallet account…and ONLY a Google Wallet account, though it does allow for the placing of a PIN or Password to prevent unauthorized purchases. I did discover that if the Google Play App Store thinks an app is “incompatible” with your mobile device, that app will not appear in searches nor when browsing.
The App Store keeps track of what you’ve downloaded, and you can even set apps to auto-update if you so desire. I downloaded several apps from the store that were free: TED (for watching TED Talks), ICS+ Browser (a bit snappier than the standard browser), Google Drive, Flixster, and some updates to other apps (G+, Maps). I have so far paid for exactly one app: Angry Birds Space HD. Once payment is set up, it is easy to purchase things. It also sends you an email receipt for paid purchases, which is good. Angry Birds Space HD cost me $2.99 and was worth the purchase price, as it is a great example of a sequel done correctly. There is a free ad-supported version too.
I had some trouble downloading the Amazon App Store app, eventually resorting to direct link from the Amazon website (this does not surprise me, since it is a competitor with the Google Play store). To install this app (and anything purchased from it) you have to enable “allow installs from unknown source” in the settings. Amazon gives a nice walkthrough of how to do this if you can’t figure it out yourself. In order to download things from this store though (even if they are free), you also need to set up 1-Click Mobile on your Amazon account. I haven’t bought anything here, but I did download Amazon Mobile, which was listed as “incompatible” with my device on Google Play. It worked fine, though I didn’t like it and removed it shortly thereafter.
Performance
There have been a lot of reports about weak/poor Wireless and GPS connectivity with this tablet. Initially, the wireless connectivity seemed a little weak, but I remembered a trick I read about on some Android tablet forum: Squeeze gently along the top of the tablet at the level of the camera all the way across. It seems the wireless antenna is attached by a couple of clips that can be shaken loose in transport, but a gentle squeeze can snap them back in. A little squeeze later and the connection jumps from “okay” to “good” in my kitchen. Of course, if I was in the room with my router, it was always “excellent”. Walking around my apartment, the wireless connectivity did drop the farther I was from my router, but that’s expected given it has to go through several walls. At no point did it drop to “poor”, even in the room farthest from the router, though I have a small apartment. Connectivity in other places was also pretty good. I’ve not really tested the GPS functionality, so I cannot report on that performance.
Early on, my device had a couple of lockups, and would not unlock unless I rebooted the tablet. After some consultation I blamed the Task Manager widget and removed it from the desktop it was on. Since then, I have not had a single lock up. I thought it was an odd choice to include on the desktop, and while I liked having that sort of granular control over my tablet, I don’t really think it’s needed and I’ve gotten on just fine without it.
Battery life is excellent. I have not done any formal testing, but just “charge it fully, use until it’s out” I got 32 hours out of it (most of that in sleep mode, of course) before I had to recharge it. How do I know? It has a handy graph. The Wireless eats up a good portion of the battery life. When I was at the car shop getting work done, I spent 4 hours with the wireless constantly on, in the “Balanced” battery mode. This dropped the tablet to about 15% battery remaining, down from 98%. Of course, I had the keyboard attached, and it is possible that affects the battery meter display.
The camera is pretty good. It takes reasonably fine pictures, and the camera app is pretty easy to use. The secondary camera is also good for self-portraits or video chat, and works flawlessly with the G+ Hangout feature. Pictures are stored locally, but finding them in the File Manager can take a little poking around, as they are under “Camera” and not “Photos”. I did not use the “capture video” function. This is not a device you will be using for “random snapshots”, but if you want to take a picture of something and share it while you have your tablet out, this will fit the bill.
The tablet has a lone speaker on the right side, but at max volume can be pretty loud. You won’t fill a crowded hall, but it’s enough to allow for family members in the same room to hear the audio from a YouTube video. Speaking of video, video playback is done solely via direct apps or the web. The TED videos were stutter free, as were the YouTube videos, though both of these apps lacked a good solid “Browse” feature outside of “New” and “Featured”. The search worked well though. Browser playback was less than ideal. At least with the ICS+ Browser, some video playback will cause the app to lock (and Android gives you a helpful pop up to let you know and let you kill it or wait), particularly anything using Blip.tv. Other video playback was fine, though you lose the “in player” controls and ability to click close certain popup ads, which is annoying. Being unable to pause videos was painful, since I was watching it between PvP queues while playing Star Wars.
Basic web browsing with the stock browser or ICS+ was fine. Flash heavy sites could slow down the browser enough to be noticeable (I’m looking at you www.swtor.com), but for the most part it was an enjoyable experience. My bookmarks from home (I use Chrome there) sync’ed up nicely so no import needed. I use the “regular” setup, but you can turn on a “pop-out control” panel option if you want to maximize screen usage.
Speaking of the screen, it is listed as a “SuperIPS+” display or some such marketing speak. It has a toggle for “IPS+”, and you don’t need that turned on indoors. The screen is bright, clear, and even with the brightness at half is very bright. The only time I turned on the IPS+ mode was when I was outside in the sunlight. It made the screen much more readable and I am very pleased.
The Transformer Prime comes with no games, but it does have a link to the “game/tech demo” of Glowball, which is free to download. Glowball is visually impressive, but it is not a very fun game for me. Granted, some of this may be because I have no idea how to play. It uses the accelerometer to move the ball as you tilt the screen, and the ball is a bright glowy thing designed to show off shadows and other eye candy. Looks great, plays awful for me. The aforementioned Angry Birds Space HD is a blast. Everything you loved about Angry Birds, but with new twists involving gravity and lack thereof. Runs smooth, looks great, and is a ton of fun. There are some more graphically impressive games for this tablet, which you can browse through with the “Tegra Games” app, but I did not try any of them.
The keyboard attachment is great. It’s a chicklet-style keyboard like those you see on some Macs, and while the right Shift key is a little small for my liking, it does the job. While waiting to get the brake pads on my car replaced, I sat and chatted with folks via Talk, along with web browsing and email. Using the attached keyboard was a lot faster than using the software one. I could actually do real work on that keyboard if I had to, even if that “real work” was just an overly long G+ entry. The extra battery means “constant all day use” if I want it, adding to the already impressive battery life. The bonus ports are just gravy. I highly recommend this attachment if you are going to buy this tablet. It’s expensive, but it’s awesome when you want to do a long bout of typing on it, or just want a lot more battery life.
Overall
I love this tablet. I’ve never had a tablet before, but I’ve messed around with them when given an opportunity, and I’m really enjoying mine. I find I most use it for browsing quickly while doing something else, such as playing a video game and waiting for an event (such as a queue pop). It is also extremely portable, and I see that this will be a great thing to take on trips, or even just over to a friend’s house. Being able to check my email in the kitchen or from the living room is just awesome, as is the ability to look up things w/o having to boot up a computer. At my in-laws this weekend during dinner, I was able to find and pass around information about the pawpaw tree when it came up in conversation. When I was feeling under the weather, being able to web browse from the couch was very convenient. It was not perfect however, as it had a couple of lockups and some “if I didn’t know this, I’d be more upset” things concerning wireless performance early on. If you are in the market for a high end tablet, but do not want to pay Apple prices, or you just prefer Android to iOS, this is THE tablet to get. I give this tablet 4 smiley faces on a scale 5 frowny faces to 5 smiley faces.
PostScript
So, the Transformer Prime is soon to become the “mid-range” tablet of the Transformer line. Right now there is a “low end” model (the TF300 Transformer Pad) and the “high end” model (the Prime). Asus will soon (Q2 or Q3, depending on who you talk to) release an “updated” version of the Prime, the T700 Transformer Infinity Prime (or some other name like that), which will become the new “latest and greatest” model. For some, it might be worth waiting to see what that model is like before purchasing this one, since it will clearly be an “upgrade” to this model. I am content with what I bought, and it is available NOW rather than “soon”.
