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Asus remoulded the conventional tablet design with its pioneering Transformer range of Android devices, in particular the Transformer Prime.
The concept brought together the fluidity of a touch-based tablet interface with the convenience of a physical keyboard in one handy package.
Now the company is about to challenge its own well-established product with a new twist on the idea and a different operating system – Windows 8.
Form
The Transformer Prime has an extremely high grade level of fit and finish. Being made from brushed aluminium gives it a very solid feel and we love the way it looks both open and closed.
From the front it looks much like any other tablet, a large 10.1-inch touchscreen with a decently sized black bezel around the outside to grip onto. Flip it round, however, and you’ll notice how thin it is at only 8.3mm.
The back is very sci-fi in appearance thanks to the brushed aluminium with a circular pattern going from the middle outwards.
Apart from this things are very minimalist but this compliments the overall aesthetic very well.
The keyboard dock is almost identically styled with the same proportions and thickness and the same premium-grade materials.
With the Tablet 600 Asus has opted for plastic instead of aluminium but, as we’ve seen with the Transformer 300 series, the company is more than capable of using plastic and still delivering something which feels of decent quality and well put-together.
Although we don’t yet have figures for the dimensions, in terms of proportions things are looking quite similar to the Transformer Prime as it is also a 10.1-inch slate, we suspect from the images we’ve seen it’ll also be equally thin.
Overall the design themes appear to be less ‘circular’ and more straight-edged than the Prime with a large and textured panel across the top edge in a slightly darker shade of grey than the rest of the bodywork.
Asus also seems to have gone to great effort to make the whole thing sit together in a sleeker and more cohesive way when the tablet is secured to the dock – it looks less like a tablet bolted to a keyboard and more like a true notebook.
The Transformer Prime had a particularly noteworthy feature in the form of the keyboard’s trackpad, which functioned like a true laptop trackpad registering taps as clicks and so on. It’s quite likely Asus will continue this little gem of a detail with the Tablet 600.
The Transformer Prime has an extremely high grade level of fit and finish. Being made from brushed aluminium gives it a very solid feel and we love the way it looks both open and closed.
From the front it looks much like any other tablet, a large 10.1-inch touchscreen with a decently sized black bezel around the outside to grip onto. Flip it round, however, and you’ll notice how thin it is at only 8.3mm.
The back is very sci-fi in appearance thanks to the brushed aluminium with a circular pattern going from the middle outwards.
Apart from this things are very minimalist but this compliments the overall aesthetic very well.
The keyboard dock is almost identically styled with the same proportions and thickness and the same premium-grade materials.
With the Tablet 600 Asus has opted for plastic instead of aluminium but, as we’ve seen with the Transformer 300 series, the company is more than capable of using plastic and still delivering something which feels of decent quality and well put-together.
Although we don’t yet have figures for the dimensions, in terms of proportions things are looking quite similar to the Transformer Prime as it is also a 10.1-inch slate, we suspect from the images we’ve seen it’ll also be equally thin.
Overall the design themes appear to be less ‘circular’ and more straight-edged than the Prime with a large and textured panel across the top edge in a slightly darker shade of grey than the rest of the bodywork.
Asus also seems to have gone to great effort to make the whole thing sit together in a sleeker and more cohesive way when the tablet is secured to the dock – it looks less like a tablet bolted to a keyboard and more like a true notebook.
The Transformer Prime had a particularly noteworthy feature in the form of the keyboard’s trackpad, which functioned like a true laptop trackpad registering taps as clicks and so on. It’s quite likely Asus will continue this little gem of a detail with the Tablet 600.
Hardware
Both the Transformer Prime and Asus Tablet 600 use ARM Cortex-A9 processor architecture alongside Nvidia’s powerful quad core Tegra 3 chipset.
The Transformer Prime is clocked at 1.5GHz and although Asus is yet to reveal the clock speed of the Tablet 600 it seems likely it’ll be similarly configured.
One key difference, however, is that the Tablet 600 has a whole 2GB of RAM compared to the Prime’s 1GB, which should see it performing faster.
The Transformer Prime has a couple of options for storage with either 32GB or 64GB variants available depending on how much money you want to spend. Either model comes with micro SD capability so you can boost the internal memory by up to an additional 32GB.
With the Tablet 600 there’s only one model with 32GB of onboard capacity but this is still plenty of space. Micro SD isn’t something that’s been mentioned yet, on the one hand Microsoft has limited phone manufacturers with Windows Phone from using micro SD, but on the other, this is a device with a serious amount of processing power and we doubt if using a card slot is going to impact performance
On cameras both tablets are going to be fairly similar – each has an 8-megapixel primarywith 1080p video. The difference comes in the secondary cameras with the Transformer Prime sporting a 1.2-megapixel front-facer while the Tablet 600 uses a 2-megapixel secondary.
Both the Transformer Prime and Asus Tablet 600 use ARM Cortex-A9 processor architecture alongside Nvidia’s powerful quad core Tegra 3 chipset.
The Transformer Prime is clocked at 1.5GHz and although Asus is yet to reveal the clock speed of the Tablet 600 it seems likely it’ll be similarly configured.
One key difference, however, is that the Tablet 600 has a whole 2GB of RAM compared to the Prime’s 1GB, which should see it performing faster.
The Transformer Prime has a couple of options for storage with either 32GB or 64GB variants available depending on how much money you want to spend. Either model comes with micro SD capability so you can boost the internal memory by up to an additional 32GB.
With the Tablet 600 there’s only one model with 32GB of onboard capacity but this is still plenty of space. Micro SD isn’t something that’s been mentioned yet, on the one hand Microsoft has limited phone manufacturers with Windows Phone from using micro SD, but on the other, this is a device with a serious amount of processing power and we doubt if using a card slot is going to impact performance
On cameras both tablets are going to be fairly similar – each has an 8-megapixel primarywith 1080p video. The difference comes in the secondary cameras with the Transformer Prime sporting a 1.2-megapixel front-facer while the Tablet 600 uses a 2-megapixel secondary.
Operating System
Asus’ Transformer Prime now runs version 4.0 of Google’s Android platform, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS).
This is easily one of the most stable and best performing Android builds we’ve seen to date and literally flies along with Apple-like fluidity. Android’s party trick was always multi-tasking and it’s as good at this as it ever was but now with the added capability of a fast app switcher complete with a swipe-to-close function.
This brings the multi-tasking straight to the surface of the operating system, as well as making it much easier to handle.
The Asus Tablet 600 runs Microsoft’s Windows 8, however, calling it Windows 8 isn’t entirely accurate because, as this is an ARM-based device it uses the specially made ARM optimised build known as Windows RT.
At time of writing, this is still the Release Preview non-final build in the run up to a full release later in 2012, but we’ve already been treated to some video footage of features we can expect in the full version.
Microsoft is picking up with Windows 8 where Windows Phone left off – it’s a colourful system which uses ‘Live Tiles’ as app shortcuts but also widgets which feedback live information from their respective apps.
It also has Windows Phone’s continuous scroll ‘Start’ page which is populated by these tiles. The whole approach is dubbed ‘Metro’ UI by Microsoft and it is quite an intuitive approach.
Performance also appears to be typically speedy as Microsoft has proven particularly adept at optimising its mobile platforms.
Most interestingly, this is the first tablet platform we’ve seen which fully makes use of the vast screen real-estate your typical 10-inch slate provides.
Generally, tablet interfaces are essentially blown-up versions of their smartphone equivalents, which leaves you with a lot of room to fill with undersized widgets and app icons.
With Windows RT/Windows 8, not only do you get true multi-tasking (something not present on its mobile forerunner, Windows Phone) but you can actually use multi-tasked applications simultaneously in the same screen space.
A sliding gesture from the left of the screen brings in an app switcher which, much like on Android, shows you a carousel of currently active apps in small thumbnail windows.
You can scroll through this and activate individual apps you want to use, or, alternatively, drag an active app into the screen alongside whatever else you were doing.
As with Windows 7 for PCs and OSX for Mac, you can snap multiple windows into the screen and use them simultaneously. This means you could have a mailbox and Twitter feed running alongside a web browser or Office document meaning productivity is a very real option on a tablet for the first time.
This leaning towards productivity is the major difference of Windows RT versus Android. On Android you’re pretty much limited to buying either the full version of Docs To Go or using Polaris Office, both are great programs but compared to the options on Windows they’re a workaround - Android isn't aimed at productivity.
Windows RT, meanwhile, is going to come with a fully touch-optimised version of Microsoft’s Office suite pre-installed and combined with the keyboard this is going to make it a fully blown work laptop right from the word go, as well as being as good a gaming and multimedia entertainment centre as the Transformer Prime.
Final Thoughts
The Asus Tablet 600 is very exciting stuff indeed. When we first saw the Transformer Prime it was a rewarding device to use, but tapping into that half-tablet, half-laptop niche it left us with an idea that it was simply testing the waters ahead of something which would bring far more scope to the concept. It's now looking as if the Tablet 600 is exactly that.
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