Asus - Transformer Prime TF201 Eee Pad Tablet with 32GB Memory - Gray

Purchased this for the wife as a Christmas gift, had a hard time finding it in stock but was finally able to order on 12/28/11. This is the first tablet we have owned but I am very impressed with the performance. Based on many reviews I knew there were issues with the wireless & GPS on this device. I wanted to wait a while to post a review because I wanted to see what ASUS was going to do to correct the problems. I spent over $500 on this tablet and it comes certain features so I expect them to work. When we first got it the ICS update came in and we had no problems other than the GPS would not work. The wireless connectivity has been great and when we are not near home we use one of our cell phones as a wireless hotspot. As for the speed: apps, programs and what not open up very quick and have great response. The colors and graphics are awesome. Now for the GPS. I have seen a lot of reviews that talk about how this tablet is great even if the GPS is not working but they won't use GPS with a tablet anyways. In my opinion, it came with it, it's supposed to work, period! With all this being said, last week we got another OTA update. I was curious what if anything it had done to correct the GPS issue. I used GPS test to see what would happen. I was very skeptical but I went outside and in a matter of about 30 seconds the satellites started to come into view and the GPS was working. I have tried it in numerous outdoor locations and it consistently picks up 8 - 14 satellites within a matter of seconds. Indoors, which "for me", is not where I will be using GPS, It will pick up 1-4 satellites and they have yet to lock on. I have not tried this yet in a car where I can see us using the GPS most for navigation. Now that it appears the GPS has been corrected I am giving it a rating of 4.5 stars and giving kudos to ASUS for rectifying the GPS issues. I would highly recommend this tablet to anyone.

I am one to read reviews and forums, in which you will find many complaints about GPS and WiFi issues with this tablet. I didn't buy the tablet for GPS use, even if it worked perfect I would never use it. So I decided to give this tablet a run, the specs are amazing. I took the tablet out of the box, everything looked good. Charged it for 8 hours and it started right up. Right away I was notified of some updates, I installed them and had the first tablet on the market with ICS, which has worked really well. At first, I had a couple of force restarts, but that was only right after the install, no issues sense. The WiFi I have found to work pretty well, pretty much the same as any other device I have with wifi. Sometimes I have trouble connecting to a network, but nothing too bad. All in all, the tablet has been great. My sister has a ipad 2, and I like this tablet much better. I also have the docking station, which is a perfect edition to the tablet. Extra battery life, full size SD slot and full size USB, it really brings the tablet to the next level.

I kept until the very last day I could because there were so many +'s to the device and wanted to keep this unit but in the end I returned it. Primary reason for the return was when I learned ASUS was coming out with a new model the Infinity that basically addressed all of my concerns. In my opinion they should have recalled all units and replaced with the new one but that's the way I would handle something like this. I had no GPS reception and a weak wireless (both addressed on Infinity). Another comment is around the zagg screen protector I purchased - when sliding into the dock, it bunched up and looked ridiculous. If you are looking for great sound - this would NOT be the unit for you either as there is only one speaker in the back located where you would hold it. I use a headset or external speaker so for me it was fine. I will certainly be one of the first in line for the new model and highly suggest the keyboard as well as I loved the versatility it gave me. All in all, ASUS did a great job with the product and it was too bad a couple of items caused me to return it. You think they would have tested wifi and gps during quality control....

My Prime has black and white bars which appear on the screen and they will not go away unless I do a factory or hard reset. Nevertheless, the bars reappear within 30 minutes of resetting the tab. So, I sent my Prime to get fixed under warranty. It has been 11 days (8 business days), Asus told me it would be returned to me by 7 business days. 17 days after Asus received my TF201 for warranty repair, I finally got it back in my possession. Not only did Asus send me a refurbished Prime, the screen has a dead pixel. This P O S will be returned for a refund. I will never buy an Asus product again in my life. If they were worth anything as a company, they would have replaced my defective tablet in the first place with a brand new unit.

I purchased this tablet to essentially be a laptop replacement as a full time student. A tablet makes for a discrete and convenient device sitting on my desk in class. What makes this tablet ideal as a laptop replacement is the docking station that you can purchase separately. The docking station itself is just as high quality in its build as the tablet and is very comfortable to type on after some getting use to. I highly recommend the purchase of the docking station for the extended battery life (18+ hours), track-pad, usb 2.0 port and SD slot. I use a mouse with my unit and it works great. Appearance: The tablet looks and feels very well constructed. I can confirm with all the other reviews out there that this tablet indeed has a premium build to it that feels un-compromised. This tablet looks absolutely gorgeous Performance: I'm disappointed that this tablet still seems to have some lag to it, especially when web browsing (Seems more of a software than hardware issue). You would think with five separate cores of processing power to choose from that this device would be a flawlessly smooth experience which is not this case. Also, the browser freezes occasionally and asks me to wait or close. I think this is mostly with flash pages taking the browser a bit longer to load. Watching video is an enjoyable,smooth and crisp experience. Video and Sound Quality: One of my pet peeves with any device is the need for great picture, screen brightness and sound quality. This tablet meets the criteria. The screen with its super ips+ mode works well outside. The sound quality coming out of this device is amazing and seems to have a full range to it. However the pitfall for some is that the speaker is on the back of the unit on one side; same as the ipad. For some this will present a problem, for me I'm fine with it and I hardly notice since the sound is more well directed from the back of the device than from the side (the ipad is much more obvious with the sound coming from one side with no where near comparable sound quality). Listening to sermons and music is also a great experience with plenty loudness to spare. I would also like to mention in this category that the microphone and cameras on this unit are top notch and work very well. Wifi and GPS; The GPS has not worked on my unit. Also take into consideration that the wifi version of the ipad does not have GPS either, so this is still the better deal so far for an overall an open and compatible device that does not lock you into a proprietary device as with Apple. Although the GPS does not work, the unit still knows its location VIA wifi. I have not had any problems with poor wifi performance and I have wandered around my yard and through my home to test it. My home is roughly 3200 sq ft, single story with plenty of walls. My router is an Apple Airport Extreme (late 2011 model). Software/Daily Use: This unit has all the essentials I need for school. I have Power Point, Word and Excel all of which work great and I have had no compatibility issues with (Polaris Office suite that comes with this tablet). If I need to print something, I use google docs and airprint to my desktop computer at home or I can remotely access my printer on my desktop from my tablet.What I enjoy most is that with this being a Google based device (android), all of my contacts, email and calendar sync seamlessly together. This tablet also comes with remote access software. Once I installed splashtop on my desktop, I was able to turn on and operate my desktop remotely from any location (in the world with internet access) with access to my files on my desktop at home with my tablet. I had to purchase splashtop separately from the android app store though to be able to manually power on my computer from my tablet. The version that comes with this tablet does not give you the option to wake the system; only access your system when its already running. Skype (conferencing) is also a wonderful experience on this device. Overall I am very excited about my Asus Transformer Prime. I really would have liked to give it five stars, but I know Asus can do better and there are still many concerns as I've too experienced their quality control not catching defective products (Zenbook). However in Asus's deffense, they are still rated number one in the market for product reliability and I'm glad they are trying to be competitivee and innovative in the market. In comparison to the base wifi ipad, the Transformer prime trumphs in all areas except a fluid interface experience, but I prefer open compatibility which is inherent of these types of problems on occassion. And yes, I have used recent Apple products and my preference is open source and performance oriented products athough apple is good at what it does, I prefer not to be locked in to them paying premium price for everything I do or need.

This is a great tab. For me there was absolutely no problems whatsoever getting it up and running. I've noticed reviews here and comments on the Internet that the wifi and gps had some issues because of the aluminium back cover. It was thus with some fear I unpacked my tab and started to set it up. I can only say it worked perfectly. The WiFI connected at once (and note this: I have had issues with my Galaxy Tab connecting before). Speed is great too. (Speedtest.net gives me 20 Mbit download which is almost on par with my wired laptop). The GPS works amazingly well too. I'm sitting in my living room (no visible satellite...) and still it finds me just fine. Again my Galaxy Tab and my Galaxy S 4G phone can't find me indoors. So only good to say about those two issues. I got the tab today so after logging in to one of my Google accounts it downloaded apps and settings which was saved from my Galaxy tab. Obviously I might not want all the same apps but still a nice feature. After that concluded I decided to see if the ICS upgrade was available ... which it was. It took 7-8 minutes to download and upgrade to ICS. The GUI is not that different from Honeycomb but the speed is so much faster. Plus you get more options in settings. After installing ICS there was an upgrade for the camera. Very professional of ASUS. Also I got the update that unlocked the bootladers so I didn't have to waste time on doing so myself so I customize my tab as I want to. The software pre-installed is good. The Office software is WAY better than Google Docs or Thinkfree Office. It even handles advanced Excel files!!!

I like many folks, contemplated between getting the Apple iPad or the an Android device like the Asus tablet. Being invested already in an iPhone, the natural path of progression was to go the iPad route. Now the real comparison here is iPad vs Android. And for my needs, Android succeeds. iPad uses iOS, which is nothing more than a blown up iPhone on a big screen. So naturally the same limitations apply. Want to download a JPEG or Photo from an email, works great. Want to download a file like a zip? Well, forget about it, can't be done. Android on the other hand is much more like a PC with a file system that's easily accessible. Allows power users to perform PC like tasks at a simpler level. And what about that hideous screen of icons on the iPad? What good is that for? I want to wake up to my notifications, weather, traffic report, and some news! Well, on Android, you've got Widgets. And all those widgets can fit on the home screen. With a quick glance, I know my days outlook very quickly with no guessing. So for me, having Android being the more powerful OS to the user is what did me in! And as for Apps, don't be fooled, there are plenty of well polish and Android ready apps. Facebook, Pandora, Email, Browsers, Publishing, Document Editing, they all exists, and often times the same as available in the Apple store. And for games, yes, Android has them too, and the Asus Transformer Prime is plenty powerful to play them all with no problem! And as for Android devices, the Asus tablet is the cream so far. Being the only one sporting the Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU, it is one of the most powerful Android tablets on the market while sporting excellent battery life and is of only a handful of devices that sport a GPS receiver in a WiFi only configuration. (albiet, GPS perform not exactly stellar. I wouldn't use it for navigation purposes, but works just fine to pin point your location on a map). Performance wise, I love it. My only words of caution with this device would be the following, as state, the GPS receiver is not reliable enough for Navigational Purposes, but otherwise does the job very well for pin pointing location. And hopefully Asus will fix this problem with a software update or during the ICS rollout. Two, I have noticed my WiFi coverage is about 10-20 feet less then that compared to my iPhone. So if your close to the router, you'll be fine, but if you find yourself at the edge of coverage, you might be in trouble. Overall, at the time of the review, this is the best tablet on the market! Love my Asus Transformer Prime and Asus products in general!

Before I get my review started I did own this device for 3 days and I did return it. I was one of the lucky ones to have preordered from Best Buy the day it came out and was shipped out right away. I got the device in Grey 32GB model alone with no keyboard. I really myself have no use for the keyboard option. OK so let's get the good out of the way. I own the Xoom WiFi model and was looking to get a thinner, lighter more powerful device and the Prime did meet all of those needs. I the device is so thin and light it was a pleasure to hold it and surf the web, play games and watch YouTube videos. The IPS screen screams greatness and the option to do SUPER IPS is mind blowing. Completely destroys my Xoom :) no denying that at all. Multitasking is perfect with no lagging at all. Opening up apps is fast and fluid with little to no delays. The web browser speed opening up pages does not seem to be that mush faster than a dual core processor, HOWEVER playing flash content is twice as fast and smoother. GPS signal for me was good. My unit did not have a problem with that. WiFi signal was a little weak. I owned the original transformer and that too seemed a little weak for the signal. It never lost a connection, but the signal number themselves seemed a little low compared to other devices/phones. To me that is not really a issue. As long as it connects and stays connected, that to me is great. Gorilla glass on the display is always a plus. I would recommend getting a tablet with this feature. For me it makes me feel more at ease. The charging cord is three times loner than the original Transformer's. Asus must have listened to that. The did shoot good 1080p video's. The ability to play Full HD 1080p videos is good feature to have. Not a deal breaker for me, but always a good specification. Now lets do the bad and these "bad" features are not bad. GPS issue. I have read some people have had GPS issues and thus creating a problem. My unit did not have a problem so I cannot comment on that issue. Speakers- now most tablets have 2 speakers. The Prime has one. Sounds good and clear, but for me two is the choice to have and also they put the speaker right where your right hand normally goes so you are pretty much covering the speaker with your hand. WiFi signal was low. Not a deal breaker for me, but I can see someone spending $500 and an extra $150 for the keyboard and you would want a perfect excellent WiFi signal for that price. Ram- This has 1GB of ram like the Tablets of 2011. Maybe this could have had 2? That is debatable. Some I've read say yes, others like myself are OK with 1GB. Screen resolution- 1280 by 800. Not Full HD like Tablets may have in 2012 but still acceptable. So why did I return this? It has a quad core processor, the screen is unbeatable, it is thin and light, and it will get ICS. When I compared this to my Xoom I personally felt like spending an extra $500 for a thinner, lighter and twice the core number of processors was not worth it. The Xoom will get ICS and to be completely honest, I have had no issues with this device. The WiFi signal is great, very responsive screen, and the dual core processor does the job fine to me. I admit, I was expecting this tablet to completely blow the Xoom out of the water and it some areas it did, but in overall performance, it was not worth $500 to me. If someone who did not purchase a tablet in 2011 and wants the "IT" tablet, that I will say 100% this is the tablet to get. If you are like me and wanting to upgrade from a 2011 tablet, I would wait and see what CES and MWC had to offer. Great tablet, I am not denying that, at all, but $500 for an upgrade from a dual core processor, is not worth it in my case.