To buy or not to buy Asus Transformer Prime?

care to share what sort of limitation when using tablets during holidays? thanks!
i need to review if it fits my needs during travel also, lacking 3G a minus for me
looks like i’m staying put for now

Hello Jayce…I love this site! Just off topic…I want to inform you that cotulla just released a window phone 7 rom…any chance you can make tutorials? Anyways keep up the awesome work! Thanks Again. – Jerome

My 2 cents worth on tablets as replacement laptops … NOT.

I loved the idea of the Asus Transformer line of Android tablets as net-books; visually the Asus products are the perfect merging of tablet and laptop. The Prime even looks as thin and sleek as my Acer S3 ultra-book (which for physical hacking reasons I chose over the Asus equivalent product).

Caveat, the following is based around the freedom to go anywhere and use computing power when need be and NOT be tethered to a desk. Conversely, if chained to a desk for 8 – 10 – 12 hours per day then a PC with dual-tri-quad monitors, keyboard and mouse is king.

IMHO … what the tablet does so much better than a netbook / laptop / ultrabook.

1# mobility of use, just pull it out of a backpack and start doing stuff.

2# ad-hoc gaming, as a short term game play platform (i.e. 5 to 30 minutes randomly throughout the day) a tablet bests the laptop. But for serious focused game play then of course a dedicated PC, xbox, playstation is best. Also, a tablet is the perfect cheap way to provide short-attention-span gaming to kids.

3# web browsing, for single page at a time information retrieval yes, but for multiple tabs then a pc rules.

4# email, for the firing off of a quick email yes, but for the organized control of multiple emails such as in a work environment then pc.

5# social networking, for quick information interchange then yes, but for Facebook type flash games then pc.

6# as a pdf reader and ebook, then yes when portable, but some material is much better in dual page format like a real book and hence a pc is better at this.

7# document editing, for quick thoughts then a tablet is acceptable, but for serious document editing such as for work then a PC is KING. I would love an Android tablet to be able to WYSIWYG edit word docs, but alas it can’t so I am left using ezPDF Reader to markup the PDF copies of my work DOCs. Until, someone produces a suite that can WYSIWYG edit Microsoft Office documents then a tablet is not a serious work editor and hence an ultra-book will always best the tablet at this.

In summation, the prime advantage of a tablet is mobility and speed of information access & transfer, and for those quick injections of fun. But for serious fun and work an ultra-book bests a product like a Asus Transformer Prime.

Also a killer for the Asus Transformer Prime type of products is its cost point when compared to ultra-books. In Australia, you can buy a Acer S3 i3 ultra-book for under $900, the Asus Transformer Prime will go on sale for $800 (32gb) – $900 (64gb). Hence, this type of tablet is too expensive for a market that is blurring into other computing market segments. If the price of the Prime was a few hundred cheaper than it would rock.

Now, you may counter with, but the Prime has 3G.
Well, my counter to your counter is … “why are you buying 3g devices in the first place”. Most probably you already have a phone with a data plan included. Would it not be better bang-for-buck to hot-spot share your phone’s data with your wifi devices and thereby maximize the use of a single data plan rather than partly use up individual data plans. Also, for many people their phone is with them 24 – 7, whatever the situation or circumstances. Hence the phone is the perfect G3 access point for your wifi tablet devices.

In conclusion, I love the idea of the Prime but I personally wont be buying one, nor similar sized tablets. I have tried my best to live with a Asus Transformer… but I ended up giving it away as a “present”. Instead, I chose a HTC Flyer 16GB wifi 7 inch tablet with digital stylus as my daily driver; given that it fits easily into my pants / shorts pocket and hence is accessible everywhere… anyone for private surfing in the toilet cubical at work =)
For me, my personal computing weaponry is as follows:
#1 … HTC Desire HD / Inspire 4G with a 5GB data plan as a wifi hot spot.
#2 … HTC Flyer 16gb wifi … 7 inch honeycomb tablet with stylus… primarily for work notes, emails, web browsing, and watching bittorrents before falling asleep. P.S. the HTC Flyer is a most under-rated tablet, easily besting my Tegra 2 tablets (Asus transformer and Acer Iconia) for real-world use and game play.
#3 … Acer S3-i3 ultra-book … hint install win8 on the 20gb SSD fast-boot partition instead of on the physical drive, cheap kick-ass portable.
Anyways, great site … love the tablet games you preview.

Cheers,
Josh

Do you think it will suppport windows 8? Because microsoft will release w8 with arm support
reference:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_8

If so, i think indeed this will be a very good tablet and laptop

I thought they are lobbying to get the rom to be unlocked. And finally Asus bowed down to the pressure.

Wow..Rm2199 is pretty expensive for tablet. Maybe i have a look at ultrabook 😛

Hi Jayce!

Love your site. I ll be in KL soon and was crazy about getting the tf prime, but after they stated that they will release the tf0700 with the corrected backpanel i feel that the original tf prime would be crap over wifi! and now i am more biased to galaxy tab 7.7. What do you think? that juiced exynos could be match for tegra 3?

Huge fan of ur site!

Thanks