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The rear of the Transformer Prime is home to a metallic circular pattern which is available in both “amethyst gray” and “champagne gold” colours. We had the champagne gold edition and the person that named the colours should be fired. The back casing doesn't live up to its naming and is a light grey colour with the faintest of gold tints.
It should be said that the aluminum can be scratched rather easily. While the front has a full Gorilla Glass casing the aluminum back is left exposed. We're not sure how many other reviewers have got their hands on our unit before us but there is quite a collection of small hairline scratches that are very obvious under the right lighting.
Although if you ever get stranded in the desert, the Prime's rear casing will act as a wonderful visual signalling tool.
The centre of the aluminum back is occupied by a Asus badge while above it is the 8 MP rear facing camera. It isn't a cheap sensor either, possessing an impressive F2.4 aperture plus a LED flash for better shots in poor lighting. Video is able to be recorded at Full High Definition 1080p resolution.
The single speaker is located in just about the most bizarre place possible, right where your right hand will mostly likely be when the Prime is used in a landscape orientation. Surprisingly the speaker is difficult to drown out completely using your palm and in general use you will only suffer a minor muffling effect at worst, at best, you won't even notice the strange placement of the speaker.
More positively, the speaker itself does sound wonderful and is easily loud enough to enjoy a movie in a lounge where there is some degree of background chatter.
Wow thats a hell of a review. so much information my brain hurts 🙂
Its impressive, but the Ipad 3 has put a real dampner on these due to the low resolution and the catch up they all need to play now against Apple.
I think its a little expensive for what you get if I was being blunt about it, but its a nicely designed product and it seems powerful for even casual gaming. Retina display has pushed everything forward really which has made this look already a little out of date.
Two weeks with this tablet were more than enough for me to experience all the issues already pointed out by other reviewers plus a brand new one: the shockingly poor build quality.
Yes, the WiFi is faulty. I use both the TF201 and a Galaxy Nexus in bed and, although the signal is quite weak on the smartphone, it never disconnects and the browsing/downloading speed is very good. The same can’t be said about the tablet, which often disconnects and sometimes requires a reboot so I can use the internet again (and what’s a tablet with dodgy WiFi? A paper weight?).
Yes, the GPS is useless. Asus dropped the ball twice here, first by not testing the unit properly and then by removing the function from the specs list. Shameful, to say the least.
Now to the build quality: although the TF201 is a stunning device and both its screen and its metallic body look fantastic, my unit proved to be cheaply manufactured when the glass started detaching from the main body a few days ago. It’s a month old tablet and I’m extremely careful with my electronics.
Right now all I can do is regret as I purchased this tablet in the US and brought it back to Ireland, so sending it back will be a costly pain in the neck both for me and for my wife’s friend who would have to drop it at UPS.
I’m really disappointed with Asus and the current selection of Android tablets in the market. No wonder the iPad is flying off the shelves, all that Apple has to do is release products that don’t suck.
Cheers Davy!
I have to agree Davis, perhaps the reason it is taking so long for other Tegra 3 tablets to come out is because everyone is running around trying to find a decent supply of FHD display to create a tablet that can go head to head with the new iPad’s
It’s decent value to me Rt23ds, 20 quid more than the new 32GB iPad. It really depends if you’d prefer a higher resolution screen or the ability to type anything of length
Guil, I encountered no Wi-Fi problems that I could attribute to my review unit (the dodgy router is to blame). Completly agree on the GPS points. The review unit I had could have been cherry picked but it has definitely been around the place and all it had to show for it was a few collections of scratches on the back. Have you tried getting in contact directly with Asus? Either way it’s really bad to hear you’re having issues with your Prime
Its impressive, but the Ipad 3 has put a real dampner on these due to the low resolution
I’d have to agree Ieeko, it’s not majorly noticeable by itself by switching between a decent phone and the Prime the extra pixel density is noticeable. Shouldn’t be too long until we start seeing Full HD tablets though