Battery Life
Asus claims that the VivoTab Smart is capable of 9.5 hours of general usage, and we cannot disagree with the company. We managed to achieve seven hours of fairly heavy general usage with the screen using its automatic brightness levels, which included at least an hour of streaming 720P content from YouTube.
The VivoTab Smart gave us four hours of non-stop 720P video streaming from YouTube – an impressive battery life for a demanding task (as proven by the below screenshot).
For basic usage such as web browsing, social networking and sending emails, you should have no problems getting a full 9-5 day of work, and some travelling time, from the VivoTab Smart's 25Wh Li-polymer battery, dependent upon brightness levels, of course.
Heat
Due to the insulating material used on the VivoTab Smart's rear side, the device didn't get particularly hot at any point during usage. We did notice an increase in the temperature of the rear side's top-left area after an intense session of 720P video streaming, but the heat output wasn't considerable enough to cause any concern.
Fantastic review Luke, how do you feel it shapes up against the Windows Surface? have you managed to get a hands on with it yet yourself? (as they are both Windows 8 im curious).
This looks great, I had been looking at an android tablet for months, and still cant decide as I liked the Surface in a local store.
Dont know what to get now 🙁
It is not ASUS fault, but Windows 8 APP store is very weak, its put me off moving over from my iPAD, but I dont like Apple or their practices using slave labour in china etc.
Its so hard to get a do it all tablet, but this is a good attempt by ASUS.
I need to get a hands on with this, as I will never pay for the Surface PRO to get access to X86 apps. this is a great move by ASUS considering the ATOM is probably a bit slow. very interested, but need to see one in the flesh. time to hunt this weekend in my local etailers. is it out now?
If I select “View All Pages” I get to a news item titled “All of humanity to own an Android phone one day”.
No apps? I’m running everything from Wireshark (try that on your iPad) to my PLC programs and games such as Age Of Titans. Quit thinking of it as being a Win8 tab and try thinking of it as a Windows PC. After you share your devices from your own PC tower, you’ll also have access to all of them as well so mine sits with my Canon Imagerunner, Pioneer DVDRW and 3TB Seagate External all available. For media I use Plex for video and Itunes for my music.
These true Windows 8 tabs are only hamstrung by their users… PERIOD. I’ve yet to see a reviewer do half of what I do as an actual daily driver of the Vivotab Smart. When compared to either my daughter’s 3rd gen iPad or my own Galaxy tab to my Vivotab Smart, the former are truly little more than really large phones and the latter a fantastically thin PC.
Had one and sent it back.
Its well made a relatively light, the display is really good.
Its slow to boot from cold and the wireless is weak. In desktop mode you need the bluetooth keyboard, i found the onscreen keyboard got in the way of many things when trying to use in desktop mode.
After i installed Windows updates and Firefox the wirelss was lost and nothing i tried could restore it. I rest the tablet to factory default which meant going through the setup process again and once it was all done it refused to accept the new account.
Personally i dont think its worth £400 especially if you wish to add the keyboard, your then looking at a nigh on £500 device and its simply not good enough for that money. At £400 with the keybaord it would be good value.
I had one too and sent it back, it was too slow and very frustrating. Those ATOM processors can barely handle basic tasks. This is a good buy if you must have a full windows 8. I cant believe the guy above said the app store is good and that he can run games on this? I could barely get solitaire to run smoothy.