Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 was the tablet with the best specifications for some time in the market and now it’s challenged. Lenovo IdeaTab S2 was only revealed at the CES 2012, and it seems like something we’ve been waiting for a long time. The enlightening feature is that, both Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime and Lenovo Idea Tab S2 come with keyboard docks that give boost to battery life. Let us explore these tablets closer to see what they have in common.
Lenovo IdeaTab S2
The Lenovo IdeaTab S2 is to have 10.1 inches IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, which would be a state of the art screen panel and resolution. It will have 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 8960 dual core processor with 1GB of RAM. This beast of hardware is controlled by Android OS v4.0 IceCreamSandwich and Lenovo has included a completely modified UI called Mondrain UI for their Idea Tab.
It comes in three storage configurations, 16 / 32 / 64 GBs with the ability to expand the storage using a microSD card. It features 5MP rear camera with auto focus and geo tagging with Assisted GPS and while the camera isn’t that good, it has decent performance verifiers. IdeaTab S2 will come in 3G connectivity, not 4G connectivity, which certainly is a surprise. It also has Wi-Fi 801.11 b/g/n for continuous connectivity and they claim that this tablet can control a smart TV so we assume they have some variation of DLNA included in IdeaTab S2, as well. Lenovo IdeaTab S2 comes with a keyboard dock that has some additional battery life, as well as, additional ports and an optical track pad.
Lenovo has also made their new Tablet rather thin scoring a mere 8.69mm of thickness and 580g of weight, which is surprisingly light. The inbuilt battery can score up to 9 hours as per Lenovo, and if you hook it up with the keyboard dock, 20 hours of total battery life is guaranteed by Lenovo, which is a very good move.
Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201
Asus has embedded Prime with Nvidia’s 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 Processor. Transformer Prime is actually the first device to carry a processor of that magnitude and the very first to feature NvidiaTegra 3. The processor itself is optimized with Nvidia’s Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing technology, or in simple terms, the ability to switch between higher and lower cores depending on the task at hand. The beauty of it is, you won’t even notice that a switch happened from a higher core to a lower one once you close a game and switch into reading.
Asus Eee Pad Transformer also comes with breathtaking graphics, specially their featured water ripple effect. Nvidia states that the game developers have unified the additional pixel processing capabilities of the GPU with the calculation power of multiple cores to work out the physics underneath. The 1GB RAM plays a considerable role in the ultimate optimization and transformation.
Asus has granted their brainchild a 10.1 inches Super IPS LCD Capacitive touchscreen featuring a 1280 x 800 resolution with a pixel density of 149ppi. This has a higher resolution and a pixel density to that of Apple iPad 2. The Super IPS LCD screen enables you to use your tablet in the bright daylight without any problem. It has scratch resistant display with the strength of Gorilla Glass display, accelerometer sensor and Gyro sensor. Been a tablet, it is intended to be bulkier than a mobile phone. But surprisingly, it scores a thickness of 8.3mm, which is incredible. It only weighs 586g. Asus hasn’t forgotten the camera as well. The 8MP camera is the best camera we have seen so far in any tablet PC. It comes with 1080p HD video capturing, autofocus, LED flash, and Geo-tagging with Assisted GPS. They have also provided a front camera bundled with Bluetooth v2.0 for the ardent delight of the video chatters. Since Asus provides internal storage of either 32 or 64 GB and the ability to expand up to 32GB using a microSD card, the space to store all high quality snaps you take won’t be an issue as well.
So far, we’ve been talking about the hardware aspects of the Tablet, and what bids them altogether is the tablet optimized Android v3.2 Honeycomb. Transformer Prime also comes with the promise of an update to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich, which is all the more reason to rejoice. That been said, we got to say that, Honeycomb flavor of Prime just doesn’t do his fair deal for the Prime. It has an imminent gap where the OS is only optimized for dual core processors, quad core applications are yet to be defined. Let us hopefully wait for the v4.0 IceCreamSandwich upgrade for better optimized solutions for multi core processors. Besides that fact, everything looks good in Asus Eee Pad. It comes in a pleasing look with an Aluminum back plane of either Amethyst Gray or Champagne Gold. Another feature of the Eee Pad is the ability to be docked to a full QWERTY Chiclet keyboard dock that enhances the battery life up to 18 hours, which is beyond awesome. With this addition, Transformer Prime simply becomes a notebook whenever it’s needed and that is just awesome. Not only that, but this dock would have a touch pad, and a USB port, which is an added advantage. Even without the add-on battery of the dock, the standard battery itself is said to do 12 hours straight up. While Eee Pad defines it’s connectivity through Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with the ability to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot, it does lack the element of HSDPA connectivity at the places where Wi-Fi isn’t a possibility. While 1080p HD video playback would be an usual aspect, Asus has added an element of surprise with the inclusion of SonicMaster supreme sound technology. Asus has also introduced three performance modes, and can be considered as the first Tablet PC adapted to such a strategy. It also features some demo versions of games that holds our breath and hopefully there will be more and more games optimized for multi core processors and cutting edge GPUs.
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A Brief Comparison of Lenovo IdeaTab S2 vs Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 • Lenovo IdeaTab S2 has 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor and 1GB RAM, while Asus Transformer Prime has 1.3GHz Quad core NvidiaTegra 3 processor with 1GB RAM. • Lenovo IdeaTab S2 comes with 10.1 inches IPS capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, while Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime too comes with 10.1 inches Super IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with the same resolution. • Lenovo IdeaTab S2 runs on Android OS v4.0 IceCreamSandwich, while Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime runs on Android OS v3.2 Honeycomb with the promise of an upgrade to IceCreamSandwich. • Lenovo IdeaTab S2 scores 9 hours of battery life without the dock and 20 hours with the dock, while Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime scores 12 hours of battery life without the dock and 20 hours with the dock. • Lenovo IdeaTab S2 features 5MP camera with some features, while Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime features 8MP camera with advanced features than the latter.
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Conclusion
The month of December marked the release of Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime and now it’s January 2012, almost a month after that. We tend to expect the market to evolve and come up with products that would challenge the specifications of Transformer Prime. But it seems one month is too little time to evolve for Lenovo to come up with a better tablet than Asus Transformer Prime. That is to say, Asus Transformer Prime still has the glory of being the tablet with performance while others are catching up fast. Their quad core processor hasn’t still been matched and neither has their performance with the Graphics Processing Unit. The screen panel still beats the best out there and we sincerely expect some more tweaks in the OS would land the tablet in best circle for more than a year. That been said, Lenovo IdeaTab S2 isn’t just a competitor. It is a competitor that has nearly the same specifications as Transformer Prime, only lacking in several areas like processor, graphics and camera. We still don’t have much information about the pricing of Lenovo IdeaPad S2, so we might not be able to objectively conclude the investment decision, but our stand on Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 is the best out there still holds its end.