Asus Transformer Book Trio

Credits : Phonearena.com

With PC sales slipping at what seems an ever-increasing rate while tablet sales blossom like springtime, it's clear that a good number of users are discovering they can do all their computing on their iPads, Google Nexus 7 tablets, or even their big-screen smartphones.

But for many of us, the need for a good physical keyboard and Windows programs like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop keep us tethered to a traditional laptop. Even if we wanted to opt for a Windows tablet with a keyboard, the rather lackluster (though improving) selection of tablet apps available for Windows 8 would have us envious of our friends with Android or iOS devices.

That's where Asus' latest convertible comes in. The Transformer Book Trio essentially takes an 11.6-inch Windows detachable, like the larger Transformer Book TX300CA priced at Rs.98,099, and puts the guts of an Android tablet behind the screen and the innards of a Windows laptop in the base. When the two pieces are docked together, you have a laptop that can run either Windows or Android, switching between the two with the press of a button on the function-key row. Remove the display, and it's an Android tablet. You can even use the two pieces simultaneously, plugging a monitor into the keyboard base and using it as a Windows desktop. Thus, the "Trio" concept: Windows laptop, Windows desktop, and Android tablet in one.

Design and specs

The Trio sports a sharp 11.6-inch IPS display (1920 x 1080) that impresses with vibrant colours and deep blacks, which look particularly alluring when the tablet's running in Android mode.

We were a little less enamoured with the black bezel surrounding the screen, which is a little too chunky for our tastes. It also picks up a fair few fingerprints, as would be expected on a reflective display of this type, but they were easy enough to wipe off.

As a tablet, the Transformer Book Trio is an 11.6-inch tablet that's powered by a dual-core Atom Z2560 CPU clocked at 1.6GHz. At 1.5lbs, it's light to hold, coming in fractionally heavier than Apple's iPad 2 (1.33lbs).

Unfortunately, that ultra level of portability stops in its tracks once the keyboard dock is attached, which isn't surprising as it houses the Trio's internal grunt. If you were to prise it open, you would discover a fourth-generation Intel Core i5 Haswell processor, a 64GB SSD, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD.

Connecting the dock makes the device thicker and heavier, bulking up from 9.7mm at its thickest point to 13mm and going from 1.54lbs to 2.2lbs, putting it on a par with Apple's 11-inch MacBook Air (2.38lbs). It also converts it into a proper laptop.

credits : phonearena.com

Ports and features

The Transformer Book Trio offers a multitude of ports. The tablet part of the device contains a micro-USB port, a microSD card slot and an audio jack.

The docking station offers one mini DisplayPort, two USB 3.0 ports (one of which is a USB charger), one micro-HDMI 1.4 port with 1080p support and an audio jack.

The Transformer Book Trio features a rear 5-megapixel snapper with auto-focus (which is still sadly lacking from Microsoft's Surface Pro 2) and 1080p full HD video recording. At the front is a 720p HD camera. It can go for up to 13 hours on a single charge in Android mode, according to Asus, which lowers to five hours when used as a laptop in Windows mode. Other features include an accelerometer, ambient light sensor, gyroscope and e-compass.

Keyboard and dock

The Asus Transformer Book Trio's chiclet keyboard isn't the best or worst we've ever used, meaning it isn't likely to win any awards in this category. There's decent spacing between the keys themselves, but they lack travel and feel a little rigid to type on.

credits : tech2.com

Performance

The PC base station packs in enough grunt to easily manage most menial tasks and then some. Here’s a breakdown of all the tests that we ran.

The Android tablet is equally powerful as well and easily manages to run most apps and games with ease. The UI is smooth and devoid of any lag, despite the skin. The Full HD display is great when using it in tablet mode as it makes video consumption a real treat. In terms of numbers, the tablet portion of the Trio is about as powerful as a Samsung Galaxy S3 and according to Quadrant, is quite a bit faster than Asus’s earlier Transformer Prime tablet.

Battery Life

The base station is fitted with a 33Wh battery, which lasted for 2-hours and 10-min on Battery Eater Pro. In real world usage, you should be able to squeeze out around 4-5 hours of usage time. The tablet is fitted with a 19Wh battery, which lasted for about 7-hours on video playback. Overall, the battery life for the PC station is average at best whereas the tablet does fare a bit better.

The Transformer Book Trio is a very compelling proposition if you’re hunting for a workhorse hybrid PC. With ability to use the notebook as a Windows 8 PC and the screen as an Android tablet – at the same time; is something that hasn’t been done before. This alone makes the Trio one of the best hybrids in the market right now. If we have to nit-pick then the battery life of the base station could have been better, the trackpad buttons are unusable and a backlit keyboard would have been a neat addition at this price. If you don’t fancy the detachable design then the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13 is another well spec’ed hybrid at this price.

Microsoft Surface Pro 2

Credit : The Verge

Microsoft has launched the second version of the Surface Pro. The Surface Pro 2 is a device designed to be a laptop and tablet in one.

As with the original Pro hybrid, the Surface Pro 2 resembles a plain old tablet until you unfurl the integrated kickstand and attach a keyboard cover to the base, transforming the device into a small, funky-looking laptop. Many other details are unchanged. The tablet alone weighs 2 pounds and measures 0.53 inch thick, and boasts a 10.6-inch, 1920-by-1080 display. You’ll find a full-size USB port and a headphone jack on one side, and a MicroSD card slot and a Mini DisplayPort output on the other.

Enter the Surface Pro 2, which comes with one of Intel's latest fourth generation processors and runs the full 64-bit version of Windows 8.1 Pro. It's available with 64GB, 128GB 256GB and 512GB of storage, but you'll need some very deep pockets for the 512GB version, as Microsoft has started pre-order prices at £1,439 – and that's not including a touch or type keyboard cover. Fortunately, the 64GB version reviewed here costs a lot less, but at £719, we reckon the £799 128GB version is the best option when it comes to good value storage.

On the outside, the Surface Pro 2 is virtually identical to its predecessor. It's a little lighter, weighing 900g instead of 916g, but the tablet's sleek gunmetal grey magnesium chassis is still a slim 13.5mm thick and has the same soft-touch texture on the back panel. The ports haven't changed either, as you still get a single USB3 port, a micro SDXC card reader, a mini DisplayPort for connecting the Surface Pro 2 to an external display and a combined headphone and microphone jack.

Over to the right a micro-SD card slot allows memory to be boosted up to 64GB. It sits alongside a power connector that's still a bit more fiddly than we would like it to be, and alongside that is a MiniDisplay port that supports daisy chaining of two external monitors of resolutions up to 2,560 x 1,440 pixels.

On the left-hand side of the Surface Pro 2 is a single USB 3.0 port, a volume rocker and headphone jack, alongside a groove to help you flip the kickstand into its open position.

Luckily, the Pro 2 also comes with a Surface Pen to make interacting with the screen that bit easier. It works much like other drawing tablet pens and the screen will sense it even when it’s 2cm away. We found it a little difficult to use with the original Surface Pro unless it was lying flat on our work surface, but the Pro 2’s wider kickstand angle now makes it much more comfortable to use when the tablet’s propped up in laptop mode.

The pen is much more precise than using your fingers, but the accuracy of its sensor still isn’t completely perfect. Like the Surface Pen that came with the Surface Pro, we experienced a few tracking issues when we held the pen at an angle near the top corners of the screen. Unless we held the pen perpendicular to the display, the sensor would run away from our pen into the corners of the screen, making closing and minimising windows a little tricky. We didn’t experience this problem anywhere else on the screen, but it was a little disappointing to see this hasn’t been fixed yet.

Surface Pro 2 ships with Windows 8.1 Pro x64. Since there's no connected standby 64-bit version of Windows 8/8.1 yet, Surface Pro 2 ships without the feature. It also continues to behave more notebook like in the sleep/wake sense as a result. There's a delay between when you press the power/lock button and when you'll see the tablet respond as the system comes out of its sleep state. Ironically Surface Pro 2 comes with nothing more than a link to try Office 2013, while Surface 2 comes with a free copy of the Home & Student edition.