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By 

M. Kim “gadget freak and man-toy expert” (Los Angeles) –

  

I was one of the lucky view at the stroke of midnight on April 26th, was able to get my order in on Amazon. I just received my tablet tonight via Amazon Prime.

I’ve been on Android since the original T-Mobile G1 released, and have owned an iPad since September of last year, so quite awhile on both. This is my first ownership experience of a Honeycomb 3.0 tablet.

Software wise, there’s not that much I can add in terms of what others haven’t already said. It’s VERY refreshing coming from iOS, to actually not be staring at pages and pages of useless icons. The notifications are ABSOLUTELY sweet (i.e. useful!). The app quick access with screenshots adds to a very desktop-esque experience, but with the navigability of a tablet UI.

Most things run very smooth, typical of all the standard Tegra 2 devices. Speakers are surprisingly loud, and there are actually 2 of them (stereo). Screen is absolutely gorgeous (IPS).

If you’re deep in Google services, such as Gmail, Picasa, Youtube, Docs, etc. Honeycomb is a godsend. I have almost 20gb’s of photos in Picasa, and after one account setup, EVERY SINGLE PICTURE synced. Pretty much all my cloud files and settings synced. From Chrome bookmarks to docs to pictures…. it seriously is a breath of fresh air to have things “just work”, without the use of something like iTunes.

Granted, if you’re not a Googler like me, it won’t be AS beneficial, but that’s not to say it’s still not a great device.

It also charges FAST as hell. My iPad takes on average 6 hours to go from 0% to 100%. I haven’t done a full discharge on the Asus, but it went from 7% to 100% in a little under 2 hrs. That’s insane.

The not so great, both the front and rear camera seem slightly sub-par as far as clarity goes. Very usable, but not great. My only real complaint is the “tightness” of the construction. I absolutely don’t mind the plastic. It’s light, grippy, sturdy, and looks great. However, along the bezel where the plastic seems to meet the glass, the Transformer tends to creak. Nothing worth concern, but it would be nice for a device that’s basically a slab of glass to “sound” solid in your hand.Then I think to myself, this thing cost 399… It’s 100 bucks less then the cheapest iPad.

So, the question really isn’t “Is this thing awesome” or “is it better then an iPad”. I believe either of those answers are really up for interpretation. However, when you throw in the equation of PRICE…”Is this thing awesome for 399″ , i have to give a resounding “YES!”.

****** Edit : Usage Update *******

So I’ve been using this tablet in place of my iPad exclusively for about 4 days now, and have better insight to the Transformer.

The good is that my previous complaint about the build quality really has proven to be a really superficial concern. It does faintly creak in a couple spots, but I would have to classify the actual severity as minimal to non-existant.

Also, after reading the issues with the Asus update, I decided to proceed since it’s only been documented that a handful (i.e. less then 5) people out of potential thousands have actually had issues. My update went without an issue.

I hear people complain about the lack of apps specifically for tablet. I can happily say that i haven’t experience this limitation since even most non-tablet specific apps scale fine. “things look stretched out”. Yes, that’s actually an indication that Android was designed to scale properly (literally). Look at iOS, they literally blow up non iPad apps to the point of pixelation. Android’s solution, while not ideal, is much better and most non-tablet specific apps actually work and look just fine. Having a FULL browser is incredibly helpful.

The notification system is awesome. Just this change makes this tablet twice as more productive then my iPad.

Now, admittedly, there have been more not-so-good issues that I’ve discovered. First off, the tablet is definitely prone to freezes and locks. On several occasions it would just freeze completely and would require a reboot. Also, there have been several times where, when going from portrait to landscape, the resolution of the screen stayed fixed. This would result in an odd partial-screen view. Usually fixed itself after a couple of seconds of rotating the tablet. Other times, presses are unresponsive, ex. opening an app. This is definitely a software issue however, not an issue with the capacitive hardware.

YouTube playback was surprisingly choppy, even in standard def. The recent update however, seemed to have improved that greatly.

Last thing, just like most Android devices, the user experience is proned to “slow-down” once you’ve been on it for any decent amount of time. Can’t be a RAM issue as this has 1GB, and at any given time there’s only 400mb or so in use.

All in all, most of these…

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