We Take the Asus TF101 Transformer Out for a 3-Week Test Drive - The Box and Goodies

trnas07In our second dive into the Non-Apple Tablet market we take a look at one of the more popular Android based tablets available right now. This is the Asus EEE Pad TF101 known more affectionately as the Transformer. This 10.1-inch Tegra 2 sporting device was first shown off at CES earlier this year. It generated quite a bit of interest as it not only works as a tablet but also has an available dock that lets you use it like a small netbook (and get a few extra hours of battery life).  The Transformer comes in two flavors; one with 16GB of internal storage and one with 32GB. Other than that they are identical. You get the dual 1GHz Tegra 2 SoC (which features an nVidia GPU core and Cuda Acceleration for Flash) plus 3D SRS surround sound, MicroSD and SD Card readers (the SD card comes with the Dock) and much more. The best part of all of this is that you can get the 16GB Transformer with Dock for only $50 more than an iPad 2 16GB WiFi. Now the question is, is it worth that much and have we found a non-Windows tablet that is anything other than a toy? Read on to find out.

 

The Box and Goodies –
The boxes for both the Transformer tablet and the Dock are fairly stylish.  Although both are labeled Transformer there is no doubt which piece you are getting thanks to the images on the front of the box. The sides contain additional imagery, but this is mostly to indicate the size of the product (to be honest it reminds me of the Apple packaging in that respect).
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Inside the boxes your new product is safely held in a plastic tray. This tray occupies the majority of the space inside each box and makes me wonder why the boxes are so large to begin with. Inside the Tablet box we find pretty much everything you would need to get working. You have a power adapter (USB to AC) and of course the USB power cable. Inside the Dock box we find… much less. You get a small box that has some details on the warranty and that it is. I am rather disappointed to find that Asus does not even give you a second power adapter and cable. I would think that this would have been a no-brainer to be honest. If there is one thing that you never have enough of it is power adapters for devices like this.

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So between the two boxes you get a lot of paperwork and a single way to charge your new Transformer. This is something of a letdown really, Asus should have made a little bit better attempt to drop in a few nice goodies. I am sure that headphones, stickers and perhaps information on where to get additional cables and charging blocks would have been welcome.

 

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