Yet another tablet, you groan? Wait. Hold on for a second! This is a tablet that does things a bit differently. Whether it is a stroke pure genius, or will end up as the laughing stock of the tablet, we do not really know. We are talking about the Asus Eee Pad Slider – the tablet with (as the name suggests) a slide out keyboard.
This is a 10.1-inch beauty with a dual core 1GHz processor and Android 3.1 (surprisingly) on board.
We must say, the performance of this tablet is quite impressive. Quadrant threw up a benchmark score of 2033. However, we were very impressed with the startup time – just 21.4 seconds as compared to the 22.8 seconds of the Apple iPad 2.
- The display is quite good. While it does lose out somewhat because of the slightly reflective nature, it is still much better than the likes of the Sony Tablet S.
- The Eee Pad Slider is quite heavy. At 960 grams, it is considerably more than the likes of the iPad (607 grams) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 (565 grams). However, the Slider offers something both others don’t – a full-fledged keypad.
- Speaking of which, the keypad did create a flutter in our test centre. One line of thought (the one with thin long fingers) found it to be a tad uncomfortable, owing to literally no palm rest and minimal travel of the keys. The other one (with more filled up yet not so long fingers) found it to be more comfortable. We will give a clearer picture of this debate in the detailed review soon, but the fact remains simple – the added keypad does add a whole bunch of functionality. Albeit at the sacrifice of weight.
- Asus have updated the Eee Pad Transformer to Android 3.2, but the Slider remains stuck on Android 3.1 still. We are keeping our fingers crossed for an update very soon.
Asus have informed us that the Eee Pad Slider carries a retail price tag of Rs. 36,999. We will find out more about whether it is value for the moolah in the detailed review. Stay tuned for that. In the meantime, check out some product pics.
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