ASUS TRANSFORMER MINI T102HA REVIEW

KUDOS TO ASUS for shrinking down a full Windows laptop shrink into a little 1.8-pound experience, the screen is 10.1. If you want to run Windows and require a fully portable experience, the transformer Mini sounds like an attractive choice. Although it’s peeling and slow as molasses, it’s light in your bag as it is in your wallet. Let’s see if calculus works.

WIRED

At just $399, don’t go into this expecting the world. The specs are decidedly modest—an Intel Atom CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage space can all be considered absolute bare minimums in today’s Windows world (although for a mere $299 you can drop down to 64GB of storage, which you should not do). Connectivity is limited to a micro USB port, a standard USB 3.0, and a micro HDMI port. The micro USB is primarily used for charging.

The screen is a dazzler, the audio is plenty loud, Asus a32-f80 laptop battery life is outrageous (8.5 hours), and even the keyboard—though teensy-tiny to accommodate the mere 10.1-inch screen—has better travel than most ultrabooks. If you can get used to the minuscule size of the keys, you’ll at least find them comfortable to type on. (The rest of you will never, ever find the shift key.) The system converts quickly between laptop and tablet mode, the keyboard attaching via a tough magnet and the screen staying upright with a Surface-like kickstand. A stylus is also included, though fingers work fine here.

TIRED

There’s a fine line between designing for affordability and cutting corners, and the Transformer Mini is right on it. Performance is a major, major problem with this machine, and it routinely suffers from that well-worn problem of “click, wait, click again, eventually find that two instances of the program start running.” Using the Transformer to do anything beyond basic web browsing is frustrating to an extreme. Hell, it’s slow just typing into the Cortana bar.

The ports feel imported from yesterday (what, no USB-C?), and charging is incredibly slow over that micro USB connection. The touchpad is rickety (the touchscreen tracks much better), and while brightness isn’t a problem, resolution is: At 1280 x 800 pixels, the screen is barely HD in a 4K world.

And now I’m going to complain about something I’ve never bitched about before: the length of the power cord. The Transformer Mini’s cord is 35 inches from end to end—not even three feet long, which is absurdly short for a laptop. I had to find an extension cord just to plug it in, unless I wanted to work on the floor right next to the outlet, and that’s not something I figure many of you are keen on doing.

That all adds up to a lot of frustration for not a lot of payoff. I love a bargain as much as the next guy, but this one just has too many strings attached.

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