laptop Asus Transformer Book T100 review

Blazing a trail

The Asus’ design is nothing revolutionary, but the hardware inside certainly is: it marks the debut of Intel’s latest Atom platform, Bay Trail. This is big news, and perhaps the biggest development for the Atom platform since its inception – Intel has promised dramatic performance improvements.

At the heart of Bay Trail lies the new 22nm Silvermont microarchitecture. This introduces a quad-core design and out-of-order execution, as well as support for USB 3, DDR3 RAM and 64-bit operating systems. Graphics performance promises to take a leap forwards, too, thanks to the presence of a cut-down Ivy Bridge-class GPU.

The Transformer Book T100 is powered by a mid-range Bay Trail CPU, the quad-core, 1.33GHz Atom Z3740, which is capable of running at burst frequencies of up to 1.86GHz. Although the Atom Z3740 supports up to 4GB of RAM, Asus has focused on keeping the Transformer Book T100 affordable – there’s a basic 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 32GB of eMMC flash storage. Nothing fancy, in other words.

In everyday use, however, the new face of Intel’s Atom brings as dramatic a transformation as you could hope for. Compared to our experiences of Windows 8 on the previous generation of devices (Atom Clover Trail), the Asus is a veritable speed demon. Applications load far more energetically; web browsing is slick and smooth; and the overall experience remains impressively responsive, right up to the point where the limitations of the 2GB of RAM start to show.

Full speed ahead

In benchmark testing, the Asus left Clover Trail-powered rivals far behind. Where the 1.8Ghz Atom Z2760 of the Dell Latitude 10scored 0.22 in our Real World Benchmarks, the Asus racked up a result of 0.32, which is more than 45% faster. The biggest improvement was in the Media element of our benchmarks, which tests a device’s ability to encode MP3 files, render HD video and edit image files in Photoshop. Where the dual-core, Hyper-Threaded CPU in the Dell scored 0.18, the Asus’ quad-core CPU sped ahead with 0.35 – an improvement of 94%.

Details
Warranty
Warranty	1 yr return to base
Physical specifications
Dimensions	263 x 178 (tablet, 171) x 24 (tablet,11mm) (WDH)
Weight	1.070kg
Processor and memory
Processor	Intel Atom Z7340
RAM capacity	2.00GB
Memory type	DDR3
SODIMM sockets free	0
Screen and video
Screen size	10.1in
Resolution screen horizontal	1,366
Resolution screen vertical	768
Resolution	1366 x 768
VGA (D-SUB) outputs	0
HDMI outputs	1
S-Video outputs	0
DVI-I outputs	0
DVI-D outputs	0
DisplayPort outputs	0
Drives
Capacity	32GB
Replacement battery price inc VAT	£0
Networking
802.11a support	yes
802.11b support	yes
802.11g support	yes
802.11 draft-n support	yes
Integrated 3G adapter	no
Bluetooth support	yes
Other Features
Wireless hardware on/off switch	no
Wireless key-combination switch	yes
Modem	no
ExpressCard34 slots	0
ExpressCard54 slots	0
PC Card slots	0
FireWire ports	0
PS/2 mouse port	no
9-pin serial ports	0
Parallel ports	0
Optical S/PDIF audio output ports	0
Electrical S/PDIF audio ports	0
3.5mm audio jacks	1
SD card reader	yes
Memory Stick reader	no
MMC (multimedia card) reader	no
Smart Media reader	no
Compact Flash reader	no
xD-card reader	no
Pointing device type	touchpad, touchscreen
Audio chipset	Realtek I2S
Speaker location	tablet, bottom edge
Hardware volume control?	yes
Integrated microphone?	yes
Integrated webcam?	yes
Camera megapixel rating	1.2mp
TPM	yes
Fingerprint reader	no
Smartcard reader	no
Carry case	no
Battery and performance tests
Battery life, light use	8hr 49min
3D performance (crysis) low settings	20fps
3D performance setting	Low
Overall Real World Benchmark score	0.32
Responsiveness score	0.44
Media score	0.35
Multitasking score	0.18
Operating system and software
Operating system	Windows 8.1 32-bit
OS family	Windows 8
Software supplied	Microsoft Office 2013 Home and Student