it has taken me forever to do this with all the complications on my channel and
whatnot but I am finally unboxing the assus apad TF 101 Transformer this is
the 16 gig model and I don't have the keyboard on me today but I am still very
excited to bring you this unboxing because even though everyone in their
dog has pretty much done it at this point I have not yet and I am still
excited uh the one that I had before when I did a little bit of content on
the TF101 back closer to launch was a demo unit so I did not have a retail box
I could not share with you the retail
box unboxing experience the inside of
the box is black very stylish okay the product itself is there
and now I will move it the plastic that holds the product is
also black ah there's all the accessories so let's have a look at the accessories themselves the first thing
we find is a little EAD uh paper
thingamajiggy holder it's a paper holder
there finally managed to spit it out we have a users's manual which is obviously
not very complete really you're using Android so what you're going to have to
do is you're going to have to you know browse the forums try things just try
things because andro what I discovered was a little bit hard for me to get into
I spent a fair amount of time with a Motorola Zoom over the last little while
and it like doesn't feel quite right at
first but once you set it up the way that you like it it's very very natural
to use and so this is Android Honeycomb a couple tips for using your e-pad so
they show you how to use some of the included things including the file
manager which allows you to use manage your internal storage um removable
devices including the micro SD port and
removing the external storage devices so that there you go there's a little icon there so that's one of the more Android
Transformer specific ones you got a charger cable here so that's just a USB
charger cable and you also have a wall
wart so you got a power to USB power
adapter guy right there now the
Transformer TF101 itself actually let's see what isus has to say for itself in
terms of what they think are the best features right off the bat here so 178
degrees now ASUS makes they're not shy
about advertising that they are using an IPS panel in here that is covered with
gorilla glass that is a premium feature IPS panel means you not only have better
viewing angles so you can pretty much see what's on the screen even from way
over here way over here but you also have better color accuracy regardless of
where you're looking at it from so that is a great feature they also claim up to
9.5 hours of battery life and that is with the screen at 60 nits as I recall
in terms of brightness and playing back 720p video next SRS 3D stereo sound
don't bother coming in it's okay I can read these um so it does have stereo
speakers and they do have software on here that allows you to in theory enjoy
surround sound but my experience with those software Solutions in the past is
that they're not that compelling I would still say though that compared to
something like an iPad 2 having stereo speakers on the unit is a definite plus
that is a selling point for sure because using the iPad 2 to watch videos over
the last little while has kind of annoyed me that it only has one speaker
and that the speaker is hidden away on the back of the unit next we have a 10
finger multi-touch input so you can potentially put both of your hands on it
and go like this should you so desire if you want to like fruit ninja it up and
you're like I just want to hit everything then you can use all 10 fingers if you want next we've got a
keyboard dock with USB and SD card reader that is optional so that also
includes an extended battery like I said I don't have that today but that does
use these latches right here as well as this input in order to connect not only
the uh oh yeah no I already said that the USB SD card reader and the extended
battery as well as the keyboard and then it folds up like a laptop and it also
acts as a case SL screen protector it is also 680 G light really they say 680 G
light well I would say it is 680 G of weight or 680 G heavy but you know
everyone can interpret that the way they desire so why don't we turn this baby on
now like the Zoom which is one of the tablets that I have have more experience
with than this particular one like the Zoom the Transformer is intended to be
used in portrait mode so you can actually here give me a sec I'm going to grab my iPad so like the Zoom the
Transformer has its webcam as well as its light sensor on the top you can see
that the logo here is right side up when you are holding it in landscape mode so
when you compare that to something like an iPad 2 where your camera is here
Steve Jobs clearly is expecting you to use the tablet more like how you would
use a traditional Notepad okay so
actually you can see that uh mine is locked in landscape mode right now or
you would be able to see that if I could figure out how to how to unlock it
normally it's over here oh right right cuz I set up the button so yeah I I like
I didn't even know how to get it to Port uh to go into portrait mode because I
predominantly use it for watching videos actually here's the thing I complained
about before where the iPad 2's only speaker is on the back which means that
if you're watching videos in a less than ideal environment you are not going to
be able to hear it very well so let let's get back to the TF 101 it's
running uh with a teg or 2 processor this is so this is something I haven't
mentioned yet and this is a huge advantage that a lot of the honeycomb
tablets running Tegra 2 have over something like an Apple iPad so you have
way more 3D performance out of a Tegra 2
than you're going to get out of any other chip on the market now there aren't a ton of games that take
advantage of it but the titles are rapidly rolling in so even something
like fruit ninja looks better better on Tegra 2 and
I'm not even kidding because the fruit
will actually be far more round and less polygon like this when you're when
you're slicing through I mean does it make a huge difference to the gameplay experience no but it's still kind of
cool that you do get better graphics Graphics out of the tegr 2 platform now
in terms of a few more spec things before I just finish up with the
physical uh look of the unit I've turned it on now
okay um you've got a 1.2 megapixel camera in the front the camera on the
back is a 5 megapixel camera and that is also located in an ideal location for uh
landscape mode use where as you can see once again on the iPad 2 it is
configured more for portrait use all right and I think that's pretty
much it actually okay so physical layout let's have a look at the button so
here's our power button here on the side this is a far more ideal location than
the one on the zoom in my opinion which is on the back right here I don't bother
getting too close it's okay I'm just showing General things so on the side
here is means that when you're using it whether you're using it like this or
like this you can you can kind of reach it whereas when it's on the back it's
very awkward to reach up here it's not it's not always uh not always
comfortable so on the top we don't have any buttons at all on this side we've
got a microphone port or rather sorry headph headphone SL microphone Port so
that can be used with the uh with like a headset style device we have a mini HDMI
that is such a cool feature uh mini HDMI is don't bother getting too close it's
okay mini HDMI is great for playing games like uh like that Wave Runner
Style game where basically you can go like this and then you can actually
watch the big screen at the same time so it does support 1080p output over HDMI
finally we have a micro SD card so this is the big reason why very few people
are buying 32 gig Transformers because you can buy the 16 gig buy yourself a
cheapo micro SD card throw it in there and all of a sudden you've got a bunch
more storage now in terms of the oh
actually Gorilla Glass what does that mean means you've got a very durable piece of glass on the front and on the
back this is a huge complaint I have about the iPad 2 so you can see the back
of my iPad 2 I've only had this thing for about a month got a big old scratch
there that was actually from sliding it across a granite countertop just got
generally the back looks totally grungy and horrible already the back of the
Transformer I mean it's not real attractive it's Brown let's be honest
here but what it is is very durable very
scratch resistant I guarantee you you know I'm going to do this I'm going to take a brand new Transformer I'm going
to go like this because I don't care
because the textured back the textured appearance of the back is going to
really mask and really hide things like fingerprints and small surface scratches
much better than most other surfaces out there so thank you for checking out my
unboxing of the ASUS Transformer TF101 don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech
tips from more unboxings reviews and other computer videos sorry guys some
clarification about the speaker that's cameraman by the way who's visiting us
here um he's going out to lunch but I
can't because I'm busy so these are not the speakers sorry about that that's
just a textured pattern on the side of the unit the speakers are actually
located here and here on the other side
so while that is significantly better than being located on the back it's
still not going to give you quite the Sound Performance of a front-mounted
speaker and I actually don't know if any of these tablets have front mounted speakers so I had originally thought
these were in the front they're not so there small correction sorry guys one
more note ASUS also advertises one year of unlimited web storage that comes with
the TF101 so that's kind of cool