WEBVTT

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welcome to a very exciting unboxing and first look this is the EAD Transformer

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Prime and based on everything that I already know about this tablet I am

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extremely excited to have a look at it so I've got a few other tablets here for

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me with me for comparison so I've got

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the uh ASUS Sam the ASUS Sams the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10. one I've got the

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ASUS transformer original and then I've also got uh an iPad 2 in its little snug

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case there which I'll take off for a closer comparison check this out so the first thing I notice about the box is a

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nice foamy insert which is going to make sure that that screen doesn't get

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damaged in any way during Transit very very high hopes for this tablet so let's

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check out the packaging here rumble's going to help us so the first thing we

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find here are some of the outstanding benefits offered cool so incredibly slim

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yes this is the slimmest tablet yet Ultra performance with the NVIDIA Tegra

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3 quad core and that's a bit of a misnomer cuz it actually has five cores

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one of which is a low powerered core for when the tablet is not really doing much

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silky smooth 3D gaming HD video playing up to 1080p all on Google's user

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friendly and upgradeable Android OS it's funny they mention upgradable because it

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will be compatible with Ice Cream Sandwich moving forward although it does

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come with honeycomb unrivaled visual Acuity so this super IPS Plus panel

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actually is according to what I've heard so far even better than what was my

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previous favorite tablet panel which was the one the uh the PLS panel on the

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Galaxy Tab 10.1 so I'm very excited to check that out Supreme sound so ASUS

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says they've put in uh improved audio

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performance okay unlimited productivity with the uh yeah with the dock which

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I'll be checking out later so there's the Transformer Prime doc just like the

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original Transformer you can add more battery life as well as

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a full quty keypad and some additional IO so that's pretty cool hey check this

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out this doesn't come with like a a Cheesy microfiber cloth it comes with an

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actual proper textured one that's going to like look at this I actually bought

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one like this number of years back this looks

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like almost exactly the same as the one I bought way back

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when whatever it's very similar this is really really old and ratty and this

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one's new so you can clean off your tablet with that it also comes with what

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appears to be the same charger that comes with the original Transformer so

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actually here I have it on hand so we might as well check it out what do we

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got here h y Jus something or other Yep

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looks like the same thing and as you can see it's a potent cat toy which you

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shouldn't be playing with that all right

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what else we got for accessories I think that's pretty much it so it's a fairly

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bare package you got your cleaning cloth you got your little instructional doodad

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you got your charger and and you've got

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what is obviously the most important piece the actual e-pad Transformer Prime

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so let's check this out first thing we want to do is take off this plastic

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shoing so this already looks very familiar to me this looks a lot like the

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Zenbook which is just a beautiful piece

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of computer hardware so I love the finish here it's got kind of a

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concentric circle thing going on with

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like a brushed Metal finish nice shiny ASUS logo right in the middle

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there overall the machine is quite light compared to the original Transformer

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that was one of the things that made me sort of less of a fan of the Transformer

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because in spite of the of the good form factor it really had some heft to it

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this one is definitely significantly lighter that's also one of the things

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that I don't like that much about the iPad 2 it's a very very heavy device and

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for a tablet it becomes very relevant if you're going to be yeah it's actually

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quite light I don't think it's as light as the Galaxy Tab 10 well maybe hold on

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wow this is really light even in spite of the fact that it has feels a little

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heavier I'll have to weigh them when I do my proper follow-up on this on my ncixcom channel but uh yeah it feels

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quite quite light indeed very nice F

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Factor but yeah okay sorry what I was saying so yeah when you're like you know

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laying in bed watching a movie or reading a book or whatever the weight becomes very very important so what else

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we got on the back here we have a flash and the 8 megapixel camera and then

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we've got one speaker on the Transformer Prime this feels like a bit of a step

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backwards to me given that the original Transformer had two speakers one on the

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right hand side and one on the left hand side on the edges there but you know

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what it doesn't bother me that much when I'm using the iPad 2 which only has one

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speaker as well so I guess I'll let it slide this time let's have a look at

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what we've got for iio on the device itself there's your standard headphone

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jack up at the top we find a whole lot of nothing except a microphone we've got

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our onoff standby button our rocker

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switch for volume that that looks hold

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on is that uh that looks like micro HDMI

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but I could be wrong give me a sec I'll double check that for you guys and then

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oh that could be a microphone as well interesting okay I don't know what that

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is either but this is definitely a Micro SD slot which is awesome because that in

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my mind already makes the Transformer Prime aside from the price point because

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yes the Transformer Prime is more expensive than the original Transformer

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but instead of starting at a 16 gig model at$ 3.99 it starts at a 32 gig

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model at $4.99 which is fine because the Transformer when it launched was $4.99

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for the 32 gig model anyway so now we see a 32 gig model and a 64 instead of a

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16 and a 32 so let's actually turn this baby on oh yeah the dock down here at

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the bottom sorry I wasn't quite done yet oh what are

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these oh you know what these are probably for uh yeah these are for

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docking to the uh the keyboard the keyboard which actually acts not only as

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a keyboard but an extended battery I think I already mentioned that so there's our serial number here's a

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little plastic thingy we don't have to leave that on we can get rid of that if we want I would probably not keep that

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on the device so it's booting up right now so let's talk a little bit about the

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Tegra 3 processor oh yeah we've got our front webcam here as well or our front

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camera so Tegra 3 processor so it's a

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quad core CPU plus NVIDIA has also

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significantly upgraded the GPU so it is substantially more powerful than the

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Tegra 2 which was pretty much the only

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uh processor that you found in most of the first generation tablets with

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Android uh honeycomb um right so I mentioned that

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it's quad core but there's a fifth core so your four cores are going to turn on

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or turn off or be clocked higher or clocked lower depending on the profiles

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you set depending on the load that you're running and then there's an additional One Core that can run just as

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a super low power State and the all the other four ones are off so that's why

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it's actually a 5 Core processor NVIDIA has also significantly upgraded the GPU

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horsepower so CPU is better and more faster and there are more and the GPU is

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much more powerful so okay one thing that I've noticed

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right away about this guy hold on I'm just going to key in the password to my

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uh my SS ID

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here okay there we go one thing I've noticed

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about it right away is I don't know if you can see this in this light but I can

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see the touchscreen interface a little bit I can see uh the grid of dots it's

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not that noticeable it only really you know what it only really comes out if I

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catch the Light that's up there on the ceiling and it shines directly off the

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tablet into my eyes I can kind of see the dots around it but it's definitely

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not as noticeable as something like the Motorola Zoom or the um tashiba Thrive

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both of those had very very noticeable touch screen overlays so this is sort of

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what I would say is about middle of the road in terms of the visibility of it I

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I can see it a little bit so let's just skip that let's get this booted up I

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just want to check out the overall responsiveness of the unit so one of the

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things that I've really heard said about the Transformer Prime is that all of the

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kind of nonsense slowness that's been

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associated with Android tablets is pretty much gone because here I mean

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come on let's compare it to something like an iPad 2 where the user interface

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is so slick I mean look at that it just kind of seamlessly goes from okay the

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air video one is at the bottom left oh boom now it's at the bottom right how

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did that happen whoa holy cow um so it's a very very smooth user interface

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experience and that's something that my expectation is that yes throwing more

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CPU and GPU horsepower at the problem is a good way to address it and it

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definitely looks better I mean look at this you can see how quickly and how

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smoothly it transitions now but ice cream sandwich is also supposed to

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address that in a very very big way as well so when you compare that to the

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Transformer see you see that leg you see

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that the first generation uh the first

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generation Android tablets really didn't feel uh I mean I'd say the Galaxy Tab

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10.1 was probably the slickest feeling out of all of them but they didn't

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really quite have that same feel as the Apple device and it looks like it was a

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combination of hardware and software so now we finally got the hardware that's

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going to be a lot more competitive with the processor and the iPad 2 we've got a

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screen that looks very very vibrant and let's actually go ahead

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and wow look at that so they've really increased the brightness of the screen

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compared to the Transformer looks like a very very

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similar but slightly different uh sort of take on the desktop wallpaper that we

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were using on the original one yeah so brightness is way up hard to evaluate

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color just based on sort of my initial Impressions here they have made some

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significant changes to the menu right here though so we've got a bunch of

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different stuff including your eco mode so turning on power saving mode turning

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on balance mode turning on normal speed mode you can lock your orientation or

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not lock your orientation look how quickly the response is on this though

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compared to previous Android tablets where navigating through menus really

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feels like a bit of a chore Wi-Fi on Wi-Fi off let's see how quickly it

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connect to my can connect to my Wi-Fi is my browser working

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yet that's nice that's one of the things that I really like about the iPad 2o is

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that when you are in range of your wireless it's like boom it's on it's on

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so let's go nci.com

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see how quickly that loads up I'm sitting right next to my Hotpot so this

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should be pretty much a best case scenario I'm on a Broadband 50 so that's a 50 megabit per second internet

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plan go to The Forum let's read the

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forums very very nice to look at overall though I mean look at the okay I I

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apologize because you guys aren't really going to be able to see this but the

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contrast between this black and this white is just outstanding like this

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looks like the deepest of deep blacks it almost looks like part of the frame more

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than it looks like part of the screen that is just

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amazing so far I'm very impressed with the screen

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though scrolling is nice and quick let's see zooming cuz that's one of the things

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that I really felt was totally not the best experience with the

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uh the first generation of Android tablets so oh there's no internet

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connection let's get that address okay just a sec I'll be back guys

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okay so here's the Transformer I've got the same page loaded so zooming in

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actually feels a little bit better than it used to there was a recent system update I wonder if that kind of

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addressed some of my concerns but it's still not quite there

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with something like the iPad 2 which just feels so silky smooth when you're

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zooming around I mean look at that okay so we're not quite there but that's more

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like a software thing that hopefully will be addressed with Ice Cream Sandwich uh let's wrap this up with just

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like a general physical comparison I just love this thing physically actually

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like I love it physically no no I don't do that I mean it's a machine it's just

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it's taboo still you know give it another couple hundred years and maybe

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we'll be having a different conversation so let's look at the uh let's look at

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the overall format compared to the iPad 2 so I'm just going to lay this down on

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top of it so the iPad 2 is still not a

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16 by10 screen which is horrible and

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needs to just die in a fire um hopefully that's something Apple will address with

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their next tablet so you can see we do have a significantly more widescreen

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screen which is great for watching your media content whether it's on YouTube or

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whether it's over Network or you put your media files on here on a Micro SD

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which iPad 2 doesn't have uh very frustrating cuz I do like the iPad oh

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let's talk about the glass right Gorilla Glass so uh as some of you know I

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recently broke my iPad too so my screen is cracked all the way from here to here

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and then all the way from here over to here it's pretty pretty wrecked which uh

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has made me fairly unhappy so so this uses Corning Weare Gilla glass which

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should make it about as scratch proof and break proof and everything proof as

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possible so that's uh that's something to bear in mind guys that actually

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there's a great demo that ASUS has on YouTube of the original Transformer

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where they take keys and objects and try to scratch the glass and they show you

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the result at the end so that's that's outstanding and that's something if

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you've ever had a tablet that's broken then hey it might be a factor for you so

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let's have a look at the format compared to the original trans Transformer which

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is pretty darn similar look at that they've reduced the width a little bit

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which is really nice although it is a little bit more okay so let's call this

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the why don't we call this the length so it's a little bit shorter lengthwise but

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it's a little bit uh wider okay however the screen size is pretty much the same

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so what they've done is they've lost some of this bezel space around here and

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then they've increased a little bit of the bezel space around the top let's

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check out the thickness so thickness was one of the ones one of the things where

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the original trans forer really didn't

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stack up well against its comp so yeah the original Transformer really didn't

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stack up that well thickness wise you can see compared to the iPad 2 against

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the original Transformer and then the there's a Transformer Prime against the

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original Transformer so I'm going to go ahead and put the iPad 2 next to the

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Transformer Prime so you can see the thick oh that's really really close Okay

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so ASUS says it's the thinnest I guess I'll have to take their word for it but

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these all look really really close to me so here's the iPad 2 Transformer Prime

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and Galaxy Tab 10 .1 uh so yes this was

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HDMI over here so that's micro HDMI so

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what ASUS has done here is they've rece they've produced AA a tablet that this

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was my favorite Android uh Tegra 2 tablet the Galaxy Tab 10.1 no secret I

00:14:46.959 --> 00:14:55.320
love the screen love the form factor love the

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weight however no micro SD no HDMI

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output done like you lose the the

00:14:59.199 --> 00:15:05.759
benefit of going with the Google platform in my in my personal opinion by

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removing those features because that's a huge selling point for me versus

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something like an iPad 2 where you have to have like a weird dongle to do HDMI

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output or get a USB port or whatever the case may be so the Transformer Prime

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takes that form factor fits in a micro HDMI fits in a Micro SD slot and is

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still very very lightweight great looking screen so far but I'm going to

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spend some more time with it hopefully in the next little bit great piece of

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glass and I think we've pretty much got a winner here folks so thanks for

00:15:32.079 --> 00:15:37.480
checking out my unboxing and first look at the Transformer Prime don't forget to

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subscribe C's Tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos