ASUS Transformer Prime Keyboard Dock Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,372 words · ~6 min read
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Today's unboxing is going to be a tablet accessory, but uh probably the most
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compelling tablet accessory that has yet to exist. So, no, I'm not talking about,
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you know, cute little carrying cases or jewel encrusted well carrying cases or I
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mean really that seems to be what most tablet accessories are these days is
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carrying cases. But no, this is the
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Transformer Prime. Well, E-PAD Transformer Prime keyboard dock
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attachment. And uh this is the black or gray or whatever they want to call it.
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It's that color. It's not the other color. So, that goes with the
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Transformer Prime that I have here. So, you can see there's a couple of logos on
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here. We got HDMI powered by NVIDIA Tegra. Tegra 3, mind you. Um although
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that's not in the keyboard attachment itself. So, what is the keyboard
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attachment itself? Well, it does a few things. One, it's a keyboard. Okay, so
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that part is fairly self-explanatory. There's the keyboard aspect of it. Uh
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two, it is like uh remember those old uh
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docking stations that you used to get for old notebooks that had like
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additional expansion? Like they'd have a parallel port for your printer and stuff
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like that? Well, this is kind of like that as well because it has additional
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I/IO including actually uh you know what, we'll go through the additional IO
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later. And then last but not least, it also has an additional supplementary
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battery. So, okay, what ASUS has to say is dock and charge the pad for up to 18
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hours of battery life. That seems a little optimistic, especially based on what I've seen so far. But what it does
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do is once you plug it into your Transformer Prime, it does charge the
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Prime's battery off of the battery that is on the keyboard dock itself, which is
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very, very cool. So, we get a touchpad, we get a keyboard, we get some
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additional IO, and we get additional battery life. How can you go wrong?
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Well, there's one way to go wrong. No, unfortunately, your old keyboard dock is
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not compatible with the new Transformer
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and your new Transformer keyboard dock is not trans. I
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wonder is this going to work?
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Hm. No. Okay. So, your new keyboard dock
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is not compatible with the old ASUS Transformer. So, why don't we have a
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closer look at it? So, you're going to see it's got a great finish to it. I
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mean, the Transformer Prime is just leagues ahead of the original
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Transformer in terms of the overall build quality. Check out the brushed metal finish here. Uh, let's have a look
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at the keyboard layout itself, actually. So, we've got correctly positioned shift
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keys, correctly positioned enter, long backspace. Overall, no complaints. It's
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a chicklet style keyboard. Very short travel distances on these keys, but that
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is to be expected because the last thing you want is high-profile keys that are
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going to stand a chance of scratching your keypad or uh scratching your screen
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when you have the thing closed. The hinge looks like it's very high quality.
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You can see it's quite difficult for me to move it right now, but once the uh
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the transformer primes on there, giving me additional leverage, it should be fine. Very solid metal construction,
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though. Um, so every part of the hinge should be very, very robust. There's the
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lock button. So, uh Oh, yeah. I'm guessing that moves once I actually plug
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something into it. And you can see the Transformer Prime's ASUS's proprietary
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docking connector right down there. You've also got a number of hotkeys. So,
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instead of F keys, uh, we've replaced all of those with just pure hotkeys. So,
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you don't actually have to hold down a function key in order to make it happen. So, we've got, you know, your wireless,
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Bluetooth, brightness up, brightness down, auto brightness. Uh, is that
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really the internet button? Cuz that looks an awful lot like an Internet Explorer thing, but I'm sure they'd
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prefer you use Chrome. Um, full certy keyboard and touchpad, easy file sharing
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with built-in ah SD cards and USB. So, I want to show you guys the improved IO.
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So, what do we got here? This is a U
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Okay, whatever it's labeled. That's a USB port. Right over here is a
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full-sized SD card slot. On the other side, we
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have Oh, okay. Right. So, that replaces
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the dock connector on the bottom of the Transformer Prime when it's plugged into
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the uh to the base station. So, that's how you'll charge both the keyboard dock
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as well as the Transformer Prime once they're connected together. I want you
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guys to check out the bottom. I've put a couple fingerprints on it already, but you know how it is. So, there's your
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brush metal finish even on the bottom of the device. So ASUS has really taken a
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page out of Apple's book when it comes to finishing every aspect of the device
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in as beautiful a way as possible rather than sort of what I would consider to be
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more like the traditional PC approach, which is to take the underside of things
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like a notebook and um and not really worry too much about them. So I'm just
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taking out these rubber inserts and I'm going to go ahead and plug the
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Transformer Prime into the docking station. So, with the actual
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intended tablet, this should be far less difficult than it was when I was trying
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to do it with the wrong one. So, you just got to make sure you have it lined up right. There it goes. It locks into
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place. And then all you got to do is boot this bad boy up and it should be
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detected in a pretty Yep, there we go. Docking connected. Use You got to be
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kidding me. There's the instructions. Use keyboard to type words. Thank you
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Google and ASUS for that. So, I just
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wanted to show you guys what the profile of the device is like. You know what? Actually, give me a sec. I'll be right
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back. So, it occurs to me. I want to show you guys the profile of the device
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compared to the older ASUS Transformer, which is right here. So, you can see
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that even with the keyboard dock, the new Transformer isn't that much thicker
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than the old Transformer, which is very, very cool. ASUS has done a fantastic job
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with the Transformer Prime. Now you compare it to something like this is a
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first generation Acer Aspire 1. Look how thin it is compared to a netbook. This
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netbook with the battery it has which is not a six cell battery is only capable
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of about 2 hours of battery life whereas the Transformer Prime is capable of well
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over 14 hours of battery life once you include the extra keyboard dock. The
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last thing I want to compare it to in terms of its size once you put the
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keyboard on is the iPad 2. Just because it's kind of the de facto standard for
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tablet comparisons, I want to make sure that I have it in there so you guys have
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a clear idea. Oh, it's even more broken than it was before. Oh, what a bummer.
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That's that uh crack keeps spreading. I might have to uh might have to get that
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glass replaced. So, there is the profile compared to the iPad 2. So, here we go.
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Transformer 1, iPad 2, Transformer Prime
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with Tegra 3, and the additional keyboard dock. Thank you for checking
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out my unboxing and first look at the keyboard dock and this beautiful little
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piece of machinery from ASUS. Don't
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forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other
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