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Apple iPad 3 (New iPad) vs Asus Transformer Prime TF 201 | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

There have been a lot of devices that kept the crown of the best device of its kind in the market, but few of them lasts for a substantial duration of time. This is actually not a flow in their designs. It’s rather the highly evolving nature of the market in question. To tell you the truth, it’s really hard to keep a grip on everything that’s going on this market if you aren’t keen enough. Coming back to our original topic, another reason to pass the crown around is the following the market trend. Coming up with a sound design that is considered as the best design of its sector is quite an ordeal if you want to do it from the scratch. On the other hand, if you are to follow the market trend and design your device, it’s going to be relatively easier than the latter. That is exactly why the crow doesn’t stay on a device for a long time because crowned device becomes the market trend setter and soon it’s overridden by another device only to find out the crown in his head.

This method of propagation doesn’t accommodate innovation which can be troublesome in an industry like this. To balance the equations, there exist some vendors who come up with products in their own terms and not the market trend setter’s terms. Two such vendors are Apple and Asus. Apple don’t release much designs to the market, typically their rate is one design per year for a specific segment in the market. Asus on the other hand comes up with variants of products that are unique compared to other such products in the market. This process of innovation is integral to the market and thus we are going to talk about a device that is going to be crowned against a device that used to have the crown.

Apple iPad 3 (The new iPad)

There have been many speculations about Apple’s new iPad because it had such a pull from customer’s end. In fact, the Giant is trying to revolutionize the market again. Many of those features in the new iPad seem to add up to a consistent and revolutionary device that is going to blow your mind. As rumored, Apple iPad 3 comes with a 9.7 inches HD IPS retina display that features a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels at a pixel density of 264ppi. This is a huge barrier that Apple has broken, and they have introduced 1 million more pixels to the generic 1920 x 1080 pixels display which used to be the best resolution a mobile device provides. The total number of pixel adds up to 3.1 million, which is actually a monster resolution that hasn’t been matched by any tablet currently available in the market. Apple guarantees that iPad 3 has 44% more color saturation compared to previous models, and they have shown us some amazing photos and texts which looked wonderful on the big screen. They even cracked a joke about the difficulty of displaying the screens from iPad 3 because it has more resolution than the backdrop they were using at the auditorium.

That’s not all about it, the new iPad has a dual core Apple A5X processor at an unknown clock rate with quad core GPU. Apple claims A5X to offer four-times the performance of a Tegra 3; however, it has to be tested to confirm their statement but, needless to say, that this processor will make everything work smooth and seamlessly. It has three variations for internal storage, which is enough to stuff all of your favorite TV shows. The new iPad runs on Apple iOS 5.1, which seems like a great operating system with a very intuitive user interface.

There is a physical home button available at the bottom of the device, as usual. The next big feature Apple introduces is iSight camera, which is 5MP with autofocus and auto-exposure using a backside illuminated sensor. It has an IR filter built into it which is really great. The camera can also capture 1080p HD videos, and they have smart video stabilization software integrated with the camera which is a good move. This slate also supports the best digital assistant in the world, Siri, which was supported by iPhone 4S only.

Here comes another stabilization for the wave of rumors. iPad 3 does come with 4G LTE connectivity apart from EV-DO, HSDPA, HSPA+21Mbps, DC-HSDPA+42Mbps. LTE supports speed up to 73Mbps. However, currently 4G LTE is supported only on AT&T network (700/2100MHz) and Verizon network (700MHz) in the U.S. and Bell, Rogers, and Telus networks in Canada. During launch, the demo was on AT&T’s LTE network, and the device loaded everything super-fast and handled the load very well. Apple claims the new iPad is the device that supports most number of bands ever, but they didn’t say what bands exactly. It is said to have Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n for continuous connectivity, which was expected by default. Fortunately, you can let your new iPad share your internet connection with your friends by making it a wi-fi hotspot. It is 9.4mm thick and has a weight of 1.44-1.46lbs, which is rather comforting, though it is slightly thicker and heftier than iPad 2. The new iPad promises a battery life of 10 hours on normal usage and 9 hours on 3G/4G usage, which is another game changer for the new iPad.

The new iPad is available in either Black or White, and the 16GB variant is offered at $499 which is rather low. The 4G version of the same storage capacity is offered at $629 which is still a good deal. There are two other variants, 32GB and 64GB which comes at $599 / $729 and $699 / $829 respectively without 4G and with 4G. The preorders started on 7 March 2012, and the slate will be released to the market on the 16th of March 2012. Surprisingly the giant has decided to roll out the device in US, Canada, France, Germany, Switzerland and Japan at the same time which makes it the biggest rollout ever.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201

Eee Pad is a Prime in its class. Asus has embedded Prime with Nvidia’s 1.3GHz quad-core Tegra 3 Processor. Transformer Prime is actually the first device to carry a processor of that magnitude and the very first to feature Nvidia Tegra 3. The processor itself is optimized with Nvidia’s Variable Symmetric Multiprocessing technology, or in simple terms, the ability to switch between higher and lower cores depending on the task at hand. The beauty of it is, you won’t even notice that a switch happened from a higher core to a lower one once you close a game and switch into reading.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer also comes with breathtaking graphics, specially their featured water ripple effect. Nvidia states that the game developers have unified the additional pixel processing capabilities of the GPU with the calculation power of multiple cores to work out the physics underneath. The 1GB RAM plays a considerable role in the ultimate optimization and transformation.

Asus has granted their brainchild a 10.1 inches Super IPS LCD Capacitive touchscreen featuring a 1280 x 800 resolution with a pixel density of 149ppi. The Super IPS LCD screen enables you to use your tablet in the bright daylight without any problem. It has scratch resistant display with the strength of Gorilla Glass display, accelerometer sensor and Gyro sensor. Been a tablet, it is intended to be bulkier than a mobile phone. But surprisingly, it scores a thickness of 8.3mm, which is incredible. It only weighs 586g which is even lighter than iPad 2. Asus hasn’t forgotten the camera as well. The 8MP camera was the best camera we have seen so far in any tablet PC. It comes with 1080p HD video capturing, autofocus, LED flash, and Geo-tagging. They have also provided a front camera bundled with Bluetooth v2.0 for the ardent delight of the video chatters. Since Asus provides internal storage of either 32 or 64 GB and the ability to expand up to 32GB using a microSD card, the space to store all high quality snaps you take won’t be an issue as well.

So far, we’ve been talking about the hardware aspects of the Tablet, and what bids them altogether is the tablet optimized Android v3.2 Honeycomb. Transformer Prime also comes with the promise of an update to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich which is all the more reason to rejoice. That been said, we got to say that, Honeycomb flavor of Prime just doesn’t do his fair deal for the Prime. It has an imminent gap where the OS is only optimized for dual core processors, quad core applications are yet to be defined. Let us hopefully wait for the v4.0 IceCreamSandwich upgrade for better optimized solutions for multi core processors. Besides that fact, everything looks good in Asus Eee Pad. It comes in a pleasing look with an Aluminum back plane of either Amethyst Gray or Champagne Gold. Another differentiating feature of the Eee Pad is the ability to be docked to a full QWERTY Chiclet keyboard dock that enhances the battery life up to 18 hours which is beyond awesome. With this addition, Transformer Prime simply becomes a notebook whenever it’s needed. Not only that, but this dock would have a touch pad, and a USB port which is an added advantage. Even without the add-on battery of the dock, the standard battery itself is said to do 12 hours straight up. While Eee Pad defines it’s connectivity through Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with the ability to act as a wi-fi hotspot, it does lack the element of HSDPA connectivity at the places where wi-fi isn’t a possibility. While 1080p HD video playback would be a usual suspect, Asus has added an element of surprise with the inclusion of SonicMaster supreme sound technology. Asus has also introduced three performance modes, and can be considered as the first Tablet PC adapted to such a strategy. It also features some demo versions of games that holds our breath and hopefully there will be more and more games optimized for multi core processors and cutting edge GPUs.

Conclusion

This is going to be a really early conclusion, but nonetheless, the facts we have are undeniable. The only thing we have a question about is the processor and the memory setup because we heard a rumor the memory is going to stagnate at 512MB in the new iPad and the processor at a lower clock rate. In that case, Transformer Prime will exceed the performance level of iPad 3 (new iPad), because of the quad core processor it hosts compared to the dual core processor offered by the new iPad. Although this is the case, the ace in the game is the super screen with a monster resolution, super-fast 4G connectivity that is becoming the industrial norm as well as the highly attractive price it is offered at. Thus making the purchasing decision is going to be a difficult choice. Although Apple guarantees that iPad 3 delivers four times the performance of the Tegra 3 chipset, we are just not sure about the benchmark they have used to come into that conclusion. So the only thing that would act as a deal maker for the new iPad is the monster resolution it offers along with the benefit of being a loyal customer. You may have to think your decision carefully based on what exactly you would expect from your tablet PC because Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime gives a hell of a fight to Apple’s 3rd generation iPad (the new iPad).