Difference Between Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime (TF201) and Motorola Xoom 2

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime (TF201) vs Motorola Xoom 2 | Speed, Performance and Features Review | Full Specs Compared
 

In the mobile market, Motorola has always been an innovator coming up with a lot of products that give them an edge and a prominent position in the market. Up to date, they have shown that they can actually deliver quality content that correlates with the needs of the society at the time. Thus, Motorola coming up with Xoom and its successor Xoom 2 is no surprise for us in a time of need like this. It is indeed a welcome surprise. Along with the Motorola, what we are going to compare here is a vendor that had its original roots back with Desktop PCs and Laptops. Asus is trying to gain prominence in the mobile market, as well, and it seems they are succeeding up to a certain point. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201 is one of the debutant players that successes Transformer Prime TF101. Asus has made sure to give it an edge like no other tablet has gotten with the superior Quad-core processor over Nvidia Chipset. Yes, you heard correct, it comes with a jaw dropping quad core processor. Does Motorola Xoom 2 have what it takes to take down Asus Eee Pad? That’s what we are going to talk about.

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime TF201

Eee Pad is a Prime in its class. To be precise, the Optimus Prime of their race. 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. It would be an understatement if I were to say that this isn’t the best processor found in a Tablet or a handheld device as of yet. We can safely assume that Eee Pad gives a sneak peak of the next generation of Android Tablets. 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 has not 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 with Assisted GPS. They have also provided a front camera bundled with Bluetooth v2.1 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, which enhances the battery life up to 18-hours that is beyond awesome. With this addition, Transformer Prime simply becomes a notebook whenever it is needed, and that is just awesome. 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 hold our breath, and hopefully there will be more and more games optimized for multi core processors and cutting edge GPUs.

Motorola Xoom 2

Motorola Xoom 2 is no midget either. It comes with a 1.2GHz Cortex A9 processor on top of NvidiaTegra 2 chipset with a ULP Geforce GPU and 1GB of RAM. This is a very solid combination that performs without the slightest lag in any benchmark. It comes with the Android v3.2 Honeycomb while Motorola promises an upgrade to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich soon in the future. I mentioned that Android v3.2 is just not optimized to take the full throttle out of AssusEee Pad’s Quad core processor set up, but that is not the case for the dual core Xoom 2. The OS uses the resources very efficiently and generates an amazing user experience. For this reason, in general terms of usability such as browsing and reading, Motorola Xoom 2 and Asus Eee Pad won’t show much of a difference.

Motorola has included a 16GB internal storage that can be expanded by the use of microSD card. The earliest version did not have this extension, which was an eminent flow. Xoom 2 comes with a 10.1 inches TFT capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors featuring a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels and a pixel density of 149ppi. In terms of the screen, the size, resolution and the pixel density is the same as Eee Pad, but the Super IPS LCD touchscreen provides superior image quality than the TFT capacitive touchscreen of Xoom 2. The tablet weighs 599g, and is 8.8mm thick. This is a radical improvement compared to its predecessor, which used to weigh around 750g. Xoom 2 also feels good in the hand and emanates a glow of superiority and expensive looks. Same as the Asus Eee Pad, the only connectivity in Xoom 2 is Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, which is a disadvantage when you can’t find a hotspot to connect with.

Motorola Xoom 2 has a 5MP camera with autofocus and LED flash with Geo-tagging and 720p HD video capturing @ 30 frames per second. This is of course a pretty decent camera but just doesn’t beat Eee Pad’s 8MP eye. Xoom 2 comes with the usual suspects for an Android Tablet along with a HDMI port and Gyro Sensor. The Gorilla Glass coating on the screen ensures it’s scratch resistant and smooth. Motorola has also included a 3D virtual surround sound setup which is a pleasant surprise. Xoom 2 promises an effective battery time of 10 hours, which is fair compared to the screen size and the processor, but this doesn’t give an edge for Xoom 2 over Asus Eee Pad.

Conclusion

The conclusion depends on what you actually look for in the tablet and your brand loyalty. If not for highly performance intensive applications, a general user won’t identify much of a difference between the user experience on Eee Pad and Xoom 2. But when it comes to high throughput applications, Asus Eee Pad redefines the usual benchmarks. Thus, if you want to have the state of the art and the best Tablet in terms of raw performance, Asus Eee Pad cannot be beaten by anything. Otherwise, you can equally choose Xoom 2 and have a very comfortable user experience with it.