We see how the forthcoming Asus Tablet 600, powered by Windows 8, compares with Apple's iconic third-generation iPad
Asus' Tablet 600 looks set to be one of the first wave of Windows 8 tablets which should arrive towards the end of the year. Like the Android-powered Transformer series, it's a hybrid device which combines the tablet's touchscreen with a laptop keyboard dock.
We take a look at how it stacks up against the current tablet king, Apple's iPad 3.
The iPad 3 hasn't changed much from its predecessor in terms of design. It still has the iconic Apple signature aesthetic and the proportions are more or less the same except for just under a millimetre extra thickness and it's slightly heavier, too. These differences are barely noticeable, so on the face of it it's just like the iPad 2.
Chances are you'll either love, hate or feel indifference towards Apple's visual style already and that will be a deciding factor in what you think of the iPad 3 as it adheres so closely to it. We can appreciate it has a clean, minimalist look but we don't feel particularly inspired by its overall very ‘soft' appearance.
The Asus Tablet 600 has much in common with the company's previous Transformer hybrid tablet and laptop designs based on the Android platform, but there are a few things which make it distinctive.
For one thing, it's made from plastic, like the Transformer 300 Series and unlike the Transformer Prime's brushed aluminium. If the Transformer 300 is any kind of yardstick for the Tablet 600's build quality, however, it will be made from a decent quality plastic and should be very well put together, too.
The other change is that, unlike the Transformer series' swirling and circular brushed design, the Tablet 600 is much plainer and has only a large band of darker coloured straight-brushed bodywork at the top of the back panel - the emphasis here seems to be on minimalism and straight, angular lines, perhaps to compliment the Windows 8 Metro user-interface (UI).
Another slight difference is it appears Asus has been hard at work refining its keyboard dock hinge mechanism to allow the tablet to sit better into it and the result is something which looks more like an actual notebook than a tablet with a keyboard attachment.
Both designs have their appeal but neither are very moving, either. We think both lean a little towards the bland side of things without fully careering headfirst into total blandness. As a result we rate each of them equally on visual design.
Winner - Draw
Display
With the iPad 3 Apple managed to upsize its Retina display technology to tablet proportions and the result is a 9.7-inch LED backlit IPS capacitive multi-touch screen with a 2048x1536 pixel resolution and a pixel density of 264 pixels-per-inch (ppi). This pretty much re-defined tablet displays and you will be hard pushed to find a tablet with as sharp a picture as this.
By the sounds of things, the display is probably going to be one of the weakest areas of the Tablet 600 (unless things are changed before release). It has a 10.1-inch Super IPS + capacitive LCD multi-touch screen with a 1366x768 pixel resolution and a pixel density of 155ppi. From what we've seen this looks suitably bright and colourful, although that pixel density suggests it won't be the sharpest display around.
In this category Apple remains the undisputed king of pixels thanks to a much sharper and more vivid touchscreen display.
Winner - Apple iPad 3
Storage
The iPad 3 comes in the usual array of storage varieties with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models on the cards depending on how much you're prepared to spend. Each has 1GB of RAM propping up the processor and, as usual for Apple devices, there's no card capability to be found.
The Asus Tablet 600 has 32GB of onboard storage and a whole 2GB of RAM to keep things ticking over smoothly. However, there's been no word yet on whether or not it'll have card storage capability and, frankly, it's anyone's guess at this point. Microsoft has deliberately kept many Windows Phone devices from having a micro SD slot and it's possible the same will ring true of Windows 8 powered tablets.
However, this is quite a powerful machine compared with most Windows Phone handsets so it could handle the extra processing load with relative ease.
Looking at things as they stand, the Apple iPad 3 is coming out better for internal storage options, but the Tablet 600 fares better on RAM.
0 comments:
Post a Comment