Sliding ahead? - Review of the Asus Eee Pad Slider

Well, you gotta admit, the iPad sure was a game changer on the electronics market. Ever since it came out, tablets have been all the rage, and have pretty much pushed netbooks to the brink of extinction. And Tablets do have a lot going for them: Their touch screens make surfing the web  much more comfortable, their OS is simply faster than Windows and, in some cases, even faster than Linux, and they are generally just fun to use. 

They do have one major drawback though, they aren`t built for someone who does a lot of typing, like yours truly. Those on-screen keyboards just aren`t the most comfortable things to use, especially as they block part of the screen. So when the time came around for me to replace my aging Acer Aspire One 110L netbook, tablets were far from my first choice. However, nothing in the netbook sectio really caught my eye, and for a while, it looked like there really was on reasonable replacement out there. Then I spotted the first hybrid devices, namely the Dell Inspiron Duo, a netbook-tablet crossover running Windows 7. It looked like quite a decent piece of equipment, and I was pretty much sold on that... until the Eee Pad Slider by Asus came along. I was sold, instantly! It adressed the two major issues of the Inspiron Duo, battery time and performance, while combining the advantages of a Tablet and a Netbook, and wrapping everything in Google`s Android Operating System. I knew it right then, the Eee Pad Slider would be the replacement.

One of the main drawbacks of the Eee Pad Slider, its highly reflective display. Usage directly after getting out of bed may be hazardous!

Lookin' smart, ace! The exterior design clearly puts the iPad to shame!

After a couple of weeks of saving, and a quick delivery from Amazon, I had it in my hands. And let me tell ya, it really has that wow factor for me that little something that says "this is it." 

Mind you, it is not the lightest at more than 900 grams, and it is not the slimmest either, being twice as thick as the current generation of iPads. However, there is a very good reason for that, but more on that later. First, let`s just bore you to death with statistics! 

At first glance, the Eee Pad Slider is just another tablet, and with a 10.1 inch IPS touch screen, one of the larger ones on the market. It comes with just about the standard range of accessories, a wall charger, a USB power cable, which can be used to connect the tablet both to the charger and to a computer, i.e. for syncing music or movies, a manual and a warranty card. That`s basically all there is. My copy also came with a protective leather sleeve, marked as a special promotion offer on the box. That really came in handy, as that saved me the hassle of getting one for my tablet.  Just a little word of advice: If your Eee Pad didn't come with one, get one, FAST!

The device itself comes with everything you`d expect from a tablet. Its sides house both the power button and the volume rocker, and the device sports a micro SDHC slot for memory expansion, a proprietary port for the power / sync cable, a mini HDMI port to hook it up to a TV, beamer or any other compatible hardware and, most useful to me, a full USB port. Furthermore, it comes with two cameras, a front facing 1.2 megapixel cam for video chat, and a further 5 megapixel camera in the back. It doesn`t come with a flash, but anyone who uses their tablet as their primary foto camera should consider getting a checkup anyway, at least in my book. 

Any port in a storm - the mini HDMI port (left) and the proprietary power/data port (right) are located on the "top" of the device, when held in landscape mode.

The left side of the device holds the power button, volume rocker, reset button mand microSDHC card slot.

The two most useful ports on the tablet are mounted on the right hand side, the 3,5mm headphone jack and the USB port.

Detailed shot of the volume controls and power button.

The insides are par for the course as well. The Eee Pad Slider is equipped with a Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core CPU clocking at 1Ghz. It also sports 1 Gigabyte of DDR2 RAM and mine came with 32 gigabytes of built in solid state memory. That can of course be expanded thanks to the Micro SDHC slot I mentioned earlier. For communications, the Slider is equipped with both WiFi and Bluetooth. There is supposed to be a 3G/4G version out there, but I don`t know if that has ever been seen in the wild. It is also equipped with an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a GPS sensor. Power is provided by a lithium ion battery which nets about 8 hours of usage, more than sufficient for a typical day. 

Softwarewise, the Eee Pad Slider comes with Version 3.2 "Honeycomb" of Android`s Mobile OS Android. Apart from a number of extra widgets, ASUS has pretty much left Android 3.2 "as is", which is really appreciated, as the stock Honeycomb interface looks pretty darn good in my opinion. 

It seems somewhat fitting that one of the backgrounds for Android 3.2 Honeycomb shows, well, honeycombs...

Asus has included a number of more or less useful programs on the Eee Pad Slider, as well as on its Eee Pad Transformer line, which is identical software wise. While their ebook reader MyLibrary, or their web storage service MyCloud both have things going for them, it is another app that really sets the whole thing apart. The Eee Pad Slider comes with a full office suite called Polaris office, enabling you to hack out word documents, wrestle with spreadsheets, or create / edit presentations "on the go." As with all preinstalled apps on the tablet, you just need one swipe and one touch to launch Polaris. 

NOOOOO, not that kind of Polaris. I meant the office app of course!  By the way, Polaris Office goes really well with that other discriminating feature of the Eee Pad Slider, its full size QWERTY keyboard. Yep, you read that right. With just one slight tug on the back of the screen, you can slide it back to reveal the keyboard, which is a reason for the supposed extra bulk, although the device is still pretty slim in my book. 

The whole sliding mechanism seems very sturdy, like the whole tablet, but it never feels clunky or rough, on the contrary, it feels really smooth. Asus definitely put a lot of thought into that feature. 

The Eee Pad Slider with its keyboard "run out" and ready for action.

That's all, folks. The Eee Pad with its manual and warranty card, and the charger.

The Slider viewed from behind. That shiny metal plate (it really is metal) isn't just an attention getter, although it works great as such. It Supports the screen, and also serves as a protector for the display cable.

 So how does the Eee Pad Slider fare in daily life? Surprisingly good, actually. I personally never had any issues with this so-called heavyweight. It is nice to hold, even when used as an ebook reader, a job it actually does pretty well. Audio playback is snappy as well, Bluetooth control inputs are almost instantaneous. The internal speakers are less than stellar, but that is to be expected. 

Browsing is fast and comfortable. The browser is based on Webkit, just like Google Chrome, therefore the similarities are more than just skin deep. It certainly does not feel like a mobile browser, and more like its desktop counterpart Chrome. One issue I did encounter was that uploads to Picasa, either directly to the website, or via Blogger.com don´t work. Maybe it`s a java problem, however, this means that, at the moment, any picture and graphics editing for my blogs need to be done via a full size desktop computer. I am pretty sure that this will be resolved shortly. 

Just browsing along - The browesr does its job well, with a few exceptions.

MyZine, one of the few custom apps and widgets that ASUS installed on the Slider.

 All this is par for the course for any tablet, however, the Eee Pad Slider really comes to its own when all this is combined with the slideout keyboard I mentioned earlier. This keyboard really comes in handy. Whether you update your blog, like yours truly, or you just need to tell that jerk on your favourite forum why his point of view is just disastrous, it is just more comfortable to actually have keys to press, instead of jabbing at the screen hoping the virtual keyboard is kind enough to accept your input. Its chiclet style keys are comfortable to use, although the whole thing does feel a bit small. 10-finger typing is a bit uncomfortable, but for people like me, who prefer the quantified approach to typing (If you hit the keys long enough, eventually something will make sense), it is more than okay. 

Welcome to the office! The Polaris home screen is sleek and uncluttered.

The interface of Polaris' text editor may seem plain, but it packs all you need for text editing.

The presentation editor is similarly plain. I haven't really tested it yet. I've got my blogs for self presentation, I don't need to torture anyone with Powerpoint!

Spreadin' out spreadsheet works pretty well. I haven't tried anything complex like editing pivot tables, but I'd guess it's safe to say if you use a tablet for that, you're doing it wrong!

Entertainment wise, the device itself is pretty bare. You get the stock Android Music Player, which is more than enough for the job, and a Youtube app, as you would expect from a Google powered device. There are no games included with the Eee Pad Slider, however, as it is running Android 3.2.1 you`ll have no problem finding what you want in the Android Market, or Google Play, as it is now called. 

Thank you for the music... The default player looks good, and Asus was kind enough to include some complimentary music, which ran from the smooth to the "interesting." Those things in the screenshot are from my personal collection. though!

 Asus has also included an app known as the TegraZone, which is basically a portal to Google Play that shows games optimized for Nvidia Tegra 2 systems. The list is pretty brief at the moment, containing very few big names (like GTA 3) and a couple of unknown gems, like Galaxy on Fire. 

I haven`t tried full video playback on the Slider yet, but I`ll update this post to tell you how it works. I have a four hour train journey to Berlin ahead of me, so that would be a good chance to test it. 

All in all, Asus has turned out a remarkably capable device. Unlike the iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Eee Pad Slider is a truly versatile device that does its job as a couch potato surfing machine just was well as it works as a netbook replacement.