Asus Tf700t B1 Gr 10 1 Inch Tablet Gray Survey Ok, for starters, I'm not some blind fan-boy trying to boost the hype behind this thing. I'm more the type to tear it down if it wasn't worth every penny I paid for it. I have been using Android for several years and am very familiar with it's pros and cons. I have to say, honestly, I haven't touched my laptop or netbook and have barely used my phone (for anything other than calls) since I got my Infinity (and dock. ) Truth be told, I'm using it to write this review. Display: The display on this thing is nothing short of beautiful. I've always loved the idea of watching movies on my back patio. Unfortunately, it's been a headache-producing, eye-squinting nightmare on every tablet, computer, phone and portable DVD player I've owned. . . until now. I intentionally loaded it up with Resident Evil: Apocalypse (because of the many dark scenes in it) and headed for the back yard. After being thoroughly impressed with how well I could see the movie, I decided to walk around the yard with it, in the midday sun. Only then did I have to turn on IPS+ to see the darker scenes and it worked perfectly. This display renders colors very true (not over-saturated or washed out) and blacks and whites are BLACK and WHITE. Text is crisp far smaller than I'd ever be willing to spend any time reading. Speed: I don't know what else to say but it's very VERY fast. I've loaded over 225 apps of many different varieties on it, so I'd say I've put it through its paces. Now, I'm not saying that you won't have a sluggish moment here or there. What I AM saying is that if you do, it's probably the app you're using that's to blame. A poorly written app can cause a plague of problems on any device. I have a couple of apps that I'm willing to forgive shortcomings for because of functionality they offer but I can say that their shortcomings aren't nearly as apparent on this tablet as they have been on any of my other Android devices. Battery: If I beat it REALLY hard, I can kill the battery (tablet only) in about 6 hours. My version of beating it really hard is multi-tab web browsing with Flash turned on, switching back and forth between several other apps, installing apps, downloading from my Box. net account, playing some games, using a remote desktop client, etc. All the while running either native movies or YouTube streams in Stick It Player (resize-able, floating, video player window that renders on top of whatever app you have open. ) If I use it like most people would normally use a tablet, I can easily break the 10 hour mark (tablet only. ) With the dock (I'm using the Prime dock,) I get anywhere between 9 and 16 hours of use out of it. Dock: I'm using a Transformer Prime TF201 dock because A) It has a bigger battery than the Infinity dock and B) it was about $50 cheaper than the Infinity dock. It works perfectly. All of the ports, the keys, the charging, etc. work exactly as they should. One thing is, it's a little bit tighter of a fit but all that really means is that there's less play and you have to manually slide the lock over to secure it. Cameras: Front-facing is great for video chat (tested with Google+ Hangouts and Skype) and the rear-facing takes absolutely beautiful pictures. I'm almost willing to consider being "that guy" who uses his tablet instead of a camera. Bottom Line: I haven't found a single thing I dislike about this tablet. It really is everything they say it is, which is rare in this day and age. I would happily buy this tablet again. Edit: Now that I've had it long enough for the newness to wear off enough that I'm actually willing to put it down once in a while, I'm getting 12-13 hours of battery life on the tablet alone and 17-18 with the dock. Again, results may vary but I'm still at the heavy end of the usage spectrum, so I don't foresee anyone having to worry about finding an outlet in the middle of the day. EDIT #2:For Christmas, my wife bought me a Sandisk Ultra 64 GB micro SDXC card. http://www. amazon. com/gp/product/B009QZH6JS/ref=oh_details_o04_s01_i03 I have tested it in both SD slots and the USB port (via USB card reader) and it works in all three. Apparently there are some SDXC cards that aren't working properly with the Infinity, so I thought I should post a link to one that does. DO NOT reformat this card. It works perfectly right out of the box with the standard exFAT format it comes with. This device is very slick in both style and design. I would compare it to the elegance of the Ipad. The device is also very light, and I have no problems holding it hours on end. Even while reading
e-books and supporting it on my chest its lighter then a real book. Watching 1080p videos on this is incredible and the built-in speaker sounds pretty good too. We also have a Plex Media server in our house. I installed the Plex Android Client on the tablet and tried streaming both 720 and 1080 content. The streaming performance was outstanding. Not one glitch even when moving from floor to floor. The other cool thing is you can do is output the tablets video through the micro-hdmi connector to your TV. Wow. We have a a TV in our basement that's not connected to cable so I decided to try it. It was just like having a blu-ray player on the TV! I also tried Netflix, Hulu and Crackle. Both performed without any issues. I can't wait to travel for work with this thing! No more boring nights in the hotel room. I'm not a big gamer, but if you go into the TegraZone app download a game called "Dead Trigger". You won't believe the graphics. When I bought this I knew it didn't have cellular conductivity, but that didn't bother me since I always carry my Android phone. What you need to do if you don't have WiFi, but have a phone with data is install a tethering app on your phone. This allows your phone to function as a WiFi access point to which your tablet can connect to. I use this on my quite a bit with my laptop. The tablet works the same. I recently got the keyboard dock and this really extends the functionality of the device. For one if your typing quite a bit the keyboard vs the screen is much more productive. Two, the dock also has another battery which extends the battery life to 14. 5. It also contains an SD card slot and a USB port. I bought the TF201 dock which is used on the older "Prime" unit, but it does work on the "Infinity". This will save you $50 if you want the dock. Use Goggle there blowing out the old docks for $99 bucks. Updates ------- Asus recently announced that Jelly Bean is coming for this device in the next few months! :)! The latest firmware update from 7-28-12 fixed the slow usb transfer speeds. ver: 9. 4. 5. 26 Pros: Super fast performance. Love the IPS screen mode when using the tablet outside. Touch is very accurate. Screen size is perfect for reading a full size html website and ebooks. Outstanding Video performance. Front and rear cameras. Quality seems pretty good, but not as good as standalone camera. GPS performance is great, even inside my house. I use the CoPilot app. Side button placement does not interfere with your hand placement irregardless of the tablets orientation. The buttons also take a good amount of pressure to engage, thus when its sitting on something (like your lap) the button wont accidentally get pressed. WiFi conductivity is excellent. No problems connecting and maintaining connections. Signal strength is great. Cons: No 5Ghz wireless N support. Only 2. 4 Ghz is supported. Not running the latest Android OS (Jelly Bean). Internal speaker is on the back of unit. Sound is muffled if its laying down on a table. 4/6/13' I just deleted my original 5-star, glowing review (I was one of the first early adopters who bought the TF700T when it first came out last Summer). . I was eagerly waiting almost a year for a full-HD tablet and on paper everything looks good and should be good. This was my first tablet and of course I didn't know better so everything seemed nice and "fast" at the beginning, just like the 70% of people giving 5-star reviews here right after purchasing this tablet. Well, what an expensive mistake it turned out to be! After 8 months of daily use and having tried other TF700Ts (all with similar issues) and comparing it to other newer hi-res tablets, I'm *gladly* getting rid of it. Despite the quad-processor and all the nice on-paper-only-specs, what kills it is the slow NAND RAM memory (not the storage memory) and the ASUS GUI overlay on top of Jelly Bean. To make things worse and adding insult to injury, the RAM is limited to 1GB(!). . it's like having a PC with very slow non-upgradeable 512MB RAM after system overhead. It makes using the tablet feel "bloated", lagging and excruciatingly slow. Of course people who just bought it (including me then) are blinded by the shinny full-HD screen (pun intended) and excited by the on-paper-only potential but that wears off pretty soon once you put the tablet to heavy use and realize how other tablets handle the same load. Don't take me wrong, the tablet works relatively well doing passive stuff (like reading) and the screen is bright and nice but that's it. The first months I was hoping for a miraculous firmware update, many came but nothing really changed. This thing stutters while browsing or just using apps. Typing gets extremely annoying if you are used to fast computers, smartphones or newer tablets. It takes time for the tablet to catch up with you and sometimes freezes up or blanks out. No, not even cold re-booting or updating to the latest firmware will fix this (I just updated to ASUS's latest modified version of Android 4. 2. 1) and it's still slow and buggy. Yes, you could root
the 700T (cleanrom, data2SD) but that misses the point. I should not be the one half-fixing a mediocre engineered tablet and on top of that losing my warranty doing it. Besides SD cards have limited read/write cycles. I bought a Nexus 10 directly from Google and the difference is like night and day, the Nexus is very snappy and you don't feel the "lag" time while typing, browsing or just interacting with the tablet. You don't feel like running faster than the tablet despite the fact that the Nexus pushes way more pixels than the TF700T. And yes, I'm using the same apps and browser. I also got an OTG micro-USB adapter to use my flash drives, micro-SD memory cards and hard drive with my N10. Pure Android is the way to go from now on. I want the Android experience the way Google designed it: clean, lean and fast. With Nexus devices you get quick updates directly from Google servers, which is the icing on the cake. Just in case you are wondering, devices in the Nexus series although produced by different OEM's, they are mainly designed and sold directly by Google to showcase it's Android operating system at it's best and of course do not have manufacturer (or wireless carrier) modifications and are also unlocked. OEM branded devices (Asus, Samsung, Sony, LG, HTC, etc) usually have heavily modified and bloated OS overlays on top of Android. Also, another reason not to buy this tablet is that the 700T is almost 1 year old (it was announced last Spring) so hopefully expect an improved model soon with fixed specs. Of course I would not get one because of the modified version of Android they use with ASUS bloatware and other crappola which is always running in the background bogging down everything. But that is just me. *** Update 4/5/13: Jellybean 4. 2 came out the other day, I updated and it works fine. Please note that Photosphere is not included, apparently this is only on Certain tablets like Nexus 10. I was hoping for it, but it isn't there. Also, my tablet is slowing down a good bit and hiccups more than I would like. I'm considering doing a clean slate format to see if that clears things up a bit. Overall I'm still happy, but for the specs and money we pay, you would think it would be consistently smooth and it just isn't. I'm dropping my rating by one star for this. Keep in mind this is just my experience. I hear other people say they have no problems at all. Maybe I have just too many apps installed, but isn't that the purpose of having a tablet? I have also installed some apps from Amazon's free app of the day, so those can slow it down too I suppose. I may just format it and only install the stuff I regularly use and see if there is a performance boost. If I get around to it, I will update to advise how the factory reset worked. At times there are no issues at all, so who knows what I will do. PS, mine is not rooted. I've only done the push notification updates from Asus. *** Update 1/21/13: Thought I would update to say that I still love my non-rooted Infinity. There have been a few updates since the Jellybean 4. 1. 1 came around, and so far everything is going pretty good. I still notice some hangups here and there when using certain websites on the stock browser. Many people prefer other browsers so you might want to try those out if the stock it sluggish for you. The current build number on mine is 10. 4. 4. 25 which is supposed to improve MicroSD card compatibility, guarantees that the music played in the background will no longer have lag if the user is switching between tabs in the browser, and also fixes an issue where some exported videos cannot be played to the end, a few bugs for the camera, Mio map, and movie studio app are fixed. I have seen a few apps in the store that were not compatible with this tablet. At this time I don't recall which ones they were, games, or Live wallpapers, or what, but I was surprised. Most games run silky smooth, but there are some that have glitches. Facebook is horrible on this tablet, and I'm not sure why. Pictures are HUGE in your regular news feed. I wish those were reduced in size unless you click on it, but that is most likely the app, not the tablet. The latest Youtube app is no longer able to play full screen since it is missing that button, but I hear they may be working on that. Workaround is to uninstall the updates. Photos have been really smooth in transitions since the latest updates, so now when flipping thru, it is really snappy. I currently have about 349 apps installed overall. I'm sure things would run more smoothly if I uninstall some, but where is the fun in that. I have stuff there for me and other people. My TF201 keyboard dock works great. It used to be a tight fit, but now it works perfectly. I don't notice any other problems with the dock. GPS locks on lightning fast. I get over 31 Mbps on Speedtest. net's app. I do notice significant decrease in Wifi thru just a few walls, but it still works well. Mt favorite wallpaper, which I chose to buy the full
version, is called GyroSpace 3D. But Planets Pack is great too. Battery life is great alone, and even better with the keyboard dock. I still highly recommend this table if you like customizable options. If you are a stickler for stability, then you may prefer the Apple line of products, but I am very content with my Infinity. Still waiting on the official Jellybean 4. 2. Hope this helps everyone. ****Update 10/1/12: I just received my Jellybean update to version 4. 1. 1 and so far so smooth. I do notice a smoother experience while scrolling on the homescreen and in the default browser. There are a few enhancements to the lock screen and when you press the power button in for a few second you get a few different options. The upgrade did not delete any apps for those concerned about it. But it is usually recommended that you backup anything you are concerned about losing. The Gallery scrolls much more smoothly now. Very nice. They added Asus MyFrame in the Live Wallpaper. Just an overall improvement so far. And Adobe Flash seems to be working fine on mine. I will test out more of it tonight and report any odd findings or any cool features. I'm sure they will be posted somewhere though. Have fun everyone!!! ****Update 8/29/12: Sorry for the constant updates, but I forgot to include in yesterday's update that I have been experiencing an odd behavior with my Infinity. I usually use the keyboard-docked Infinity and when done, I just close it to put it to sleep, then when I open it later, all is fine. . . I may do this a few times, then suddently, here and there when I open it, I get a blank black screen and I have to press and hold the power button for about 10 seconds and it restarts. This is a little annoying when After months of comparison shopping and test driving all of the best Tabs on the market (thanks to Best Buy) I'm extremely happy with my TF700 and dock from Amazon. I now get to enjoy my TV episodes, movies, games, and yes, even my Excel and Word files I bring home from work. My previous Tablets were the Ipad2 & the ASUS TF101 which I also loved, but I wanted the Quad core and Hi-Res of the TF700. WOW! I'm in love all over again! For storage I'm using a 64gb microSDXC card for the Tab and a 64gb SDXC 133x card for the dock. It's not necessary to go that high or that fast for some users out there, but I find that it makes for quick access & response times when saving files to the removable SD cards and provides zero lag when playing back Hi-Res video as often as I do. To each his own. I have not experienced any crashes, reboots, black lines on the screen, or missing pixels, and only the rarest of force closures. By the way, I am rooted, which was super easy to do (less than 15min), but it's not unlocked. This is not an endorsement for rooting, nor does rooting violate the Mfr warranty when rooting can be easily reversed & restored via the Voodoo OTA RootKeeper app avail thru the play store. However, unlocking does violate the warranty & blocks you from receiving OTA updates. I have still received three OTA updates from ASUS in the last 5 wks since I have had this, all while being rooted. The latest was JB10. 4. 4. 25. Thank you to ASUS for their continuous support & improvement of their products. The Wifi & GPS reception is full & strong from a distance of more than 50ft away from my ATT router when I'm outside lounging on the back patio. The battery drains & recharges differently on the TF700 when docked than it did with my TF101, which took a little getting used to for me, I admit. But it still recharges quickly. The TF700 has awesome features and settings for prolonging battery life between charges. When combined with Juice Defender it's even better. The battery life is at about 7-9hr undocked and an additional 5-6hr when docked depending on continuous use vs sporadic use and a prior clean full AC charge. And also depending upon your power saving settings. Explore the many options avail in the system settings to see what best suits your needs and usage. Because I use the Tab daily I recharge overnite. I program in the settings not to push email, app updates, or any notifications between the hrs of 11pm & 6am. But once 6am rolls around the Tab comes to life and starts sounding off like a happy R2D2 with all sorts of email downloads & app update notifications. It's like having my very own alarm clock, only better. So far I have never not made it thru a full day without plenty of charge left on the Tab. But then I keep it docked most of the time, where it recharges itself whenever it needs to. However, I did need to fully drain & recharge the Tab & dock 3x over the first few days, before experiencing the long battery life from each, like the user manual suggests. I also get great Blue Tooth reception for my hands-free BT device, & my DBEST PS4003 BT stereo speakers for extra volume when I'm watching videos, movies, or even games. And great tether reception and Internet connection thru my Inspire 4g phone for on-the-road Internet access. I just
turn on both the Mobile network & Wifi Hotspot connections on the phone, I turn on the Tablets Wifi connection in settings, more, Tethering & portable hotspot, and you should see your phones device name there. Click on it, wait a few seconds till they sync with each other, enter the security access code into the Tablet that is displayed on the phone screen, hit OK on the phone to accept the connection, and you've got instant Internet access thru the Tablet via the phone. This only has to be done once, for the very first time. After that, anytime I need Internet access thru the Tablet when away from home, I just click on the phones Mobile network & Wifi Hotspot from the quick access Taskbar, the Tablets Wifi connection from the Tablets quick access taskbar, and they automatically pair up every time. Quick & easy. I transferred my 258 apps from the TF101 to the TF700 and all ported over flawlessly except 1 game, which was the app Mfr fault, not the Tablet. I wrote to the app Mfr and they said they are already in the process of updating the app to take advantage of the TF700's Higher Res. The app still works. . . it's just that it doesn't expand to the full screen size of the Tablet. (about 1/4" shy of the Lft & Rt edge) That is the only prob I've had with any app not running or displaying correctly. There were 4 games with large data files that I attempted to restore but would force close on me. The problem was that the data was originally downloaded from the Mfr website after the play store installed the app. I had to delete the app & data, then allow the play store to re-install the app, and allow the app to re-download the data from the Mfr website. Then I used Titanium Bac
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