Asus Transformer Pad Infinity

Asus Transformer Pad Infinity

That Google and Samsung have given the iPad’s halo a wobble with the Nexus 10’s better-than-Retina screen might not come as a surprise. But you might not expect real competition in terms of molten desirability backed by superb picture quality and a brilliant keyboard dock coming from the Asus stable. The Transformer Pad Infinity has been around for a while now but it still stands apart from the current crop of Android tablets. First, there’s the top-class build. It really does look like £600 worth of tablet, which can’t be said for anything else but the iPad, with a sturdy, brushed aluminium casing, reassuring weight and a sliver of plastic on the back to improve the wi-fi.

The screen’s the star
Then there’s the Infinity’s mighty 10.1in Super IPS+ display. At 1920 x 1200 pixels it’s better than Full HD and serves up smooth motion, deep blacks and excellent detail when watching 1080p movies from Google Play. The Infinity is also one of  our favourite tablets to use outside, as the picture quality barely suffers and text on webpages is rendered crisply regardless. Asus hasn’t made too much of a mark  on the Ice Cream Sandwich interface either, so if you’ve used Android tablets before you’ll be met with the same customisable home-screens, app drawer and multi- tasking along with pre-installed widgets.

Only the fact that it could sound a  lot better keeps it from joining the iPad  and Nexus at the top table. It’s far from unlistenable, with plenty of agility, but isn’t as refined as it could be – and its audio is certainly no match for that great picture. The Infinity does very different things and does them well. The battery-boosting dock is fantastic, video is impressive (if not the absolute best) and it’s speedy in use. It’s a shame about the sound, not to mention the Infinity not being available in smaller sizes than 64GB. Still, if Apple is out of  the question and you need a tablet that  is built more solidly than the Nexus 10,  the Infinity is among Android’s finest.

The Transformer Pad Infinity also has a battery-boosting keyboard dock that turns it into a fully fledged Android-toting netbook

TECH SPECS
Operating system Android 4.1 Screen 10.1in Resolution 1920 x 1200 Processor 1.6GHz Storage 32GB, 64GB, (8GB cloud storage) Expansion card slot microSD HDMI output Micro HDMI Battery life (music/video) 9.5 hours (14 with dock) Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n 3G No Bluetooth 3.0 Dimensions (hwd) 26.3 x 18 x 0.9cm/598g

Rating ★★★★★
FOR Full HD screen; beautiful build; best keyboard dock around
AGAINST iPad sounds better; expensive
VERDICT A very capable iPad alternative and one of the best Android tablets around

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