ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T 32GB Tablet Review

INTERIOR, ACCESSIBILITY, AND USER-INTERFACE

The battery of The TF700T has a life of 9.5 hours with the Mobile Dock attached and runs for 14 hours. It’s a downgrade from the TF201T 12 hours with docked 18 hours. As such, the TF201T has a 22Wh battery compared to the TF700T 19.5Wh battery.

If you’re like most, you always have the screen cranked to full with Super IPS+ enabled and watching video streams/movies etc. The Infinity’s battery does go a lot quicker than its predecessor. Not saying you can’t get long life out of it if you use it’s built in power modes; power savings can prolong the life of your tablet for a very long time especially if you turn off GPS and Wi-Fi. Balanced mode seems to be fair, keeping everything in the middle and turning off the screen when not in use – perfect for a long commute or days use. Performance mode does use a lot more juice but testing the TF700T, we can almost get a full seven hours watching 720p videos, so it works a little under advertised.

I just miss having 12 hours; These first world problems are killing me! With the addition of Jelly Bean when the device hits 15% power the Infinity automatically goes to power saving. I actually like this feature as it’s easy to bypass and acts as a wake-up to plug-in. From dead the device takes about two and a half hours to charge fully.

32GB/64GB for $100 more makes a pretty expensive tablet especially if you buy a dock and extended warranty. If you use the keyboard dock there is a SD card slot. A 64GB SD card works perfectly and just to make even more room there is a USB 2.0 slot on the dock as well. We still prefer physical storage on a device that does not offer data. For a little tablet the Infinity probably can take advantage of more physical storage than any other tablet on the market, and of course ASUS offers free 8GB for life cloud storage (not to mention all those lovely cloud services like Dropbox and Box).

The UI is quite simple, smooth, and clean with just a couple of widgets; it’s very customizable. Occasionally while inserting a micro SD card we have also noticed some lag and dropped frames and even a couple of times the Infinity crashed completely. We haven’t noticed an issue since the latest Jelly Bean update, but it has been a reported problem especially with 64GB micro SD cards.

Hopefully the current version of Android has solved the problem. Make sure to properly format your card to minimize problems. It’s a very fast nice experience especially with Jelly Bean with not a single hiccup to report. The Infinity does come with a few ASUS-only apps like Super Note – a really nice simple note-taking app. You can add texts/voices/scribbles/videos/photos in your notes and save them accordingly. We still prefer Evernote, but Super Note does take full advantage of the keyboard.

The Infinity also comes with ASUS@Vibe, a marketplace that sells games/audiobooks/eBooks etc. Honestly it’s not great as you can find a lot of content at different marketplaces like Amazon and Google Play for much less. If I could uninstall it I would have long ago. MyCloud is just another cloud service. They give you 8GB storage for life and there is nothing really different compared to Dropbox or Box. We honestly have no real use for the built-in ASUS apps. There are just so many apps that do the same but better (not to say that you shouldn’t play around with them if you’re a first time user).

HD video mode this is where that beautiful faster Tegra T33 CPU and the improved resolution of the Infinity shine. Playback of full 1080p videos is silky smooth. We haven’t seen a single hiccup yet. The video modes actually have more features than the camera modes (mostly a few fun filters). “Torch mode”, if you are recording video in low light, lets you keep the flash on while recording. Standard flash modes, time-lapse feature, white balance and video quality round-out the last few additions. We are sure as Android is updated more features will follow.