Asus Transformer Pad Infinity review

Product Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700
Website uk.asus.com
Specifications 10.1in WUXGA 1920x1200 screen, Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core 1.6Ghz CPU, 1GB DDR3L RAM, 32GB or 64GB, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, 2-in-1 headphone/mic-in audio jack, HDMI and microSD card slots, 8MP rear camera, 2MP front-facing camera, HD 1080p video recording, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, Pad only - 181x263x8.5mm, 598g, 9.5 hours battery life, dock only - 181x263x10mm, 537g, 14 hours of additional battery life
Price £599

FIRST SEEN at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last March, the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700 is the Taiwanese hardware firm's most powerful Android tablet to date. As the successor to the critically acclaimed Asus Transformer Prime, the hybrid tablet is one of the most highly anticipated Android tablets to come to the UK, due for release on 31 August.

Design
The Infinity has a clean, minimalist appearance that most buyers should find hard to dislike.

Though the brushed metal effect on the case gives it a premium and stylish finish, we imagine that Asus' choice of colour options won't be enjoyed by all. We can understand why Asus would want to set the Infinity apart from other tablets on the market by giving it some distinctive colour options, but the fact is that purple and beige likely won't appeal to everyone's tastes. We think that Asus should also have offered the more standard black and white options to maximise customer interest.

A feature that we found the Infinity lacks is a physical home button. Although having one might get Asus in trouble with Apple over some patent, the three capacitive 'back', 'home' and 'multitasking' buttons on the bottom left of the screen often disappear, such as when the Infinity is being used in photo mode, and this makes it a bit harder to use than Apple's Ipad.

Asus has, however, given these capacitive buttons haptic feedback upon key press to make them feel a little more like physical buttons, so it's not too much of a problem.