ASUS Eee Pad Slider Unboxing – Comparison with Eee Pad Transformer

By Cheryl Lindo Jones
25 Aug, 2011 7:30 am

7 Comments

An excited Sascha Pallenberg released an unboxing video for the ASUS Eee Pad Slider SL101 tablet, comparing it with the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. He showed off the 32GB, special edition that includes a nice carrying sleeve.

The Eee Pad Slider is ASUS’s latest Honeycomb tablet running version 3.1 (upgradeable to 3.2), featuring the NVIDIA Tegra 2, Dual-Core A9, 1.0GHz processor with 1GB of RAM. This slider tablet also has a glossy 10.1″ IPS display with a resolution of 1280x800px, and two cameras — a front-facing, 1.2MP cam, and rear-facing 5MP cam, standard fare for most Honeycomb tablets out today. Rounding out the ports on the Eee Pad Slider is a micro-SD slot, a USB 2.0 port, and a mini-HDMI port capable of 1080p output.

Of course, what sets this Honeycomb tablet apart from all the others out today is the slider mechanism that reveals a keyboard with a dedicated number row. This slider is different from the HTC Shift because it tilts up the screen at an ergonomic, but fixed, viewing angle, rather than keeping the screen parallel with the keyboard. Looking at this slider mechanism, it reminds me of the Nokia N97 mini slider, for better or for worse. However, Sascha says that the hinge and slider mechanism is very solid — as he repeatedly demonstrated quite a few times in the unboxing video — and so is the overall build quality.

Compared to the Eee Transformer, the Eee Pad Slider is slightly narrower, but the thickness is very similar to the Transformer’s when it is docked with the keyboard. While the overall package of the Eee Slider at 960g is heavier than just the Transformer alone at about 680g, the Slider is lighter than the docked Eee Transformer which weighs about 1300g. Sascha prefers the feel of the curved edges of the Slider compared to the more angular, sharp edges of the Transformer.

While Sascha was very impressed by the hardware build and slider form-factor, he was not as enthused about the included software. ASUS has a custom Waveshare UI on top of Honeycomb 3.1 that includes apps like MyNet, a media player/organizer; MyLibrary an organizer and portal for e-books, magazines, and newspapers; and MyCloud, a cloud storage and remote PC access solution. Sascha really liked the inclusion of the NVIDIA Tegra Zone because it makes it easy for users to find Tegra 2-optimized games and apps. He also liked the inclusion of Layar, an interesting augmented reality app that overlays location-based information over live video. However he was sorely disappointed that there wasn’t at least one game pre-loaded that demonstrates the great graphics capability of the Eee Pad Slider. He also was not that impressed by the inclusion of the Zinio magazine app.

Overall, Sascha seemed quite pleased with the Eee Pad Slider SL101, and I’m sure we’ll hear more follow-up reviews as he has a chance to use it over the next few days/weeks. If having the keyboard readily available without a separate docking station is important, you may want to consider the ASUS Eee Pad Slider as your next purchase. Sascha bought it in Taiwan for 18,900 NT which is roughly equivalent to $630 USD. However, it is not yet officially available in the US. For the early adopters who “gotta have it now”, you can get it from Amazon for about $899, but we expect US retail prices to be more around the $630 mark once it is officially released here.