NEW ASUS TRANSFORMER PAD INFINITY FEATURES

We take a look at the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity to see whether a better display takes it beyond previous tablets

Asus Transformer Pad Infinity T700

Published on Jul 26, 2012

Asus may have dropped the Eee part of its range name, but we've yet another Transformer Pad to feast our eyes on. This time, it's the Infinity - and what a visual treat the device is.
Encased in the champagne silver, the Transformer Pad Infinity looks like an expensive gadget. And it is, at £600. But price aside, the metal backplate with its spherical brushed-metal effect looks absolutely stunning. Pictures just don't do it justice.

The accompanying keyboard dock is also nicely crafted, and also comes in the same attractive colour. When locked together, it looks like a very swanky laptop, and in that moment we forget it's made by a competent, but not usually that cool manufacturer.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is the operating system, which means it's not on Jelly Bean just yet. But ICS is still a much nicer experience than Honeycomb, thanks to interface refinements, usability tweaks and Asus' own enhancements to make use of the keyboard. For instance, you can bring the device out of sleep mode with a touch on the touchpad, or go directly to home with the home key.
An 8-megapixel camera on the back caters for all your photo needs, and there's a front-facing snapper for video calls and vanity purposes. It's a fairly standard setup but the quality seems to be good and the interface is easy to get to grips with.
Typing on the keyboard feels comfortable and although it's not a very wide Qwerty variant, it's not so thin that you end up pressing all the wrong keys. Typing out emails took around the same time as when using our desktop computer.
We've yet to fire up any HD quality films but the display instantly looks the part. It's beautifully crisp, relatively bright and Dead Trigger, the latest graphical wonder from Shadowgun developer Madfinger Games, looks like a top-end console game. Those seriously impressive visuals look a treat on that 1920x1200 pixel screen.

To keep things running along nicely, a quad core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor has been implemented. The result is silky-smooth transitions, fast app loading and few hiccups as you try to do too more than one thing at once.
Without benchmarking the Transformer Pad Infinity, it's impossible to say whether it's the fastest Asus tablet yet, but it definitely feels at least as good as its predecessors.
Minus the dock and the tablet still feels nice in the hand, but it's quite bulky. In fact, without the slightly plastic-feeling keys, you could argue it's better, especially as its top-heavy design when docked means it can fall over quite easily.
Knowing Asus will be upgrading its Transformer Pad range to Android Jelly Bean in the ‘coming months', you shouldn't worry about being left behind. And although the Nexus 7 is substantially cheaper, the larger, higher resolution display, 64GB of storage, a keyboard and that eye-pleasing design provide strong enough reasons to at least entertain owning one - if you have the extra pennies.
Based on first impressions, Asus is really refining its Transformer range and the Infinity is one premium bit of kit. Whether it's that much better than the Nexus 7, though, the cheaper Transformer Pad 300, or even the new iPad, remains to be seen.
Expect our full review in the near future.