We take a look at the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime to see how it stacks up against
Motorola’s new Xoom 2 Media Edition.
Form
Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime - 263x180.8x8.3mm, 586g
Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition - 216x139x9mm, 386g
The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is one good-looking device. The chassis is made from spun aluminium, giving it an interesting texture and the build quality is second to none.
Other elements which are pleasing to the eye include the nicely sized and spaced bezel around the screen, elegantly shaped corners and a svelte 8.3mm thin profile.
Overall it’s very minimalist in style which goes well with the futuristic-looking metallic finish. The attachable keyboard dock is as thin as the main tablet and equally stylish.
Motorola’s new generation of Xoom tablets have had a complete redesign, which is quite striking to behold. Instead of the usual rectangular shape Motorola has echoed the design of its Razr smartphone handset with angular and tapered edges and corners.
Again the bezel space around the screen is a flattering size and aluminium has been used for the construction of the outer shell, though not quite as extensively as on the Asus.
The Xoom 2 Media Edition is extremely light and thin coming in at 386g and 9mm thick – that’s an 8.2-inch tablet which is lighter than many 7-inch tablets.
We think both devices, despite being very different, have fantastic design elements and are very appealing to look at.
However, the Xoom 2 Media Edition is just that bit more eye-catching with some very individual styling.
Winner – Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition
Display
The Xoom 2 Media Edition has an unusually sized display at 8.2-inches – the first of its kind. It’s a TFT capacitive touchscreen with multi-touch and made from toughened Gorilla Glass.
The resolution clocks in at 1280x800 pixels giving a pixel density of 184 pixels-per-inch (ppi).
The Transformer Prime has a larger screen at 10.1-inches and uses a Super IPS + LCD technology, which results in a much brighter display.
It’s a capacitive multi-touch screen, again made from reinforced Gorilla Glass, with the same 1280x800 pixel resolution at a lower pixel density than its rival at 149ppi.
The Motorola’s display may be smaller, though not by much, but it’s got a much sharper picture and higher pixel density making it our choice this round.
Winner - Motorola Xoom 2 Media Edition
Storage
Motorola’s tablet is a little limited on storage space, especially with a name like 'Media Edition.' At 16GB and no card support there's not much to play with here.
So what's a user to do? Simple: use Motorola’s MOTOBLUR cloud service to stream content directly from your home computer, which supposedly works even if you’re miles away (we're talking a different country here), to the slate.
We understand the logic: everyone needs to flock to the cloud. But what if you're not bothered about the cloud? Surely it'd be better to give consumers the best of both worlds, like Apple does with its iPad and iCloud?
Apart from the internal storage, the Xoom 2 Media Edition is also packing 1GB of RAM to assist the processor in its duties.
Asus’ Transformer Prime is much more handsomely equipped on internal storage with options for 32GB or 64GB onboard. It also has 1GB of RAM like its opponent but unlike the Motorola it has a card slot with support for microSD up to 32GB.
We have to side with Asus on this one.
Winner - Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime
ProcessorBoth devices use ARM Cortex-A9 processors but they’re getting very different results thanks to distinctly varying configurations.
Motorola’s Media Edition Xoom 2 is equipped with a dual core processor clocked at 1.2GHz running NVidia’s Tegra 2 T20 ‘Turbo’ chipset and ULP GeForce graphics processing unit (GPU).
With the Transformer Prime, Asus has ramped things up a bit, it’s still using NVidia technology but this time it’s the new Tegra 3 ‘Kal El’ chipset, which means a quad core processor clocked slightly faster at 1.3GHz.
The GPU is the same as the one found in the Xoom 2 Media Edition.
The end result is that both are very slick customers and can run whatever you throw at them with a good degree of finesse.
However, having seen the Transformer Prime and Xoom 2 running side-by-side we have to say the Transformer Prime really is on a completely different level.
It is just so quick delivering silky smooth performance for multi-tasking, viewing media, gaming and navigating the Android interface.
The Xoom 2 Media Edition is no slow coach but the lightning fast Transformer Prime leaves it standing. In fact we’d go so far as to say the Transformer Prime is easily the best performing Android tablet to date.
Winner – Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime
Operating System
These are both Android tablets and each ships with Honeycomb 3.2 – the most up-to-date version of the tablet-specific build.
The Asus Transformer Prime will be receiving the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) 4.0 update in early 2012, which should add plenty of new functionality and features.
It’s currently unknown whether Motorola’s Xoom 2 Media Edition will get the same treatment but with a launch so close to the release of ICS we’d be pretty surprised if Motorola hadn’t planned ahead.
With both tablets using the same operating system there’s nothing to distinguish between them here.
Winner - Draw
Camera
Motorola’s Xoom 2 Media Edition has a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, just like its larger cousin, at a resolution of 2592х1944 pixels with 720p quality video recording.
Features include LED flash, autofocus, digital zoom and geo-tagging, along with a 1.3-metapixel secondary camera.
It’s actually a very nice camera for mid-range shots but gets a bit fuzzy when you zoom in with the digital zoom.
The Transformer Prime’s main camera is rated at 8-megapixels and a resolution of 3264x2448 pixels. Video capture is 1080p and the Asus features an LED flash, touch focus, autofocus, geo-tagging and a 1.2-megapixel secondary camera.
The Xoom 2 Media Edition makes a good go of things but the Asus Transformer Prime wins out here.
Winner – Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime
Final Thoughts
The Xoom 2 Media Edition is a decent offering and if you want to keep your music, films and other data on a PC to access remotely you’ve got a very slick, purpose-built device with Motorola’s 8.2-inch tablet.
However, in terms of both overall performance, versatility and longevity the Asus Transformer Prime really does come out miles ahead of the Motorola and indeed much of the competition.
