Take a look at these good reviews from NewEgg
And these 3.5 star reviews from Amazon
AWESOME hardware that is crippled by Windows RT.
$50 for the keyboard? Seems expensive.
Anyone know if the bootloader is unlocked? Can you root them and put Android on them?
The Keyboard also has a battery in it that charges the tablet and one USB the regular price of that keyboard is 100$ I have one and I paid way more than the price that they have here but the RT tablets are the only ones that gets good battery life with a full browser and the ability to adjust the resolution to optimize when you have micro HDMI out to a bigger screen or monitor
After reading several reviews, it seems the verdict is:
BEWARE glitchy hardware and little to no customer support.
Nope, but why the hell would you want to? Asus Transformers can be had for this price on the regular.
Keyboard dock has an 8 hour battery, doubling the live time for this tablet/laptop.
That said, mine has be unusable since not long after I bought it. I suppose I should file a warranty claim and see if I can land one of the reconditioned units that might work for a couple weeks.
Let me be clear - when this tablet’s touch screen is working and not giving dozens of ghost touches (which if I could disable the screen’s digitalizer, would probably make it worthwhile using again), this is a fantastic tool. Great for reading, watching videos, browsing the web, using various apps and what I really bought it for - a very robust writing tool with Microsoft Word and Excel.
I’d strongly suggest getting the Square Trade protection - those ghost touches (and admittedly, I’ve not researched it in the last couple months) end any productive use from the tablet or as a laptop.
Also, the tablet should come with an adapter that turns the proprietary port on the tablet into a standard USB port. Outside of that, it pairs beautifully with virtually any bluetooth keyboard, mouse, speaker or headphones I’ve tried on it.
Total waste of money. RT is a massive failure and it’s not selling. This is a fire sale for an orphan technology that has very little software available for it and will be abandoned soon. If you want a nice tablet, get an Android tablet or an iPad. If you have to have Windows, spend the money and get a Surface Pro, which is actually a good product, or a Windows 8 laptop. This is money pissed away.
I would rather have a Transformer Book TX300: http://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/ASUS_Transformer_Book_TX300, but at this price I might settle for this low-res screen for a cheap travel lappie.
I’m sold on the the hardware, its the software that I’m hesitant about.
i have a tegra 3 in my nexus 7, not happy with it. get the new nexus it is going to be faster for less money.
Comparing this to the Nexus 7 is one heck of a stretch…I guess they are both tablets. That is about it. Apples and oranges are both fruit, also.
Simple answer is NO.
It does, until you realize that the keyboard also serves as a battery extension - it nearly doubles the battery life.
I’ve got one of the transformers (the android-based tablet Asus makes) and it’s the same thing. They also serve as a sort of screen-protector. Dock it, close it, and the screen is covered.
Adds USB ports too…
With good reason. I have a Surface RT and I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to someone who isn’t fully aware of what Windows RT entails. That said, it isn’t without its charms (oh god, MS has turned that into a pun).
It’s not a full OS; it’s a tablet OS, first and foremost. You have to play the app store game if you want new software. You don’t see Android or iOS making their way to your home desktop as a primary OS, so it should be no surprise that Windows RT shouldn’t be there, either. It is a supplement to a full Windows 8 computer. You can’t run Steam or your bevvy of .exe files, but neither can an iPad or Nexus.
Where Windows RT excels (damn it, sorry; last one, I swear) is its integration with its desktop platform. The UI is the same. The underlying OS layer is the same. If you have apps purchased from the Windows Store, they are the same. For the first time, you can natively run the same app on your tablet or your laptop/desktop, so long as it supports ARM (a significant portion in the Windows Store do); not even iOS and the Mac App Store can boast that. You get native NTFS support and cloud storage support (SkyDrive or whatever it becomes) integrated into core apps.
It comes with Office 2013 (Outlook is coming with 8.1, also free). Aside from lacking macro support, it’s mostly indistinguishable from its x86/x64 counterpart. The idea is that you can work at home, then hit the road with your tablet, using your SkyDrive and app of choice to pick up right where you left off, while still maintaining the battery life, connected standby, and portability afforded by a tablet (Haswell has 2/3 with connected standby in the pipeline).
So, if you don’t like taking work with you; if you don’t have a Windows 8 machine at home; if you don’t care at all about MS Office; if you don’t have the need for a tablet; or if you don’t feel that the price difference between a Windows RT tablet and a Windows 8 tablet/laptop is worth the compromise, skip it. Otherwise, Windows RT is a rather effective supplement to your desktop experience.
x2. This is a good and accurate post. I like the Vivotab RT. In fact, I’m typing my post on the tablet’s keyboard right now. For me, the biggest con is the fact that Windows RT doesn’t work with Microsoft Exchange in the same way as Windows 8, which hampers productivity. When on my work network, I can’t use network shares, for example. Also, Dropbox integration is poor(can’t upload docs, only download for viewing), but Skydrive integration is much better. The battery life is outstanding, though, and in my opinion Windows RT is zippier than Windows 8 on a tablet. I had a Samsung Windows 8 tablet I purchased at the same time for about the same price as the Vivotab. I kept the Vivotab and returned the Samsung because it was much less touch responsive than the Vivotab. I’ve had no issues with the hardware or software beyond the built-in limitations of RT. And, to fully commit heresy here, I think that Windows RT/8 is a much better tablet interface than iOS.
Bottom line: great tablet for viewing emails, surfing web, multimedia/Netflix, etc. Could be better as a work tablet due to RT limitations & lack of digitizer.
the mail client is activesync, so it should work just like an ipad or smartphones. Granted, it’s not outlook, but the mail client is the same one that’s in win8. Also, you can use network shares just as on a regular PC, but you can’t join RT to a domain. Though there are age old ways around this or you can simply authenticate to them with your network credentials as needed.
Quality Post right there!