Asus Eee Pad Slider SL101

There are netbooks and there are tablets. This Eee Pad Slider hopes to provide its users the best of both worlds. Perhaps another attempt at being the iPad killer! The Asus Eee Pad is a tablet by design; the top panel containing the screen lifts up and fixes at 45 degree to reveal a small and compact QWERTY keyboard underneath. The input options and the keyboard are designed to extend the tablet functionality to that of a netbook. The Slider SL101 sports a 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 IPS LCD panel which is bright and color-rich and has great viewing angles (178 degree). The display has 10 Fingers Multi-Touch Support and comprises of Scratch Resistant Corning Gorilla glass. However, one big flaw is that the top panel with the screen, when adjusted for keyboard usage, fixes itself at 45 degree and it can't be adjusted/tilted to optimize the viewing comfort. The plastic chassis is quite sturdy and drapped in a matt finish look which looks decent enough. The glossy screen, however, is a fingerprint magnet which might not really be a pro for the product. The tablet is heavy at 960 gms which is more than other standalone tablets. But considering the fact that it comes with an built-in physical keyboard, this weight is manageable and better than any tablet with a separate keyboard. Apart from the ergonomics, the tablet is armed heavily to be considered as a replacement to the netbook, and beyond. The tablet has SRS sound which is decent enough.

The slider works on the Android 3.1 Honeycomb version which is upgradeable to Android 4.0. The slider is powered by NVIDIA's Tegra-2 1GHz dual-core GPU, paired with 1GB of RAM, 16GB of flash storage, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR and GPS. The slider comes with one year unlimited ASUS WebStorage for easy sharing of files and data. Other holes into the chassis are a Micro SD card slot, mini HDMI input, a USB port and a headphone 3.5mm jack port. The USB port can be used to connect a USB dongle for Internet usage. There is a 40 pin connector as well which can be used for charging the slider as well as sync with PC.

The slider has 2 cameras; a rear (5MP) and a front cam (1.2 MP) for video chats. The quality of the rear cam is decent. This camera is fine when using the slider in the tablet mode. However, when the tab slides to reveal the keyboard, the cam is now at the base of keyboard and is not really easy to use.The tablet offered a battery backup of around 9 hrs which was a tad bit on the lower side.

The Bottomline: A feature rich cusp of the netbook and a tablet. The physical keyboard gives the tablet an extra edge over a regular tablet.