The Prime is an incredible piece of hardware. It has a marvelous display, form factor, the best camera on any tablet yet, and it’s new quad-core internal organ puts more graphics and gaming power in your hands than you’ll know what to do with (quite literally in fact, until the games start appearing). And then there’s also the added keyboard dock that adds over 10 hours of battery life and really does transform the tablet into a highly-usable laptop.
But a true laptop replacement isn't about raw power; it's about the productivity that power enables, and Honeycomb just isn't up to the task. The operating system hasn't been optimized for that ridiculous processor or that beautiful display, the app selection remains pitiable at best, and it's just not that intuitive to use. Asus may have produced a brilliant piece of engineering at a price that's competitive with the iPad, but Android hasn't yet matched iOS when it comes to unlocking all that potential. Android 4.0 (or even Windows 8, which we expect to run on this very sort of hardware) might just rectify some of these issues, but one thing is for sure: the laptop of the post-PC world needs the software to match it.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 has had a long run as the top-tier Android tablet in the 10-inch size, but that position has now properly been usurped. The original Transformer was a very good tablet and it successor steps up another notch. The Transformer Prime is thinner and lighter than the rest and, with 32GB of storage available for a dollar under $500, it's a better deal than most of the top-tier contenders.
The dock, however, is a bit of a tougher sell. If you need crazy battery life on the road then it's definitely a good choice, even if you won't be relying on that cramped keyboard too often. In fact, the less you have to use that part the better, but it's still a perfectly usable way to enter URLs and it sure beats the pants off of any virtual, touchscreen text input method .
For the moment the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime is the best Android tablet on the market. All hail the new king.
