Features

When ASUS first shipped the Transformer Prime it only came with Android 4.0 out of the box, but the unit I received is obviously far longer into its life and we're now in the wonderful world of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

As a huge fan of Android, and especially Jelly Bean, this is a great addition. I do wish that Jelly Bean could've been baked into devices from day one, but we can't change the past. Future Android-based devices are going to enjoy this, and it really does make the entire tablet experience that much better.

Project Butter and its 60 frames per second make the tablet feel buttery smooth, pun intended, and Google Now is just amazing. We've talked about this before in previous reviews, so I won't go too much more into it.

ASUS do have some of its own UI splashed on top, which isn't too bad and it doesn't lag the Prime anywhere, and I mean anywhere near the experience I had on Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. It's just a bit of aesthetics, with some applications thrown in like SuperNote, App Locker, App Backup and more.

I took a look into SuperNote with our Transformer Pad Infinity review, and the same things apply here.

Another great feature ASUS have thrown in, that was also included in the Infinity, are there power settings - "Power Saver", "Balanced" and "Performance". The Prime can be tapped into any of these modes depending on your use, so if you're doing something that is not too heavy on the Tegra 3 processor, you could switch to "Power Saver", but if you were to crank up a game, you would switch to "Performance".

I kept it on Balanced for all of my use and experienced no drops in performance, but I'm not a hugely heavy tablet user. Give me my Google (Gmail, Drive, Maps, Now, etc), Dropbox, Facebook, Instagram and I'm a happy boy. I do like that ASUS don't mess with the core of the tablet experience too much, unlike Samsung.

Also on play here is the Super IPS+ panel, it really is just gorgeous. I was spoiled by the Super IPS+ panel in the Infinity, but the Prime sports the same screen sans the Full HD resolution.

Outdoor use is great, it's not perfect, but it is a huge cut above most of the competition. You can at least see the screen outside, compared to barely being able to see my Galaxy S II's screen in sunlight, for example.

Again, these modes can be changed - all from the settings pane in the bottom right of the Prime tablet. This is a true treasure amongst the other gold, silver and other precious metals found in ASUS' Transformer Prime tablet.