Pros: Specs - Pretty much all of the specs are high-end. Tegra4 is on par with other top SoC's like the S800, Exynos 5420, Atom BayTrail, and Apple A7. The screen is obviously awesome WQXGA and IGZO technology, super-bright (according to gsmarena it hit 755 nits, though I saw another review showing much lower brightness levels), probably the best screen made for tablets right now (it's manufactured by Sharp, btw). Price - 32GB of (fast) internal storage in the $449 model ($150 cheaper than iPad Air & Note 10.1) Availability - ASUS was smart to release this now, though it did take them awhile to get it to the USA. They beat the Nexus 10 (2013) to release, and lots of people like me were waiting for the N10. Expandable storage - The Nexus, iPad, and Kindle lines of tablets lack this. Docking keyboard - One of the key selling points for the Transformers. Extra battery, nice keyboard, decent multi-touchpad, USB 3.0 port, SD slot for another 128GB card, etc. They did start using plastic for the bottom of the dock I guess, though it still looks like painted brushed aluminum. Unfortunately, the TF701 will not work with previous docks (so I hear), unlike the TF700 which worked with the TF201 dock. No more internal storage lag! I had the TF700 for about a month. I grew tired of the constant lag caused mostly by the internal storage controller (I believe). They avoided that problem in the TF701 and I've seen storage benchmarks showing it doing pretty well. ASUS doesn't muck up the Android experience. The changes they make to the OS are fairly subtle. I like the dual-ring shortcut semi-circle when you hold down the home icon. I might actually use this default launcher and not Apex or Nova, though I do find myself immediately longing for some of the options in Apex. This also makes my desire to unlock the bootloader less since the OS is decent as-is, versus the TF700 that begged for a custom ROM to help the lag issues. As I mention in the CONS section, unlocking the bootloader is easy but voids your warranty. Oh, one thing about the default UI that I don't like is the keyboard. It's steel-blue and light-gray...but the rest of the UI is standard Android-black. The keyboard has standard settings like word-completion and auto-correction, but no color or theme options, and no option to change the long-press delay, which is something I really REALLY have to change to 250ms or I get angry (lol!). Dedicated HDMI-out port - Lots of tablets lack this but there are a fair amount of people that want it. This HDMI port is actually capable of 4k resolution, which is almost mind-blowing for me. Future-proof for people without 4k displays (like me).

Cons: Overall size and bezel - When the Transformer Prime came out, it was considered pretty slim and somewhat light. Well that was 2 years ago and this is now, and the TF701 is about the same size and weight as the TF201. Other tablets like Note 10.1 (2014) and iPad Air have cut down the weight and bezel, but the Transformer has not. That's okay by me because I like the full bezel. My wife has the new Note and it's kind of cramped. This is coming from someone with pretty small hands for a white guy. I do like the lightness of the Note, but it's not even 10% lighter than the TF701, so it's not like the TF701 is THAT heavy. Speaker - A single, average speaker. Would love to have seen them put in 2 or 4 speakers along the edge of the tablet like the 2 speakers in the Note 10.1 (2014). Even iPad's have stereo speakers these days. Proprietary port and no microUSB - I think they could give us a microUSB port for convenience and still keep the full-size docking port on the bottom for use with the keyboard dock. Instead, we have to use the docking port for everything and likely only have 1 cable to do so (until I buy a couple more). Camera - I haven't tested it much, but the pics I took in my office setting were really grainy and smeary with the rear camera. I have it on default settings, which is auto-white balance, auto-ISO, 4mp 16:9. Turbo mode takes pics pretty fast and will do up to 100, which is nice. My Galaxy S4 camera is a LOT better than this one, so I'll never use it I'm sure. The front camera looks about the same but lower resolution, so it's pretty bad. Of course, some of my distaste for the camera can probably be blamed on the fact that the screen is so freakin' amazing and shows me all the flaws in the pictures. Boot-loader unlock = voided warranty - This is smart by ASUS to avoid warranty repair costs, but it's really poopy for the consumer. I would rather rely on XDA devs to hack the bootloader than get the official unlocking tool from ASUS and let them void my warranty. My TF700 that I sold died on the next owner after a month or so. They sent it to ASUS for repair and received a $280 repair bill because it was a voided warranty from me unlocking the bootloader. Not cool ASUS. Until someone can prove that unlocking the bootloader can cause physical damage to the machine, then it shouldn't void the warranty. I imagine they could show physical damage by forcing an extreme overclock, but I kind of doubt it.

Overall Review: I unboxed the tablet and turned it on. The first power-on froze after a second on the ASUS logo with the circular progress indicator stuck at the 9 o'clock position. I let it sit there for awhile but it didn't do anything. I held in the power button for a few seconds and it rebooted and worked fine. Whatever. I like how it feels. Maybe it's just me, but it feels easier to grip than the TF700. I don't mind the size or weight at all and the bezels feel just right. Granted, it is pretty hard to type with your thumbs on the default keyboard when in landscape (hard to reach the middle), but that's typical. I will install SwiftKey and ThumbsKeyboard and see which one I like better on this tablet. This thing is fast! The only place that I've seen animations less than 30-60fps is when opening SuperNote and when minimizing SuperNote. This zoom-in / zoom-out animation isn't the smoothest, but it's still quick. You can just tell it's dropping frames, which is okay and typical for Android launchers.

Pros: High resolution screen - The black-levels aren't as dark as the Note 10.1's SuperLCD, but the contrast is still good. Colors are pretty saturated, but again not as much as the Samsung SuperLCD. It's still a beautiful screen, but side-by-side with the Note 10.1, I would go with the Note because I'm a fan of darker blacks and more saturated colors. I would compare it to the Nexus 10's screen since it's also a WQXGA LCD, but I haven't played with one recently. Nice build quality - With the brushed aluminum shell and simple design, it feels sturdy and premium. Great for fans of aluminum, not so great for fans of plastics. Performance - While I do have my performance gripes (see Cons), it does still perform admirably at many tasks, especially CPU-based ones. The internal storage isn't handicapped like it was in the TF700. Internet browsing is fast - I browsed to 9gag.com while tethered to an LTE connection and it displayed the page with the first few pics in less than a second, and I had never browsed there before on this tablet. It felt really fast, comparable to iPad4. Ample bezel if you like that sort of thing. I do, and it is useful considering the heft of the tablet. TegraZone - Handy but not necessary since it basically links you to the games in the Play Store. Optional keyboard dock - Great accessory, almost a necessity if you're getting a Transformer. Added battery life, USB 3.0 port, full SD card slot, touchpad, nice keyboard, etc. I wish it had a pair of decent speakers in it to account for the poor speaker on the tablet. When the 64GB version of the TF701 comes out, you could add a the keyboard dock, 64GB microSD, and a full-size 128GB SD for a total of 256GB of storage, all for the price of a 64GB wifi-only iPad ($700). So if you need lots of offline storage and don't want to carry an external hard drive or thumb drives, this is a great solution. Price - $450 with 32GB? That's 25% cheaper than Note & iPad, and only $6 more than Kindle HDX 8.9". Easy bootloader unlock - It hasn't been working for many people, but I think ASUS has maybe fixed that now. They provide you with the tool to unlock the bootloader, allowing you to root and rom the tablet. However, you void your warranty when you do this, so think about that before you unlock (I had a TF700 that needed a $280 repair when the touchscreen died and the warranty was void). Launcher - Asus didn't ruin the UI. I am not a fan of TouchWiz, MotoBlur, or HTC Sense. I like to start with vanilla android and add the features that I want, rather than being given a customization that slows me down. Asus has always been good at not mucking it up. They add useful features like the dual-ring app launcher when holding down the Home button, and the quick-settings that they customized on the notification drop-down. They didn't, however, add any useful options to the launcher, like grid-size for the desktop & app drawer.

Cons: 3D performance - Unacceptable frame-rates in many games and unfortunately a lot of games don't give you any control over the resolution or graphic settings. This is the Achilles heel in this Transformer (every Transformer seems to have one, be it laggy internal storage of the TF700 or bad WiFI & GPS reception with the TF201). Gamers beware! The Note 10.1 seems to do about 40% faster in my testing, and benchmarks show similar results (AnTuTu: 3D performance of 6500 versus 9200). This is with the latest firmware, build 47. I'm sad about this fact and am surprised I didn't read anything about it in my research. All I heard about was how the Tegra4 was good, though not as good as the SnapDragon800. Little did I know that the S800 and Exynos5420 were BARELY fast enough for 2560x1600 and the Tegra4 simply isn't, for me at least. Also, the animation when apps open and close is pretty chunky. I am using a live wallpaper, but it's a really light weight (Spectrum ICS) one that doesn't slow down the animations on my GalaxyS4. If you can handle 15 - 20 fps in games, or simply don't care about those games, then this is still a great tablet for you. Other performance - It's pretty fast with many tasks but still feels like it should be faster at some things. When I push the power button to wake it up, it takes close to 2 seconds with no recent apps in the memory or foreground. It should be almost instantaneous. When rotating it, it also takes 2 seconds to recognize my action, then a slight freeze and another second to actually rotate the display, and the animation is a little chunky (maybe 15 or 20 fps, very similar to iOS7 on iPad4). Underwhelming and unfortunate that they still haven't smoothed this out, but not too terrible if you don't demand better performance. Speaker - Only 1 of them and it's not very good. It's overly bright and almost harsh with treble with very little to no bass response. Camera - I see no reason why they can't slap a better set of cameras in this tablet. The rear camera is pretty bad, worse than phones of 3 years ago. It's pretty fast at least. They took away the LED flash I guess. I didn't notice my TF700 had a flash even, tbh. Basically, this is good enough for Skype but your skin-tone might look funny to the other person (mine looked too orange, grainy, and splotchy). Design - It's dated, but still decent in my opinion. It's still got full-size bezel and weighs almost 600g. Many people will find this unacceptable, though. Bootload unlock = voided warranty. I believe most manufacturers do this. I know Samsung has a counter that will tell them how many times a ROM was flashed or something.

Overall Review: Battery life - I haven't had a good amount of time to sample it, but I have noticed some pretty short runtimes. It's probably due to me installing so many apps. However, tell me if this sounds right: I charged it to 100% when I first got the tablet. It auto-installed maybe 80 apps. I used it for maybe 2.5 hours that night, not doing heavy 3D tasks or anything, just browsing and playing WWF. The next morning, it had 35% remaining battery. I looked at the usage stats and saw the screen-on time was 2h 27m and the screen used 70% of the battery. The Play Store, WiFi, and Android OS all were around 7% or 8%, so it's not like the battery was being used a ton when it was screen-off and downloading huge apps for several hours (the Play Store was terribly slow, like 100k/sec for some reason). The next charge of the battery is harder to gauge because I partially recharged it for an hour or so, but still it's at 24% now with 4h 47m on screen-on time that accounts for 66% of battery used, and that's starting at a 100% charged and adding another 25% in the middle. Official battery tests have fared better, though, so I would trust them more than me.

Pros: Large size QHD resolution Color accuracy Brightness Heavy, solid stand

Cons: Beats Audio - A waste of money for HP to include this. Non-removable speakers.

Overall Review: When you first fire this thing up, it's awesome, especially if you're used to 24" or smaller. Going through a couple thousand 1440p+ wallpapers really looks great. Also, switching YouTube from 1080p to 1440p makes you realize how much sharper it is. Videos from my wife's Note4 recorded in 1440p look great. Now I just need more sources of 1440p content. 4K isn't ready for prime time. 1440p is a good hold-over until 4K is ready. If you care, these are my issues with 4K currently: 1) Windows sucks at scaling, even in Windows 10. Because of this, I want to leave scaling turned off. This means I need something close to 40" @ 4K to use as a monitor for Windows. When looking into 4K TV's since true monitors only go up to 31.5", you start to see that the cheaper 4K TV's near 40" don't REALLY do chroma 4:4:4 over HDMI, and without 4:4:4, on-screen text has a rainbow effect and stuff. Basically you need 4:4:4 for computer monitor usage. The TV's could avoid this problem if they just included DP, but very few do. So I would have to spend over $1500 for a decent 40" 4K 60Hz screen that either has a DP or HDMI 2.0 chroma 4:4:4. For HDMI 2.0, the only video cards that support it are the GTX 900-series (until the R9 300-series comes out). So I would need to get a 970 for $350 and it would barely be fast enough for 4K gaming. Ya it does 35 - 40 fps in games now and will probably run games fine in the future with medium to high graphics, but I want something close to 60fps with high or better graphic setttings. That means I need probably two GTX 970/980's, which means I need a bigger PSU (600W currently). Then there is the fact that a lot of games simply suck at 4K. There are just too many really poor UI's in the games I like to play. I am seeing this when gaming at 1440p, and 4K is just a lot worse. Eventually, games will scale better or users will hack and patch them. Until then, I'm 100% happy with 1440p. Other Other thoughts: ----------------------------------------------------------- The contrast is decent - not good enough to be a pro, yet not bad enough to be a con. Same with color gamut - It's not super wide but it's pretty accurate and I like it.

Pros: Slimmer design Same 2560x1600 screen resolution as last year's Note 10.1

Cons: Same laggy SoC that Samsung used last year in the Note 10.1" 2014 Edition (Exynos 5420) at the same clock speed. Still made somewhat cheaply, yet they charge a lot.

Overall Review: Samsung really needs an SoC refresh. I had the Note 2014 and thought it was laughable how Samsung's own apps, especially My Magazine, were laggy as all get-out. We're talking 10 frames a second or worse. Even S-Note is laggy at this high resolution. Samsung needs to step up and put out a new SoC or crank up the clock-rate of the aging Exynos 5420. Even the Tab Pro and Note Pro use the same chip. Lag central, even with root + custom ROM. Luckily, it's still faster at 3D content than the Tegra4, but NVIDIA has the K1 now and it blows the Exynos away, big time.

Pros: Flexible design, reliable, self-powered, solid build.

Cons: None that I can think of.

Overall Review: I only had 1 working front USB port on my PC, so I got one of these and double-side taped it to the top of my case. It works like a charm. I can have all my stuff plugged in and haven't had any low power issues or anything. This usually includes a couple external hard drives, xbox360 wireless controller adapter, bluetooth adapter, charging a phone and a kindle, with a random flash drive or steering wheel & pedals plugged in from time to time.

Pros: It's a GTX 460 SE. EVGA Precision software is cool (It's basically rebranded Riva Tuner)

Cons: Cheap, noisy fan.

Overall Review: From all the reports of bad fans, I'm curious if all the fans are like mine and some people can put up with the ticking noise or if mine is just a bad one and a replacement would be better. I think I'll take my chances with a different brand. My EVGA 8800GTS was built using higher quality parts, so I figured this one would be good. Oh well, sorry EVGA - you went cheap on the fan and it's costing you.