Asus Vivo Tab RT Review: A Windows 8 Tablet Is Here, But What Do We Do With It?

When Microsoft first announced its plans to make Windows 8 an operating system that would work on tablet and traditional PC alike , many considered the plan challenging . Now that the oxygen is here , the Vivo Touch RT is the first third company , ARM - free-base pill to take the software for a spin . And while it ’s a in full functional product that works , it ’s still not ready to sway the naysayer .

What Is It?

A 10.1 - in Windows RT Tablet not made by Microsoft .

Who’s It For?

The Microsoft partizan ( or Apple hater ) who wants something different than an iPad or Android lozenge .

Design

Thinner than an iPad , and noticeably lighter , the Asus Vivo Tab RT is a well - construct gadget . When the screen is off , it is a unform bleak slab , offering little indication where the bezel terminate and the screen begin . The back end is a dark , two - timber aluminum and plastic jazz group , which not only looks nice ( even if the plastic feels a bit cheap ) , but will in all probability shroud shekels as well .

Using It

Once you get used to Windows 8 , the oecumenical experience of using it as a tablet is enjoyable . The touchscreen is dead exact and reactive . Switching between apps is a breeze , and foretell upon contextual menus using gestures is howling . For first generation software , everything is fairly smooth and responsive . And induce a screen background mode and full file manager open of directly download file — include .zips and .rars — is a nice luxury to have . Oh , also , Flash video do cultivate .

But for a twist with a quad - core Tegra 3 chipset and 2 gig of RAM , everything still feels a bit gauche . Even compared to an iPad 2 , apps take a spot longer to adulterate and pages take a bit longer to render . Little things , like getting a text edition entry field and the on screen keyboard to play nicely together , or the package camera app , palpate wonky and unconsidered sometimes . And of course , there are n’t many apps yet , which can limit what you do apart from browsing the web , sending some e-mail , Skyping , Facebooking and view Netflix .

But if you ’re assay to trump this up in promise that it will be some kind of a laptop replenishment , do n’t bother . Not only is this an ARM - establish system with circumscribed developer support , the bundled dock does not lend itself to productivity . The keyboard is just a bit too small , and the trackpad will make you require to run your head into a bulwark . Sure , it add surplus barrage fire animation and a USB port , but the Vivo Tab RT should be considered a tab for all intents and purposes .

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The Best Part

The hardware refinement exhibit here . It has potent guts , dashing looking at , a lightness few other pad of paper can match , and a display that looks reasonably all-fired good .

Tragic Flaw

A pill is only as good as its apps in 2012 . And correctly now , there are n’t many in the Windows RT ecosystem .

This Is Weird…

When using Windows RT without a proper mouse / trackpad , manually closing apps requires you to call up the tilt of open apps and then drop back the app you want to close down until it disappear . Not the most intuitive matter ever .

Test Notes

Primarily used as a tablet without the keyboard loading dock .

Rarely did the tablet exhibit any sort of noticeable or unusual meanwhile with multiple apps running . look like that automagical resource management is work .

The utterer and audio out manual laborer both get the task done . Nothing special , but that ’s fine for a tablet .

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The camera is really laggy . And its machine - photograph UI could apply some improvement . The front cam is o.k. for Skype function , however .

7 - 8 hours seems to be the norm for battery life on the Asus Vivo Tab RT . That includes a muckle of web browsing , some Netflix watch , some e-mail and electronic messaging , and some music listening .

Should You Buy It?

For now , the Vivo Tab RT is only deserving it for the mortal who is intemperately invested in the Microsoft product ecosystem . This is a fine first generation Windows RT product and the promise is there . But the discase down OS still has some cultivation to undergo before its ready for primetime , and absolutely necessitate apps to really be deserving a shit . This wo n’t replace any computer — and aboveboard , nothing with a 10.1 - inch screen should be ask to anyways — but until there are more choice for media consumption , the Brobdingnagian absolute majority of us will be better served by another weapons platform .

• Price : $ 600 ( 32 GB with keyboard dock ) , $ 700 ( 64 GB with keyboard sour grass )

• Chipset : 1.3 GHz Quad - Core Tegra 3

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