Asus Eee Pad Slider review

An Android tablet with a built-in, slide out keyboard - the best of both worlds or a muddled compromise that pleases no-one? David Ludlow finds out in our review.

IT Pro Verdict

The Eee Pad Slider would be brilliant if it somehow integrated a large and comfortable keyboard into a light and inexpensive tablet. What we get instead is a tablet with a rather mediocre built-in keyboard that isn't worth the significant bulk and weight that it adds. As a result, it's not very good either as a straight tablet or as a keyboard-equipped tablet.If you need a regular tablet, the Apple iPad 2 remains the better product. However, if you need a keyboard on a regular basis, the Eee Pad Transformer and its keyboard dock is better and cheaper than the Eee Pad Slider.

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The Asus Eee Pad Slider with his keyboard closed.

When closed, the Eee Pad Slider looks like almost any other Android tablet.

Asus has installed the same screen on the Slider as on the Transformer, and it's a brilliant choice. The IPS panel used has excellent viewing angles (incredibly important for a device you'll move around in your hands), bright whites, deep blacks and rich vibrant colours. It's every bit the equal of the iPad2's screen, with the added advantage that it has a higher 1,280x800 resolution, making web browsing a more pleasant experience.

The dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor provides more than enough power for any job and even for decoding Full HD video. It scored 2265.8ms in the SunSpider JavaScript test which is in line with what we'd expect from a dual-core mobile processor. Despite this power, battery life is pretty good and the tablet lasted just over nine hours in our video playback test. This is almost an hour longer than the Transformer lasted in slate mode, but six hours less than the Transformer when docked with its keyboard which has an extra built-in battery. While battery life pales in comparison to the iPad 2, it compares well to other Android tablets.

We found the 5.1-megapixel camera a little disappointing. It struggled to focus in dimly-lit rooms, often leading to out-of-focus shots. Images were very noisy and lacked detail. Switching to 720p video mode, wasn't much better - the footage suffered from high noise and poor detail. Potentially more useful is the front-facing 1.2-megapixel camera that you can use for video calls.

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