ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T review: Full throttle

Google Now is awesome

Google Now was first introduced in Jelly Bean 4.1 and is definitely one of the most interesting additions to the OS. Simply put, it's Google's version of a personal assistant. Google Now is in the same neck of the woods as Apple's Siri, but it learns constantly from your use patterns.

It's accessed by swiping up on any of the three on-screen controls and gives you a short overview of information it believes is relevant to you. Going to work the same route every morning? Google Now will let you know there's a big traffic jam on your usual way to the office and will offer to re-route you.

It can interpret a lot of things from your search history as well. If you've been searching for, let's say, your favorite football team, Google Now will prepare a card showing you the next match the team is playing and will provide you with score updates once the game begins.

Google Now is gotten a lot better now

Google constantly updates Google Now and in its latest version has become even smarter. If you allow it, the service can scan your email for upcoming flights, deliveries or restaurant reservations and let you know when they are due. There are also numerous kinds of cards like birthdays (yours and those of your contacts and friends in the Google+ social network) and what distance you've walked in a particular month. The last one could definitely feel creepy for some users, but it's easy to turn off from the Google Now settings menu.

Google has also integrated Voice Actions. They can handle stuff like sending messages (SMS or email), initiating a voice call, asking for directions, taking a note or opening a site. Google Now can also launch apps, check and manage your calendar and look for nearby places of interest and stuff like movie openings in theaters.

One big advantage of Google's Jelly Bean is that the voice typing functionality doesn't require an internet connection to work. You can enter text by speaking anywhere you can use the on-screen keyboard - be it the Messaging app or a note taking app - without the need for a data connection as long as you have pre-downloaded the needed language packs (and those only take about 20-25MB of your storage per pack).

Making voice typing available offline also made things faster as it's not dependent on the speed of your data connection. What's even more impressive is that the transition hasn't cost it anything in regards to accuracy.

Synthetic benchmarks

The Asus Transformer Pad TF701T is powered by a very rare beast. It's the Nvidia Tegra 4 T40X and is Nvidia's hope of tackling the big guns on the market, namely the Snapdragon 800. The chip packs a 1.9GHz quad-core Cortex-A15 CPU with 2GB of RAM. The GPU is Nvidia's own 72-core Ultra-Low Voltage GeForce.

It may be uncommon, but it promises to be a beast of a performer. At least in theory. The Tegra 4 was big news back in February, but now as we're gearing towards the end of the year, it's got a lot to prove if it wants to play with the big boys in the chip arena.

First up in our battery of benchmark tests was BenchmarkPi, which tests the calculative performance of the individual processor cores. Here, the Transformer Pad comes in third in the list with the LG G Pad 8.3 and Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition beating it, but not by much.

Benchmark Pi

Lower is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  115
• LG G Pad 8.3
  131
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  137
• LG Optimus G Pro
  147
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  211
• Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
  324
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  351
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
  470
• Samsung Galaxy 3 7.0
  483
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 Plus
  488
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
  499
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  520
• Huawei MediaPad
  703

Linpack

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  969
• LG Optimus G Pro
  743
• LG G Pad 8.3
  736
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  749
• Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
  324
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  263
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 Plus
  222
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  185
• Google Nexus 7
  124
• Samsung Galaxy Note
  105
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  86
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  96
• Samsung Galaxy 3 7.0
  78

In our compound benchmarks, the Transformer Pad did well once again, but not as well as the Note 10.1 competitor. The difference is small - 32991 vs. 33198, but it's enough to put the Nvidia 4 rocking Transformer Pad behind. The story repeats itself in the Quadrant and Geekbench 3 tests.

AnTuTu 4

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  33198
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  32991
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  24716
• LG G Pad 8.3
  24440
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  24236
• Sony Xperia ZL
  20743
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  20216
• LG Optimus G Pro
  20056
• HTC Butterfly
  19513
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  19131
• Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
  17159
• Oppo Find 5
  15167
• Google Nexus 10
  12695
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  9070

Geekbench 3

Higher is better

• Samsung Galaxy Note 3
  2937
• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  2743
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  2665
• LG G2
  2243
• HTC One
  1972
• LG G Pad 8.3
  1950
• HTC One Max
  1899
• LG Optimus G
  1623
• LG Nexus 4
  1288
• HTC Butterfly
  1257

Quadrant

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  17945
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  13522
• LG Optimus G Pro
  12105
• HTC One
  11746
• LG G Pad 8.3
  11804
• Sony Xperia Z
  8075
• LG Optimus G
  7439
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  7215
• Oppo Find 5
  7111
• Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0
  6942
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  5916
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  5864
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  5552
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  4627
• Nexus 4
  4567
• Google Nexus 10
  4385

We ran GFXBench (formerly GLBenchmark) tests off-screen, which means we're testing at a fixed resolution and getting numbers for raw GPU power. The Transformer Pad didn't perform too well here, scoring a bit lower than its main rivals.

GLBenchmark 2.5 Egypt (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  60
• Apple iPad 4
  54.4
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  52
• Google Nexus 10
  40
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  40
• LG G Pad 8.3
  39
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  39
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  32
• Asus Padfone 2
  31
• Oppo Find 5
  30
• LG Optimus G Pro
  29
• Sony Xperia ZL
  29
• Sony Xperia Z
  29
• LG Optimus G
  29
• HTC Butterfly
  27.9
• Apple iPhone 5
  27
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  26
• Nexus 4
  26
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  17
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  16
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  15
• HTC One X+
  12
• HTC One X
  9

GLBenchmark 2.7 T-Rex (1080p off-screen)

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  22
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  21
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  17.1
• Apple iPad 4
  16.8
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  15
• LG G Pad 8.3
  15
• Google Nexus 10
  13.9
• Sony Xperia Z
  13.5
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  13
• Sony Xperia ZL
  12.8
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  7.0
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  4.0

But video benchmarks running at native resolution will give the most accurate portrayal of real world performance, which is why we've included the Unreal Engine 3-powered Epic Citadel benchmark. Unreal Engine is popular with mobile game makers, so it's a pretty important test. The ULV GeForce GPU couldn't rank at the top of the cart here, but the good news is it managed to outperform the Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition by 5fps.

Epic Citadel

Higher is better

• Sony Xperia Z1
  54.9
• Sony Xperia Z Ultra
  54.9
• LG G2
  51
• Samsung Galaxy Note 3
  47.7
• Samsung Galaxy S4 (S600)
  37.2
• LG G Pad 8.3
  36.3
• HTC One
  35.6
• HTC One Max
  34.9
• HTC Butterfly
  29.6
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  29.5
• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  24.1

Our browser benchmarks show some great numbers from the Transformer Pad, with the tablet toping the category in the SunSpider web benchmark. With HTML 5 thrown into the mix in Browsermark and Vellamo, the Transformer Pad continues its great performance.

SunSpider

Lower is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  569
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  606
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1011
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  1150
• LG G Pad 8.3
  1190
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  1233
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  1366
• Google Nexus 7
  1703
• new Apple iPad
  1722
• Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1
  1891
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7
  1953
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus
  1992
• Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
  2253
• Huawei MediaPad
  2490

BrowserMark 2

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  3138
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  3005
• LG G Pad 8.3
  2664
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  2386
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  2228
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  2363
• HTC One
  2262
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2170
• LG Optimus G Pro
  1801
• Oppo Find 5
  1797
• Google Nexus 10
  1773
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0
  1612
• HTC Butterfly
  1475

Vellamo

Higher is better

• Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition
  2743
• ASUS Transformer Pad TF701T
  3089
• LG G Pad 8.3
  2505
• Samsung Galaxy Note II
  2418
• HTC One
  2382
• Sony Xperia Tablet Z
  2265
• Samsung Galaxy S4
  2060
• Google Nexus 10
  1929
• HTC Butterfly
  1866
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0
  1633
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1
  1777
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0
  1440
• Samsung Galaxy S III
  1641
• Asus Nexus 7 (2013)
  1597

Overall, the ASUS Transformer Pad and its Nvidia Tegra 4 chip perform as well as you would expect it. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset outperformed Nvidia Tegra 4 in a large portion of the tests, but in real life the two perform equally great, delivering smooth lag-free performance.