Is the Asus Transformer Book Trio worth buying? Find out

Backed by powerful specs and unique styling, the Asus Transformer Book Trio is easily one of the best ultraportables

Hybrid devices have been gathering a lot of attention lately, most importantly the Asus Transformer Book Trio, which got eyeballs rolling with its conventional design at the recently concluded 2014 CES, winning the Best of Innovations Award. 

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So, we put the Transformer Book Trio to a test to see how well it performs in the real world conditions. Is the hybrid that combines three devices — a Windows desktop, laptop and Android tablet — into one worth paying R98,009? Here’s what we found

Build and OS:
The Trio comes in aluminum metal body, offering a sturdy build. Although a bit bulky for an 11.6-inch device, it has a very conventional design, which makes the Transformer Trio simply irresistible. Simply put it’s like a Beetle, distinctly bulky and old looking but charming. The Trio offers two separate OS environments — Android 4.2 installed on the display, which is attached to a base station running on Windows 8 through a mechanism that’s sturdy and reliable to detach; all you have to do is press a button.

Specs:
Take a look inside the hood, and the Transformer wins with quite a big margin here. It runs on a powerful 4th generation Intel i7 4500U processor with the Intel HD 4400 integrated graphic processor, powerful enough to meet most of your visual computing needs as well as play games like Call of Duty 3 with ease. The keyboard comes with a shortcut key, that makes switching between the two screens easier, but the wake-up time for the Windows is a bit long, sometimes over 10-20 seconds, making it a painful task.

Storage:
The Trio comes with standard HDD (500GB/720GB/1TB) — hence the delay in startup and weighs 1.7 kg, heavier for an 11.6-inch device.

Accessories
It comes with a VGA converter, a LAN, and separate chargers for the detachable tablet as well the desktop station.

Our verdict
The device packs almost everything you would look for in a hybrid. But still, it compromises on a few basic things — like wireless display and touch experience; an SSD drive would have made it lighter. And at this price, you don’t want a compromise. However, if you prefer Windows on anything else, and want something small, powerful and cute, the Asus Transformer Trio could be the best buy for you.

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