ASUS Transformer Pad 300 Series Video Hands-on [MWC 2012]

We made the weird trek over to ASUS’ booth here at Mobile World Congress to bet let in on a world of stunning tablets. One of those tablets was the ASUS Transformer Pad 300. It’s a device positioned for the affordable market but that doesn’t mean it’s crap. In fact, it’s actually still quite good.

It has a 10.1 inch LED-backlit 1280×800 display, though it’s only regular IPS compared to the Super IPS+ on the Transformer Prime. It also doesn’t have Corning Gorilla Glass 2 which contributes to its thickness (9.9mm, still a slim device but not quite as slim as the Prime).

It has a quad-core Tegra 3 processor clocked at 1.2GHz and 1GB of RAM, plenty of power for what you’d be paying for it. ASUS will offer this in configurations starting at 16GB to bring down costs. Its plastic chassis also goes toward price reduction, but also adds to the aforementioned girth.  We would have appreciated the brushed metal backing but the plastic doesn’t feel too bad.

It’s not the flimsy sort of plastic we’ve seen on other devices. We still have an 8 megapixel HD camera and a 1.2 megapixel front camera to round things out, and Android 4.0 (slight customizations by ASUS) runs just as smoothly as it does on the Transformer Prime.

Unfortunately, the device’s keyboard dock only adds 5 hours of extra life instead of the 10 hours we’re used to on the Transformer Prime, but hopefully that means the dock will be more affordable, too. The Pad 300 will be available in red, white and blue colors with WiFi, 3G and LTE versions.

As it will be cheaper than the Transformer Prime, you can’t expect it to have all of the same features but it would appear that ASUS has found the right balance of features and price. I find myself not caring too much about the things ASUS had to scrap, though we understand if you’re more inclined to opt for the Transformer Prime (or even the Transformer Pad Infinity). Be sure to check out our video hands-on above.