Lenovo Miix 10 Review.....

Trying to shoehorn hardware that can run full Windows 8 into a thin tablet often requires significant performance compromises—especially in brute processing prowess. As a tablet maker, to create a slim, attractive device that’s easy to operate with one hand while you hold it in the other, you have to settle for a tablet-grade processor. By far the most common of these to date in Windows tablets have been Intel’s Atoms, which can run on much less power than the average laptop chip. But, until recently, they put out performance that matched their power-conservative habits.

The chips typically do a decent job stretching battery life, though. Tablets built around Atom processors tend to last longer between charges than slates powered by Intel's more powerful Core CPUs—often as much as three to four hours longer. And constructing a slate around a lower-power Atom processor also allows manufacturers to make less-expensive devices, like the subject of this review: Lenovo’s $479-list Miix 10, a tablet that comes in at a price point closer to those of Android-based devices.

The trade-off, though—and there's always a trade-off, isn't there?—is speed. The Miix 10$412.50 at Amazon turned in a score of 0.53 on our CPU-centric Cinebench benchmark test, whereas full-Windows tablets and hybrid laptop/tablets built around Intel’s laptop-grade Core CPUs, including Lenovo’s own ThinkPad Twist$729.52 at Lenovo, typically turn in scores four or five times faster. While it doesn't feel particularly slow for basic tablet tasks, demanding Windows programs do lag, and some won't run at all.

The thing is, though, because of some recent moves by Intel, it's more complicated than that: Atom itself is evolving. Most of the Atom-based Windows tablets and hybrid laptops on the market when we wrote this (in late October 2013) were based on Intel's "Clover Trail" generation of Atom chips. (Indeed, the Atom Z2760 in the Mixx 10 is the same Clover Trail chip powering most of the lowest-cost Windows tablets and hybrids we saw through much of 2013.) That CPU is much slower than a laptop-grade Core i5 or i7 processor, and it supports only Windows x86, 32-bit architecture, as opposed to the 64-bit architecture supported by the higher-end Core CPUs.

Where it gets complicated is with Intel's recently debuted next generation of Atom chips, code-named "Bay Trail." Hybrid laptops and tablets based on Bay Trail Atom processors are just now starting to hit the street, and if the first we saw is any indication, Clover Trail machines will need to head toward the discount rack, and fast. The vanguard model we tested, the Asus Transformer Book T100T$374.00 at Amazon, is an 10.1-inch Bay Trail Atom-based Windows 8 hybrid, and it's a killer value at $349 to $399, depending on its internal storage. As you'll see in our test results, it delivered roughly twice the performance of the Miix 10 and its Atom Z2760 cohorts, and it blew them all away on battery life. The T100T isn't perfect (for one thing, the touch pad is balky), but it rewrites the price and performance equation for low-end Windows 8 tablets and hybrids, and more models like it are imminent. The divide within the Atom ranks will get even greater in early 2014, when a version of Windows 8.1 will roll out that should allow Bay Trail Atom devices to support 64-bit processing.

Bay Trail or Clover Trail, there's still a sizable performance difference between Atom tablets and Intel Core-powered ones, but the early Bay Trail models appear to reduce that delta by quite a bit. They are looking robust enough and price-aggressive enough to make the Clover Trails look like yesterday's news.

This brings us back to the Miix 10, which doesn't differ much from several other Clover Trail Atom-based slates we’ve looked at over the past few months, in terms of configuration and performance. As you’ll see in our Performance section, the Miix 10’s numbers were quite similar to the other Clover Trail slates we’ve tested. Its price, at least within the Clover Trail world, is also aggressive: At $479 list, it was a few hundred dollars cheaper, at this writing, than several competing Clover Trail Atom/Windows 8 models. HP's business-orientedElitePad 900, for instance, listed in early November 2013 for $699. But the 10.1-inch elephant in the room (the Asus Transformer Book T100T) seems poised to upend all of the furniture in Clover Trail's den and crush it underfoot.

It's not just the chip difference that's shaking things up, either. Sometimes, a competing tablet costs more because it comes bundled with attachable keyboard cover or a docking station. In the case of the Miix 10, the combination keyboard dock/cover will cost you an additional $99 (list), bringing the total price up to about $580, which was on the low side for a Windows 8 tablet-plus-keyboard until not very long ago. But the clincher for the Transformer Book T100T is that the $350-to-$400 priceincludes a pretty good keyboard base that turns the tablet into a quasi-laptop.

Taken against its Clover Trail competition, the Miix 10 is a capable entry, but nothing much about it—appearance, battery life, or performance—sets it apart. We'd like it better with the optional keyboard case, but our bottom line is that this Lenovo is as middle-of-the-road as current Clover Trail-based Windows tablets come. It’s a decent tablet at a fair price, in the moment in time we write this. But similar Bay Trail models are poised to invade the Windows tablet and hybrid market, and if the first we've seen is any indication, they'll be well worth holding out for.

HP Officejet Pro X551dw Color Printer Review

Of all the kinds of gadgets we’ve reviewed over the past five or so years, we’ve seen the fewest substantive breakthroughs in printers. Both lasers and inkjets—how they function at the core—have seen few notable changes to the mechanisms inside them.

Lasers draw, or “image,” pages onto print drums, which in turn attract toner particles and fuse them to paper, while the printheads in inkjet printers travel back and forth across the page, micro-spraying ink as they go. Granted, we’ve seen incremental advances in print speed and quality over the years, and all kinds of convenience add-ons, such as automatic two-sided printing and scanning, as well as fancy color LCDs for facilitating PC-free printing. But the way these devices print just hasn’t changed much—until now.

A few weeks ago, we looked at—and lauded—an innovative multifunction inkjet, the Officejet Pro X576nw Multifunction Printer, based on HP’s PageWide technology that debuted in February 2013. PageWide printers differ from standard inkjets in that, instead of relying on printheads that travel back and forth across the page, printing one row at a time, the printhead is stationary. Paper passes under the print nozzles in one swift pass, similar to how pages pass over the print drum on laser devices, resulting in laser-like speeds from an inkjet machine. The result—blazingly fast inkjet devices—is a clear-cut breakthrough.

We should stop here and point out that the PageWide debut was not the first time we’ve seen stationary printheads on inkjet printers. A similar technology, called Memjet, showed up at CES 2011, and we were impressed enough that we gave it our Best of CES 2011 award. Since then, Memjet has showed up in some office-grade printers from LG Electronics, Lenovo, and Lomond—but they're sold only in Asia and Europe. HP’s iteration of a stationary inkjet printhead technology, PageWide, is the first to be mass-introduced on North American soil.

Today, we're looking at the Officejet Pro X576dw’s sibling, the Officejet Pro X551dw, a $599-list single-function version of the printer. In all, HP offers four printers built around the PageWide mechanism, two of them multifunction models and two single-function ones. (During our research for the X576dw Multifunction Printer review, HP told us there were six models planned, but the company was offering only four on its Web site at the time we wrote this.) The other single-function Officejet X is the Officejet Pro X451dn, which lists for $449. For the $150 savings, you get a machine rated by HP at 55 pages per minute (ppm), opposed to this more expensive model’s 70ppm, and a lower suggested monthly duty cycle (500 to 2,800 pages per month, versus the X551dw's 1,000 to 4,200). The X451dn also lacks wireless connectivity.

Instead of the color touch-screen LCD on the X551dw, the lower-priced X451dn’s control panel consists of physical buttons and a monochrome LED, and it has no USB port for PC-free printing from thumb drives. In addition, the less-expensive model doesn’t support the wide range of cloud-printing and HP printer-app options that the X551dw’s control panel does. On the whole, the less costly Officejet X451dn is designed to print primarily from networked PCs. Still, if all you need is the ability to print from the computers on your wired network, it might still be a good fit, despite the slightly lower speed and volume ratings.

The X551dw is a decided step up from the $449 model. Like on the multifunction X576dw, the print quality on the single-function X551dw is excellent, and, when printing photographs, it's better than most midrange laser printers we’ve reviewed. And it’s at least as fast—in some instances, faster. But what we like most about these new PageWide devices is their extremely low per-page cost of operation, which we’ll discuss in the Setup & Paper Handling section later in this review. The X551dw is cheaper to use, especially when printing color pages, than the high-end business inkjet printers we’ve seen, and it beats nearly every color laser printer we know of, too.

On the whole, this is an exceptional printer if you don't need the flexibility of a multifunction machine. During our evaluation, we didn’t find any reasons not to recommend it. Like its multifunction sibling, this single-function Officejet easily earned our Editors' Choice nod.

Change or Replace Display Font On Your Symbian Nokia Phone

Well, with technology getting advanced day-by-day, new mobile devices are being launched every hour. Almost every mobile deviceoffers same features in the same price range. Gone are the days when mobile phones used to be style-statements. Nowadays, what differentiates a mobile device from other devices are the applications.

 A new symbian software was launched on April 5, 2010. The new software MonotypeImaging FlipFont, allows the user to enhance the characteristics of their phones by making them more attractive, appealing and fun to use. As the name suggests, users are able to select a font size and font style for their phone, using this application.

The application is completely free for all and easy to download. Once the application is installed in your mobile phone handset, follow three simple instructions. The application offers four different font styles. You can also take advantage of the service which enables the user to go online and choose fonts from a wide range of unique styles. Once you have chosen your font, just restart your phone (Switch-off and then switch-on), and the font will be autimatically updated on your mobile device.

The application is free of cost and is available only for Symbian S60 5th edition phones.

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AVADirect Z87 Quiet Gaming PC Review

If you've ever owned or known someone who's owned a high-end gaming PC, you've probably noticed that such systems tend to be quite a bit louder than your average Dell or HP box—especially when running games or CPU-taxing tasks.

A combination of high-performing parts that are often overclocked means a lot more heat gets generated inside the case, and that heat needs to be blown out, while cool air gets sucked in. The end result can often be a system that sounds like a DustBuster or even a Dyson Ball—definitely not an ideal companion for a quiet room in your home.

If your current gaming rig is aging and you're looking for something not too noisy to replace it, AVADirect's Z87 Quiet Gaming PC is a topnotch choice. In our $2,622 review configuration, it's well-equipped for high-end performance with an Intel Core i7-4770K processor, 16GB of low-voltage RAM, and Nvidia's powerful GeForce GTX 780 graphics card.

To keep things quiet, AVADirect has chosen NZXT's H630 Silent tower case, which has sound-dampening panels. And the 2TB hard drive is wrapped up in its own sound-dampening enclosure. Don't look for an optical drive, though. You can configure the system with one if you want, but if you do, it will likely be the loudest component of your PC.

   

The view inside the Quiet Gaming PC: Plenty of room for expansion, plenty of sound-deadening equipment.

   

We do have a few minor issues with the system, like its slightly outdated solid-state drives, and the fact that the case doesn't feel as premium as we'd like. But AVADirect does deliver a nicely built machine that is indeed much quieter than most other performance rigs, whether at idle or under full load. Nor does the company charge a lot extra for doing so.

In fact, when we wrote this review in early October 2013, the parts alone for this machine sold for just $372 less than AVADirect's asking price. Considering that the vendor provides building, testing, shipping, and a three-year limited parts and labor warranty, we'd say pricing is here is more than fair.

Design

When configuring the system, you can choose from several different cases. But the white NZXT H630 Silent case that AVA shipped with our review unit is a good fit for a quiet PC—especially if you want lots of room for future upgrades.

The case is painted steel and looks quite nice. There's room inside for several extra hard drives and expansion cards. And the case has two LED lights on the back that makes it easier to see the ports when you're trying to plug in a cable.

The case also has four front-mounted USB ports (two 3.0, two 2.0), along with headphone and mic jacks. But they're in a somewhat odd place near the top, on the right side. If you place the case on the floor to the left of your feet, it could be easy to accidentally kick any cables or flash drives you leave in the ports. Put the tower to the right of your feet, and the ports will be a pain to get to.

There's also an SD card slot below the front ports, which is nice. But when we attempted to insert a card, we discovered that the slot wouldn't accept the whole card, leaving it too sticking out precariously from the side of the case. Also, it was a bit of a challenge just to get our card in the slot. Rather than the smooth card insertion we're used to, we met some resistance.

For most, this will be a minor issue, as the slot and USB ports did work in our review unit. But it did leave us with a feeling that the case just wasn't as attractive as the other components.

Lenovo ThinkPad T430s Review

The ThinkPad T Series didn't get to be the best-selling business-notebook nameplate of all time by accident, and the latest iteration makes clear how it won that distinction. Lenovo's ThinkPad T430s blends portability, performance, features, and creature comforts in a near-perfect execution of a thin-and-light laptop that will suit corporate types, small-business buyers, and power users alike.

In past reviews (dating back to, oh, around 2001 or so), right about now is when we would start apologizing for the T Series' high price and arguing that it was justified. Not this time: The platform starts at just $790—a bargain—and our well-appointed Core i5 configuration checks in at a very reasonable $1,174.

One of the strengths of the T430s is that configure-to-order is alive and well for the platform. Lenovo lets you mix and match components to suit just about any need and budget, ranging from an Intel Core i3 CPU and 4GB of RAM to a Core i7 processor married to a whopping 16GB of memory. Another rare commodity is the UltraBay, which lets you slide out the standard optical drive and pop in a second battery or up to a 1TB hard drive. Sweet.

  

Call it classic or call it boring, but the T430s is available in any color you want so long as it's black.

  

What you can't change, however, is the look of the T430s. The squared-off matte-black case is classic ThinkPad, take it or leave it. Admittedly, we have a touch of envy seeing the parade of brushed-metal laptops in a rainbow of silver shades pass by, but the sure grip provided by the almost-rubbery finish of the ThinkPad T430s keeps our lust in check. The laptop weighs at just under 4 pounds and measures a hair over an inch thick. Both measurements are more than reasonable for a 14-inch slimline machine, although they seem downright chunky next to all the svelte ultrabooks that have debuted this year. But hey, which among the latter have optical drives, let alone swappable bays? Correct: few and none. And if you're deciding between the ThinkPad T430s and its less expensive stablemate, the ThinkPad T430, note that the T430s is a quarter-inch thinner and 0.8 pound lighter.

The T430s is no less durable than its larger sibling. Both are considered business-rugged laptops and feature Lenovo's internal carbon-fiber skeleton to protect their internal parts. The T430s has also passed eight U.S. military testing specifications (Mil-Spec, for short) including those for humidity extremes, low/high temperature, altitude, vibration, and mechanical shock. The T430s keyboard is spill-resistant and has been tested (by Lenovo, not us) to survive up to 4 ounces of water poured directly into it with no damage to internal components.

Speaking of the keyboard, that's the most obvious major design change. The ThinkPad T420semployed the traditional-style keyboard that made the T Series a favorite of fast typists everywhere. Opening the lid of its T430s replacement, we were confronted with—say it ain't so!—a newfangled chiclet- or island-style keyboard, with keys jutting through a recessed backplane. Lenovo switched to this kind of keyboard on its X Series, its ThinkPad Edge models, and others, but we thought the T Series would be immune from such tinkering. Not so, and the T430 wasn't spared, either.

  

Heresy! The T430s switches from a traditional keyboard to a chiclet-style unit. But the feel of the keyboard is still darn good, and you gain an optional backlight in the bargain.

  

But a funny thing happened as we started to dash off a letter of complaint to Lenovo: We found we actually liked the new keyboard. It's rock solid—none of the flex in the middle that we've experienced on others—and the key plunge (the amount of up/down travel) seems better than on other chiclet-style keyboards we've tried. The spacing of the keys is perfect, and the concave curve of the keytops feels comfortable. What's missing is the spot-on audible and tactile feedback of the old ThinkPad keyboards, but as far as island-style keyboards go, this one is arguably the best. And, in the bargain, Lenovo was able to make this keyboard backlit, something the company couldn't do with the old-style unit. So, in addition to the standard ThinkLight (a small white LED above the screen that casts a gentle light on the keys), for $40 you can opt for a backlit keyboard with two brightness levels.

Sony Xperia Tablet Z Review

We’d warn you not to mistake the Sony Xperia Tablet Z for just another Android tablet, but set eyes on it, and you'll see there’s little danger of that. This model is unique among its full-size Android kin, with a slim, light design that blows away weight and thinness records for the screen size, a brilliant display, and water and dust resistance, too. With the Xperia Tablet Z$436.99 at Amazon, Sony returns to its design and innovation roots in a big way. Each of this slate’s distinguishing features tangibly enhance where and how you can use this tablet.

That said, innovation seldom comes cheap. The Xperia Tablet Z starts at $499.99 for a 16GB model, and you’ll have to pony up another $100 to boost the internal storage to 32GB. Those prices are in line with what Apple charges for its same-capacity Retina display-equipped iPads, but it also feels a bit steep considering that the Google Nexus 10$372.21 at Amazon starts at $399 for the same capacity, and 7-to-8-inch Android tablets now start at about $150 (and, in a few cases, even a smidge less).

That said, with the Xperia Tablet Z, it's evident from the start that the premium you're paying has gone straight into this tablet's design and components. A wildly thin, lightweight, and waterproof chassis and a gorgeous display immediately distinguish this tablet from the Android pack.

When the Xperia Tablet Z was first announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this past February, it became the thinnest and lightest 10-inch-class tablet to date. Upon its release, the Xperia Tablet Z still maintained that crown. You can only tell it’s more than a quarter-inch thick with a micrometer, and at 1.1 pounds, it's the lightest tablet with a 10-inch-class display. That makes it about a tenth of a pound lighter than the previous lightweight champ, the Toshiba Excite 10 LE$505.00 at Amazon.

The real surprise to us, though, was that Sony managed to work water resistance into a design this slim, seeing as most water- and dust-proof tech tends to have a bit of bulk. If you’re planning to hit the pool with the Xperia Tablet Z in hand, there’s no need to fear; Sony maintains that its tablet meets the IP55 and IP57 standards. That means you can submerge it in up to three feet in water, for up to 30 minutes, and not worry that you’ll end up with the world’s priciest glass serving platter.

On the inside, the Xperia Tablet Z stands alone in a different way, at least for the moment. This is the first tablet we've tested that's equipped with Qualcomm's 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor. Paired with 2GB of RAM, the chip helped propel the slate to strong performance in our benchmark tests.

If you're in the market for a 10-inch Android tablet today, the Xperia Tablet Z is one of the best you can buy, and it boasts a dual distinction. For the cost of entry, you get a unique set of features—and, they're compressed into an impressively lightweight design that we'd laud even if this were a more ordinary tablet.

Amazon Kindle Fire HDX (7-Inch) Review.....

Since the launch of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets in 2011, Android and Apple purists may have been excused for dismissing them with some condescension. After all, the Kindle Fires had weaker features and (due to their reliance on Amazon.com for access to Android apps) a much smaller selection of apps than Apple's App Store or the Google Play store. Granted, the prices of the Fire tablets were competitive, but there was something limiting about them: fine tablet tech geared a bit too much toward selling content inside the gates of Amazon. (Any fair-thinking outsider will point out that Google and Apple take the same approach, in their own ways, but the impression was stronger with the Kindle Fires.)

Now, in the fall of 2013, the Kindle Fire HD line of 2012 has morphed into the HDX—“Beyond HD,” as it says on the box. The two HDX models, with 7-inch and 8.9-inch screens, have the screen resolution, processing speed, and competitive pricing to go toe-to-toe with Google’s 2013 Nexus 7$225.00 at Amazon and Apple’s 2013 iPad Mini with Retina Display. Granted, the Amazon Appstore is about one-tenth the size of Google Play or the Apple App Store (at about 100,000 apps) but the convenience and breadth of Amazon’s content and service ecosystem should satisfy most consumers.

In this review, we're tackling the 7-inch, Wi-Fi-only version of the Kindle Fire HDX, which was released in October 2013. (Expect a review of the 8.9-incher to follow shortly after.) The 7-inch model has a gorgeous 1,920x1,200-pixel (323ppi) display resolution, a Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor (running at 2.26GHz), and 2GB of memory—base specs that stack up handily next to the 2013 Google Nexus 7, which has been our favorite compact tablet since midyear. Amazon says the Kindle Fire HDX’s graphics processing is four times better than the 2012 Kindle Fire HD's, and the computing performance three times better. And we believe it. In our tests and our anecdotal use, this tablet runs and feels like it takes no prisoners.

The Wi-Fi version of the Kindle Fire HDX also matches the Google Nexus 7 on price. Both come in at $229 (for a version with 16GB of onboard storage) and $269 (for the 32GB version). For buyers who want the most possible local storage, Amazon also offers a 64GB Wi-Fi model, at $309.

That said, you'll see competition on the high end and the low end for this slate. While the cheapest iPad Mini with Retina Display isn't really close in price (the $399 16GB/Wi-Fi model, costing $160 more), you can find some decent Android competitors for $75 to $80 less, such as the Hisense Sero 7 Pro and the Asus MeMO Pad HD 7$149.00 at Amazon, albeit both with much lower-res screens. With the Kindle Fire HDX, though, some users will find the base $229/$269/$309 prices artificially low. That's because you'll need to add $15 to each to remove Amazon's “Special Offers” (i.e., ads) from the Kindle Fire HDX's lock screen. The ads will bother some buyers; others won't care. Know, though, that the Kindle Fire devices are engineered to push Amazon's commerce, and that a mere $15 won’t make the Kindle Fire HDX wholly noncommercial. Whether you pay the extra or not, make no mistake: The Kindle Fires are tablets designed to leverage Amazon's content ecosystem.

For those who will frequently need Internet (or Amazon download) access outside of Wi-Fi zones, Amazon also offers versions of the Kindle Fire HDX with 4G LTE from AT&T or Verizon. At $329 (16GB), $369 (32GB), or $409 (64GB), you'll be adding $100 at each capacity level, and again, tacking on $15 atop those prices if you want to kill the lock-screen ads.

Compared to the 7-inch HDX, the 8.9-inch version of the HDX costs $150 more at each memory and connectivity configuration. Meanwhile, Amazon continues to sell last year's models, too: The 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX’s older brother, the 2012 7-inch Kindle Fire HD, has a dual-core processor and no camera, and starts at $139. One of our favorites from 2012, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch, was on sale for $229 when we wrote this in late November 2013, the same price as the 2013 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX. While it sports only a dual-core processor, has a lower pixel density, and weighs twice as much as the 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX, it may tempt those desiring the extra screen size for watching movies. Plus, that screen is a 1,920x1,200 panel. Movie buffs may have mixed feelings about watching blockbusters like The Hobbitand Skyfall on any such screen—7-inch or 8.9-inch—but having true high-def movies on a tablet can be a godsend for frequent travelers or buyers with long, sedentary commutes.

Back to the 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX, though. Amazon matching most of the 2013 Google Nexus 7’s specs in this tablet was a feat, we’re sure, but the company upped the ante by adding a unique form of tech support to its HDX models, which it calls Mayday. Imagine tapping your tablet and starting a one-way video chat with tech support, at any hour of the day, within 15 seconds. That’s Mayday. Techies may not need Mayday, but they’ll love referring their advice-needy relatives to it. Paired with Amazon’s FreeTime software (which lets parents create profiles for children on the tablet that limit access to content and features, or limit sessions by time), the Kindle Fire HDXs were built with families in mind.

Despite some hardware shortcomings—notably, the lack of a rear camera, an HDMI port, or a MicroSD card slot—the Kindle Fire HDX is a slam-dunk for current Amazon customers, especially those with Amazon Prime accounts hooked on the video function. (Amazon Prime, for those not in the know, is an Amazon-specific subscription service that nets you free two-day shipping on many physical products sold by Amazon, plus access to extensive video streaming and e-book-borrowing.) For those who aren't wedded to Amazon’s ecosystem, though, the Google Nexus 7 keeps its place at the top among compact Android tablets, and the iPad Minis hold sway as the only compact tablets for iOS, at $160 more for an equivalent Retina display model or an extra $70 for the basic, much-lower-res 2012 iPad Mini$299.00 at Apple Store. Indeed, the choice here is really all about exactly how much you're tied—and want to be tied—to the world of Amazon.

Asus Transformer Pad TF300 Review

Just as you wouldn’t expect a Toyota Camry to outclass or outperform a Lexus ES350, you wouldn’t expect a company's midrange tablet to outclass or outperform its high-end one. And yet, that’s exactly what happened with the $399.99 Asus Transformer Pad TF300, an Android tablet with a 10.1-inch screen. Compared with the company's flagship model, the $499.99 Eee Pad Transformer Prime (which is, without question, drop-dead gorgeous and has one of the best-looking screens we've seen), the Transformer Pad TF300 is, in terms of performance and connectivity options, an all-around better device.

Before we go any further, though, we should note that we also liked the Transformer Prime—so much so, in fact, that we gave it our Editors' Choice award. However, despite the fact that the Transformer Pad TF300 has a slightly slower processor (more on that in the Performance section), it scored better on most of our benchmark tests. On the surface, this doesn’t seem to make sense, but processor speed isn’t the only performance-impacting factor. Specific operating system and firmware tweaks, as well as different types of memory chips and other circuitry, can also make a slate run better. For example, Asus used DDR2 for the system memory in the Prime, but stepped up to DDR3 memory for this model. Little changes like these can make significant differences in performance.

As of late April 2012, these two slates are the only ones we've seen built around the Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. In addition to performing better on several of our tests, the Transformer Pad TF300 also provides support for 3G and 4G cellular Internet connectivity. The Transformer Prime supports only Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. That said, as of this writing, 3G and 4G service for this tablet were not available in the United States, and we can't say when it will be. (Asus would not discuss its ongoing negotiations with cell-service providers.)

The Transformer Pad TF300 comes in two versions and three colors. You can buy a 16GB model for $379.99 and a 32GB version, the one we review here, for $399.99. (Paying $20 more for twice the storage seems like a no-brainer to us.) As shown in the image below, you can take your pick of red, white, or blue chassis—eventually. Only the blue model will hit the stores in spring 2012; you'll have to wait until June to get a red or white one.

               

             

We seldom put a slate through our rigorous evaluation process without finding something to complain about—but not so with the Transformer Pad TF300. Not only did it perform well on our tests, but it also turned in the longest battery life of any Android-based tablet we've reviewed. The screen displayed text, graphics, and videos well. Sound playback, as well as sound and video recording, were better than average. And, even though the design is not quite a work of art like its higher-priced predecessor's is, it's still a nice-looking tablet. Combine all this with its up-to-date processor and operating system (Android "Ice Cream Sandwich")—all for $400—and not only is it a great tablet, it's the best Android-slate value available to date.

Google Nexus 7 (2013) Review

In 2012, with the release of the Google Nexus 7 by Asus$268.60 at Amazon, Google literally redefined the compact-tablet market—erased the slate, you might say. It did that not by delivering anything truly ground-breaking, but instead by offering a premium-quality slate at an entry-level price. Nothing about the 2012 Nexus 7 was particularly new, apart from it being the first tablet at the time to run the incremental 4.1 (a.k.a. “Jelly Bean”) version of Android. But it was the first slate you could get for under $200 that wasn’t plagued by quality-sapping, cost-cutting compromises.

For starters, the 2012 Nexus 7 was the only budget-friendly tablet near its price built around Nvidia’s Tegra 3 quad-core processor. And, unlike most other entry-level slates at the time, Google (and the actual hardware manufacturer, Asus) didn’t compromise on screen or build quality. The display rivaled those we’d seen on tablets that cost $100 to $200 more, and its light, attractive chassis felt sturdy, well-balanced, and, well,expensive, in our hands. On the whole, it was a great tablet at a great price, resetting the standard for the entire market for compact tablets.

Here we are a year later, and Google has introduced the next generation of the Nexus 7$229.00 at Amazon, which goes under the same name; we’ve dubbed it the “Google Nexus 7 (2013).” The new Nexus starts at a $229 list price (for a model with 16GB of onboard storage), and it’s manufactured by Asus, like its 2012 predecessor. This time, though, not only has Google delivered a great product at a decent price (albeit one with a starting price $30 higher than the 2012 model's), but this time the new Nexus does bring a number of firsts to Android mini-tablets.

It is, for example, the first 7-incher to come with a super-high-resolution, true-HD screen (with a native resolution of 1,920x1,200, or 1,080p), and it supports wireless charging. (We'll discuss both of these features in detail in the Features & Apps section, a little later in this review.) It’s thinner and lighter than last year’s iteration, too, making it the leanest 7-inch slate we've tested to date. And it’s the first slate to run on Android 4.3. Version 4.3 may be an incremental update to the operating system, but early returns suggest that here it delivers significant performance boosts, especially in graphics processing.

In addition to all these exciting new changes, the Google Nexus (2013) is one great-looking, great-feeling tablet. As with last year’s model, our only real complaint is that this new model doesn’t let you increase its storage capacity. You’re stuck with either the 16GB that comes in the $229 version, or the 32GB in the $269 model (the one we’re reviewing here). Apparently, this lack of an SD slot didn’t dissuade many tablet buyers, though—if the sales of last year’s Nexus 7 and the stalwart Apple iPad Mini$299.00 at Apple Store are any indication.

As you’ve probably gathered by now, we really liked this tablet—so much so that our recommendation is simple: If you’re looking for a compact slate that doesn’t have to be an iPad, and your budget has any kind of flex at all, buy this one.