Asus Eee Pad Slider SL101 Review

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Last Updated on March 29, 2020

Asus have a good reputation for reliability and their netbooks and notebooks are popular products. This “slider” tablet partly crosses into the netbook market. It is built around an NVIDIA processor and the Android operating system so is comparable to several other tablets on the market, but the physical design is somewhat different. With one slide the Asus Eee Pad Slider SL101 converts from a tablet PC to a netbook.

Features

The processor in this tablet is an NVIDIA Tegra 2; the operating system is the very popular Honeycomb 3.2 and the tablet comes with 16GB memory and 1 GB of RAM. Additional storage is supplied by a micro SD reader allowing expansion up to 32GB. Additional connectivity is provided trough one USB 2.0 port and a mini HDMI for output to other media and HD technology.

The slider comes with two cameras, a 1.2 mega pixel front camera and a 5 mega pixel rear facing camera for video and conference calling. The tablet supports Adobe flash 10.3 so this is an ideal movie and gaming machine, but it is also aimed at the business market with its laptop style QWERTY keyboard and built in GPS plus E-compass, perfect for the travelling business person.

The Asus Eee Pad Slider SL101 comes with Polaris Office preinstalled so the user can edit documents, presentations and work on spreadsheets. ASUS also include one year of unlimited cloud storage through Asus WebStorage offer allowing backup and sharing of movies, photos and tunes.

For a 16 Gb model Mocha and White color of tablets are available. There is a 32GB version of this tablet, model number ASUS SL101-B1-WT 10.1-Inch 32 GB Tablet (White).

Usability

As you would expect, the Eee Pad Slider is heavier than a standard tablet, weighing just over 2 pounds with a 10 inch by 7 inch and is about 3/4 inch thick. The screen is toughened and scratch proof, a patented Corning® Gorilla® glass with 178° viewing angle (1280 x 800), LED backlit panel and running on NVIDIA GeForce graphics it provides an excellent gaming experience and high resolution display. The keyboard is a soft touch keyboard with specially moulded keys to enable a comfortable user experience and the screen is a capacitive screen that is 10-finger responsive. If you want more than a tablet but do not want to carry around a laptop then the Asus Eee Pad Slider is a good compromise between the two.

What customers say

This is a relatively new tablet but so far it is getting very good reviews. The slide out keyboard is a real hit with those customers who struggle with a virtual keyboard and do not want to go through the extra expense and hassle of attaching a keyboard to their tablets or iPad. The screen glass gets thumbs up; excellent resolution and tough, making the user feel confident that the tablet is well constructed. This is an ideal tablet for a college student who needs to research and take notes but needs a good battery life; customers report usage times of 7 to 8 hours is feasible with the Eee Pad Slider. The charging cable is a bit short, and a USB charger would have been a good option. Currently the slider does not support NetFlix but will do once the Ice Cream Sandwich update comes out in November. The Android operating system is efficient and Asus provide extra with ASUS Waveshare, an interface that gives the user access to MyNet, to stream digital media to home network devices, e.g. play music through your HDTV; MyLibrary which consolidates all reading material into one easy to browse profile and MyCloud which currently includes one years unlimited cloud storage and access to music, photos and videos. Customers have given this tablet a 4.9 out of 5 star rating but there are still only a few reviews. However, this is an ideal tablet for the user wanting a long life netbook equivalent with all the ease of a high resolution browsing tablet that is very portable and instantly becomes a fully interactive solution through the slide out keyboard.