The island-style keys are small and cramped, practically the same as what you’d find on an Asus netbook. I found typing on the Transformer dock to be mixed, unfortunately. Usually, a device combination like this–with all the “guts” in the screen–ends up being top-heavy and easy to tip backward, but in my tests the Transformer stayed firmly in place, even when I tilted the screen back a good ways. The hinge also rotates down as you raise the tablet into the “open” position, which lifts the keyboard to a nice angle for typing. You won’t need any extra stands or folding cases.
And having the whole thing fold together is a design advantage for when you’re pulling the keyboard/tablet combo out of your bag for going through airport security, for example.Īnother major advantage of the laptop-like hinge that connects the Transformer to its dock is the fact that it holds the tablet up. When you want to do some work on your novel, you just plug it back in. So for those times you just want to put your feet up and swipe your way through the Internet, you can leave the keyboard behind. But this keyboard can do one neat thing a netbook keyboard can’t: It comes off. That makes the whole kit similar in size, weight, and thickness to your average netbook.
The keyboard also adds a lot of bulk to an already heavy tablet–a full 1.4 pounds and 1.1 inches, to be exact. I found this issue most noticeable when I folded the tablet down over the keyboard for transport: Whereas you would expect a laptop to fold solidly in half, with the screen edges sitting flush with the edges of the bottom portion, the Transformer didn’t line up as nicely with its keyboard. Despite the large connecting port, the latch, and the wide hinge, however, the tablet still has a lot of room to wobble back and forth. A release latch slides into place to secure it. The tablet slots into a rotating hinge at the back, and connects via a 40-pin dock connector.
The Transformer TF101 Mobile Docking Station ($150 of March 7, 2012) is a must-have accessory for your Transformer, and not just because it gives you the ability to type on a physical keyboard. The Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 tablet gets its name from the keyboard dock add-on that transforms the tablet into a laptop-like device.