Asus Launches Transformer Pad TF300TL

LTE-equipped tablets have been around for a while. The feature of 4G connectivity is kind of becoming inevitable for the current crop of tablets, given the consumer’s needs to engage with high-speed connectivity and the consequent high demand for it.

Asus hasn’t been much behind and has now launched its own quad-core LTE equipped tablet, Transformer Pad TF300TL. Given the fact that the specifications of TF300TL are more or less the same as the Asus Transformer Pad TF300, we can safely say that the new slate is essentially a 4G-LTE version of the latter. We recommended TF300 for those looking to do some serious computing and would suggest the same about TF300TL.

The tablet packs Nvidia’s quad-core Tegra 3 processor and a 12-core GeForce GPU rendering it a fairly handful power-punch. The display, which is a 10.1″ WXGA, can seamlessly play full 1080p full HD video while Asus promises a great gaming experience on the tablet.

TF300TL features an 8mp rear camera as well as a 1.2mp front camera. The rear camera is equipped with a 5-element lens which enables it to capture 1080p HD video. Asus is currently offering the tablet in two variations, 16GB and 32GB. The battery life clocks at 9 hours, which is not bad for an LTE-capable tablet.With the ‘suggested’ retail pricing of the tablet starting at $499 (for the 16GB model), Asus has launched it with AT&T data plans. The pricing and availability of the tablet may vary across different regions. You can also fit it up with a separate mobile dock which comes at $149 and adds three additional hours of battery to the tablet.

Lenovo G560:The Best Laptop To Buy

The Lenovo IdeaPad G560 looks no different than its elder sibling - the G565, which we have reviewed earlier. However, subtle changes add a touch of class to the G560, giving it an identity of its own. Unlike the G565, the cover lid, screen bezel and the keypad layout are all coated in glossy black finish. While the rear-panel and the palm-rest are still coated in matte black finish, the keypad keys coated in glossy black and add a stark contrast to the textured battery compartment above the keypad. The screen bezel is marked with tread-like textures & decorated with four buttons each at the top and bottom, giving it an antique look. The glaring shiny surface on the cover lid and palm-rest are vulnerable to fingerprint smudges, compromising any positives derived from its antique yet stylish design.

The Lenovo IdeaPad G560 is quite bulky weighing in at about 2.63 kgs. Inheriting the most characteristic features from its elder sibling – the G565, the G560 also incorporates subtle changes such as capslock & numlock status indicators, as well as mute, volume up/down and video recording buttons located at the top of the keypad. It is a welcome change to see the addition of eSATA and HDMI ports which were missing on the G565. The special status LED indicators, the Wi-Fi on/off switch and the multi-format memory card reader add value for money.

HP Pavilion G6 Features

The HP Pavilion G6 is a very good option for a price of under Rs. 40,000, out-performing some of its more expensive rivals. It ticks all the right boxes - decent specs, pretty powerful graphics and to top it off, good battery life. On a budget, this is one combination that impresses.


Design Specifications

A couple of things are very clear right from the moment the HP Pavilion G6 comes out of the box. First, is that it is big. There is no getting away from the fact that anyone who is going to be carry the laptop around often, is not going to buy this. The 15.6-inch display is the biggest factor for this, but then again, this isn’t appealing to anyone who wants a slim light machine. The second is the build quality of the HP Pavilion G6. It is much better than expected, and unlike some brands that make laptops glossy to give them an upmarket look, HP has taken solace in the enamel finish. And it looks very good, without being maintenance hungry like the fingerprint attracting shiny finishes.
Since the HP Pavilion G6 has a 15.6-inch display, there is a lot of real estate afforded for the keyboard and the touchpad. Generously, this one gets a well spaced out keypad, with a dedicated number pad. The touchpad is adequately big for multi-touch gestures to work without your fingers hitting the edges.

Overall, the HP Pavilion G6 feels much more expensive than it is, and that probably says everything there needs to said about this laptop. You will not be reminded that this is a budget laptop that you use.

Features

Well, being a budget laptop, there were bound to be some cutbacks in terms of what is on offer. Happily though, the Pavilion G6 doesn’t have too many of them on the power package front. The only little hiccup that we can foresee in the long run is the Intel Core i3 processor. The one here is the dual core 2350M clocking at 2.3GHz, with 4GB of RAM to help it along. We will talk more about how good this is, in the performance section.
Graphics capability is where the Pavilion G6 really surprises, at least on the spec sheet, with the AMD Radeon HD 7670M (2GB). This is the same graphics chip that we have seen earlier on the more expensive Sony Vaio E-series and the Toshiba Satellite L850 that we had tested sometime back. Technically, the one in this laptop is the older Thames-Pro series with the DDR3 memory. There is a faster version in the market, codenamed Thames-XT, for the higher-end laptops. However, even this older gen graphics chip is more than capable.
The HP Pavilion G6’s 15.6-inch display has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, and we believe this is doing very well on most fronts. Natively, it has a good amount of brightness to work its way forward from a solid base. Colour reproduction is very good, and surprisingly, there is no visible gradation. However, contrast doesn’t have the necessary punch you would expect on a display that may be used quite a bit for watching movies on. Decent amount of crispness makes readability easy, but if you look very closely, there is a very limited amount of noise around the individual alphabets.
The Pavilion G6 comes with a 500GB hard drive, and Windows 7 preloaded. HP does preload the machine with certain utilities, but the clutter is definitely lesser than what we saw on the previous generation notebooks. We particularly like the software update utility within the larger Support Assistant app.

Performance

While this is technically a Core i3 processor, it is by no means a slouch. The performance is very close to the much more expensive Toshiba Satellite L850, and on our benchmark test score sheet, there was just .1 of a difference between the two, with the Pavilion G6 ahead! While we aren’t comparing between the two because the two play in very different price brackets, the fact that the G6 is so close to a laptop more expensive shows that there is no cost cutting in terms of the power package.

The PC Mark Vantage benchmark score of 6247 indicates that the Core i3 will not be as sluggish as we had expected it to be. The real life usage performance of the HP Pavilion G6 is rather smooth, and will handle a bit of multi-tasking as well with some ease. However, there will be limitations post a certain level, and you should be ready for that.
The HP Pavilion G6’s battery life is surprisingly good. In our battery test, the G6 lasted a bit more than 2 hours. Essentially, in a real world scenario, you will get around 3.5 hours of battery backup, and a bit more if you are careful with the settings.

Final Review

For a price of under Rs. 40,000, the HP Pavilion G6 is one of the better machines that you can consider. Yes, it is still on the older Sandy Bridge hardware, but in terms of price vs. performance, we can’t hold that against the G6.