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Battery life
Battery life is an area that becomes extremely subjective due to the variety of usage situations that we all find ourselves in. Thankfully the Transformer Pad lives up to precedent that its older brothers have set.
Normally I talk of batteries in terms of mAh, but Asus prefers to talk in Wh. The 31Wh battery that sits behind the tablet section has a quoted length of up to 13 hours, with the dock providing 16Whs, meaning a further four hours of use.
I haven't seen anything that would detract from Asus' claims of such impressive battery life, as the Transformer Pad was easily able to last a full day's use.
Under lighter demand, the Transformer Pad battery life was seemingly endless. It allowed me to browse the latest deals in the evening, and type on the move for a couple of days.
Throughout the review process, I was very pleased to say that there wasn't a single time that I felt worried that I didn't have a charger near by. This relief was a little greater than normal as Asus hasn't given the Transformer Pad a microUSB port for charging.
Connectivity
Unfortunately though, you will have to be in front of a TV in order to browse the web, or at least within range of a router, as the Transformer Pad comes without any mobile connectivity options. With an increasing variety of 3G- and 4G-enabled slates on the market, Asus might well have shot itself in the foot.
Even some of the Google Chromebooks come shipping with a SIM port, which makes sense given their cloud based OS. This is solved to an extent by using your smartphone as a mobile hotspot, but this is a less than ideal compromise.
Elsewhere, the Transformer Pad comes with the standard connectivity options that you could expect from an Android tablet. GPS is supported, as is HDMI out via a micro HDMI port.
As Asus' tablet comes with a proprietary USB cable, microUSB isn't supported, thus no MHL support. Wi-Fi is supported to 802.11 a/b/g/n standard. The inclusion of Bluetooth 3.0 is a tiny bit disappointing given that the technology is now at 4.0, so smart Bluetooth features are missing.
Miracast is supported, meaning you can connect wirelessly to a supported display to show off the presentation that you perfected in Polaris Office. The dock also provides the ability to connect up to a USB memory stick, as it comes with a USB 3.0 port. A full sized SD card slot is also available.
