The Transformer Prime is the first tablet to be announced with the Nvidia Tegra 3 platform, and while the price and release date have yet to be officially announced, it is likely going to be in even higher demand than it’s predecessor, the Eee Pad Transformer.

Our pal Ritchie has a detailed writeup of his hands-on experience with the Transformer Prime along with some great photos to whet your appetite of this thin and powerful device. If you’re the visual type, he’s also prepared a video summary of the Transformer Prime for your enjoyment:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0D-mXIzlKc

Ritchie says that the Super IPS+ display looks great, and this will be an upgrade over the original Transformer’s regular IPS display, while retaining the durable Gorilla Glass. Asus added a display brightness boosting function to the Transformer Prime which is intended for better viewing during outside use.

Tegra 3’s performance is also in full force; it appears as though it can handle 720p and 1080p video with no problems. That could make the Transformer Prime a great portable home-theater (thanks to the micro-HDMI port), with the only problem being the relatively weak Android codec support. I’m curious to know how well the Transformer Prime can handle software video decoding that comes along with some third-party applications.

The unit itself is slimmer and lighter than the iPad 2, and attached with the keyboard, the Transformer Prime is rated to run for 18 hours which is pretty awesome.

For more detail about the Transformer Prime, don’t miss Ritchie’s write-up.

Unless there are any unforseen issues leading up to it’s launch, the Transformer Prime is certainly setting the new bar for Android tablets, and I would go as far to say that Apple better pay attention as well. The Transformer Prime has nearly everything one could want in a tablet today except for a little Ice Cream Sandwich action.

‘HDR mobile computing’ is how I would neatly define the Ultrabook category. These surprisingly powerful laptops can work as efficiently as a netbook and then when you need the power, kick-in cores, turbo and other special features to give you a truly all-round solution that includes video editing, gaming and care-free desktop-style working. The Asus UX21 is one of the lightest, smallest and yet, most powerful of the Ultrabooks, at least in the Core i7 1.8Ghz version we have here. We’re impressed with what’s inside and with its weight and style but there are a couple of potential showstoppers for some people. Read-on to find out more in our detailed multimedia review of the ASUS Zenbook UX21E. Thanks ASUS Germany for the review sample.

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Those of you that are considering the Lenovo U300s should check this good video review out. Ultimately, the UX31 is regarded as better than the U300S, even where the trackpad is concerned. I was surprised.
Screen brightness and battery life are also said to be better on the UX31 although Mobile Tech Review do regard the U300S as a good Ultrabook all-round with a solid build, full size HDMI and a good Centrino WiFi card.

The choice is yours but if you need to wait for another opinion and even a live review and Q&A session, stay tuned here because we are close to securing the UX31, U300s and the Z830 for detailed testing at Ultrabooknews.

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In a meeting with Toshiba Europe today we got an update, and more hands on with the Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook. It’s light, well featured and will come in Portégé and Satellite versions meaning business, and consumer specifications. Toshiba haven’t decided on final specification line-up yet and price targets weren’t given but from what we learnt today, we can’t see the Z830 coming at under $/€1000. First though, lets give you the video, taken after the meeting. It’s one of the most complete overview’s to date so worth watching.

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“We’re in for another boom”
“In everybody’s hands”
“The functionality and utility of a tablet”

Intel’s latest set of promotional material related to the Ultrabook consists of three very short videos showing Intel analysts views on the 22nm process and the advantages of an Ultrabook.

Personaly I hope they produce something a bit better than this in the near future because this looks like It was rushed through the editing room.

Can someone explain to me why an Ultrabook has the functionality and utility of a tablet? Where are the focused, low-costs apps and store? Where’s the always-on.capability, the touchscreen, the 350gm-700gm weight and the $200 starting point?

You may disagree but in my opinion, Ultrabooks are the devices that can do everything that a tablet can’t! They are the devices you need if you’ve got a tablet. You can now throw away the dusty netbook and get busy with 720p video editing, 1080p video conversion, music creation, comfortable text input, full and unlimited web browsing, flexible interfacing and expansion, multi-user usage, office software, software development and enterprise compatibility.

I know there are design elements that come from tablets but thin design and quick-start don’t give them the functionality and utility of a tablet.

As for ‘In everybody’s hands’ well that’s bordering on the offensive. Consumers buy $500 pcs, not $1000 PCs, in many countries it’s less or nothing at all.

Sorry Intel. I appreciate your lead and skill with the technology but you’re going to have to get busy on the message. Tablets are satisfying huge amounts of consumer computing requirements and in many cases do things better than a PC architecture. The Ultrabook has its place and we’re excited about that but let’s be honest and realistic about where it can effectively fit in.

Videos after the jump. . .

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I’ve always loved slider devices, and this is probably why I’m so excited for the Eee Pad Slider which has recently made its way through the FCC and should be arriving in stores soon.

Brad Linder of Liliputing points out a lengthy hands-on video of the Slider that recently went up on YouTube. I must say that the video only makes me more excited… the device looks really well built and the sliding mechanism seems to work great!

The only thing I’m not happy to see is that there is no mouse! I feel like Asus could have easily put a nub-mouse or optical mouse on the device and that would save people from having to use the only USB port on the Slider for an external mouse.

Source: Notebook Italia

Damian and I are at it again with another indepth review of the Asus eeePad Transformer and this time, we decided to throw as many USB goodies at the Transformer [tracking page] and keyboard dock as possible in an attempt to defeat it.

The USB selection included a Samsung USB keyboard with a trackpoint, a rather ancient looking Microsoft USB mouse, an USB Flash drive, a Sarotech ABIGS multimedia hard disk enclosure and a USB SD Card reader.

This video segment was totally unscripted and thus the we were genuinely surprised and excited that the Transformer worked and functioned with every USB device tested.

This is good testimony that the Transformer and the keyboard dock accessory is a real contender to replace the netbook as most of the common USB devices that we rely on for everyday computing will function on the Transformer.

Damian also commented that Asus will be releasing some useful Transformer adapters (including USB) for the tablet really soon which means you won’t need to get the optional keyboard dock in order to tap into the USB goodness!

The next challenge we had for the Transformer was hooking it up to a LCD TV via the HDMI out connection.

Note that the Transformer uses the mini-HDMI which differs from the Acer Iconia A500 that uses the micro HDMI instead. (If you’re looking for HDMI cables, don’t miss our guide on how to avoid getting ripped off)

There were no issues with getting the display mirroring working albeit a ‘gremlin’ moment when the LCD output display froze — this was rectified by detaching and reattaching the HDMI connector on the Transformer.

We tested video playback using 2 sets of 720p and 1080p video files and playback was disappointing on both the tablet as well as the LCD TV display out – both audio and video were terribly choppy and experience dropouts. This was encountered even after the latest Android system update which promised performance improvements which certainly weren’t evident in the video playback.

The system update did deliver some new cool features such as video editing application but that is review for another day, so stay tuned for that!

We’ve got the LG Revolution on hand and have prepared an unboxing video for you which also features a flash test. I’m happy to report (and somewhat impressed) that the LG Revolution has so far handled YouTube 720p flash video quite well. This surprised me because the Revolution is using a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU as opposed to Nvidia’s Tegra. Have a look below: