Asus Transformer Book Chi T100 review

Practicality issues aside, the Transformer Book Chi has a decent screen for such a small and relatively inexpensive hybrid. You get a 10in 1,900×1,200-pixel display, which makes everything look very sharp, and its pixel density of 224 pixels per inch beats the Surface 3’s ppi of 213. However, it won’t do your eyes any good as smaller objects onscreen don’t scale particularly well in Windows 8.1. This shouldn’t be a problem if you’re using well-supported applications such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Office, but it might be a problem with software packages that don’t have well-optimised display scaling features.

While the resolution impresses, actual colour accuracy is only average, with the 69% sRGB gamut coverage, 742:1 contrast ratio and 0.34cd/m2 black level contributing to an adequate but not particularly punchy overall image. Viewing angles are wide, which is a relief as there’s very little hinge adjustment for the screen, meaning the display won’t always be at the perfect angle when you’re trying to get some work done.

Despite the £50 price increase, performance hasn’t increased significantly over the old model. We ran our old Windows application benchmarks to see if the Transformer Book Chi’s quad-core 1.46GHz Intel Atom Z3775 processor is much of a step up from the 1.3GHz chip in the 2013 model. It’s a modest improvement, scoring 27 overall where the old model scored 22. While the numbers look reasonable, actual day-to-day performance was a mixed bag. Often we found applications hanging, and web pages taking an age to load.

Battery life in our video playback benchmark was average for a Windows tablet at just under nine hours. Getting through a full day of media consumption or work on one charge is questionable, but the Micro USB power supply is light and compact so you should keep it with you at all times just in case.

You get 64GB of storage, of which around 40GB is free with a Windows 8.1 install – the same as on the entry-level Surface 3. This should be enough if you don’t have a huge photo or video collection, although you can expand the storage with a microSD card.

We’re a little underwhelmed by the Asus Transformer Book Chi T100. It’s not particularly light or compact, and it lacks the ports that would make it a legitimately useful laptop, which seems like a step backwards to us compared to the previous Transformer Book. Moreover, the basic model of the Microsoft Surface 3, which also has 64GB of storage, costs just £20 more and has a full-sized USB port, a better screen and a faster chipset. Admittedly, the Surface 3 doesn’t come with a keyboard (this will cost another £110 if you don’t already have a Bluetooth one), but is still a more useful and appealing Windows hybrid. If that’s not for you either then check out our Best Laptops and Best Tablets articles.