Asus Eee Pad Slider Review

Camera:

Underwhelmed yet again, the 5-megapixel auto-focus camera of the Asus Eee Pad Slider fails to impress as its quality is wretched – like to the point abysmal. With still shots, they’re simply too soft in tone with details, which tends to come off as muddy looking at times. Snapshots taken in low lighting don’t get any better in the quality department as they’re super grainy and filled with too much noise to enjoy.



And don’t even bother with shooting 720p videos, especially when they’re far from being regarded as “high-definition” in any shape or form. Souring its quality, we find many distractions that include poor details, bouts of artifacting when panning quickly, unrealistic color reproduction, distorted audio recording, and a jumpy exposure. Simply, it’s absolutely horrifying for a tablet!

Asus Eee Pad Slider Sample Video:




Multimedia:

Well, what can we say more about the stock Honeycomb player? Yet again, we adore the 3D carousel interface it offers when browsing through albums, but beyond that, there’s nothing particularly new with it. Strangely, its speakers are placed in the area above its keyboard, but it’s actually hidden from view when the tablet is in its closed position – thus, it doesn’t disperse audio properly and minimizes its volume output. Despite being very weak in tone, it doesn’t crackle or sound strained.


Video junkies will surely appreciate the Slider, especially when its IPS display adheres well to our test video that’s encoded in MPEG-4 1920 x 1080 resolution. Of course, the entire experience is more than satisfactory as we’re treated to pleasing looking details, accurate colors, and a smooth playback. However, it’s worth noting that it doesn’t support videos encoded in DivX or Xvid out of the box.


When so many devices opt to use a microHDMI port for video out functionality, we’re somewhat irked to find a miniHDMI port instead on the Slider. Needless to say, we undoubtedly love the availability of video-out functionality, but it would’ve been generous for them to opt for a more favorable microHDMI port. Oh yeah, it also offer DLNA functionality with the preloaded MyNet app.