Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

See updates at end. Original review: This is a terrific convertible laptop, and if not for two issues, I would have rated it five stars. The two issues are: 1) The keyboard does not work in some advanced maintenance and troubleshooting situations such as when in safe mode, the advanced startup screen, or when trying to boot up with a Windows PE recovery disk and 2) Tablet functionality is not optimized when using traditional applications such as Firefox, Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer. More about these particular issues latter, but first some basics. Keep in mind I am not a power user. I use a computer mostly for web browsing, email, Microsoft Office and photo editing with Photoshop. So I am reviewing this computer from that perspective. WHAT’S IN THE BOX - The T300 Chi comes in a fancy, beautifully made charcoal grey presentation type box. Inside, In addition to the tablet and keyboard dock, are: -- 1 Micro USB to standard USB adapter. This lets you attach any standard USB device to the laptop via its USB 3.0 port. -- 1 Micro USB to Micro USB cable to charge the keyboard via the tablet’s micro USB port. -- 1 very nice microfiber cleaning cloth -- 1 long velcro-type cable tie -- 1 power adapter -- 4 very brief and skimpy leaflets for warranty information, battery safety, and intros to the tablet and the dock. There is no user guide, but there is a pdf one preinstalled and you can always download one from the Asus website. PROS: -- Beautiful full HD 12.5” diagonal IPS screen that’s great for image editing. Colors are clear, bright and crisp, and because of the IPS technology, they don’t fade in and out when changing viewing angles. The dpi is about 170. It is Corning Concore Glass which is similar to Gorilla 3 glass and is optimized for larger touch displays. The aspect ratio is 16:9 which is pretty standard these days. -- Quiet, fanless Intel Core M processor. Noise from laptop fans has always bothered me. So it’s such a huge pleasure to use the T300 Chi without having a fan cycling on and off. I will never buy another computer that has a fan again. The back of the tablet does get a little warm, but it’s not uncomfortably hot, and the warm spot is confined to the lower right quadrant (looking at the screen from the front in landscape mode). -- From a processing perspective, the T300 Chi handles all applications I’ve thrown at it so far with ease, including Photoshop CS6 and Microsoft Office 2010. -- Beautiful sleek design. The T300 Chi has a very thin profile and solid feel. The case is matte in a very dark blue and there is a silver bezel running around the outer edge, as well as around the trackpad. -- Quick and speedy detachment of the tablet portion from the keyboard. The tablet part and dock are held together by magnets! I love how this works … you just pull the screen portion up and out to detach it. It works very well. No fumbling around with latches or buttons to disengage the tablet. There is a little wiggle room and the screen can wobble a bit, but I suspect this is inevitable given the magnetized hinge design, and honestly it hasn’t bothered me at all. -- The built-in speakers are nothing special, but the audio with headphones is nice and clean – without any hiss or static. -- Update: Its wireless adapter supports the speedier 5GHz band (more on that below). CONS: -- As mentioned in my first paragraph, the keyboard does not work in some advanced maintenance and troubleshooting situations – when in safe mode, when in the advanced startup screen, and when trying to boot up with a Windows PE disk. I think this is because of the novel way Asus chose to have the keyboard communicate with the tablet. But they should have thought it through for all situations, and right now in some modes it does not work. If anyone comes across a solution to this issue, please leave a comment with the information. Having had this computer for such a short time, I haven’t had the need to get into safe mode or use a boot up disk, but from my previous experience with Windows, I think I’ll eventually want to or need to one day. -- The second key issue is that Windows 8.1 is not optimized for tablet use with traditional apps. For example, when using it as a tablet and you bring up Word or a plain text document, the on-screen keyboard does not automatically pop up. You have to touch the keyboard icon on the taskbar to bring it up. The same thing is true if you put your cursor in a text field in Firefox or Internet Explorer. On the other hand, when using the Metro apps, the on-screen keyboard does pop up automatically when you are in a text field. So Microsoft could fix this I think. And, yes, this is a Microsoft limitation and not Asus’ fault, but since you are limited to this OS, it’s an important point. -- Can’t upgrade the HD or memory. However the 4gb of supplied RAM is enough to handle Photoshop CS6. And if you uninstall some of the pre-installed apps and get a large capacity card for the micro SD card slot, there is enough room on the 128gb internal drive for most purposes. -- The menus and icons in the interface for some applications appear very small, and changing the display settings in Windows does not fix this. This is because Microsoft and many software vendors have not adapted properly to the influx of higher resolution screens on the market. Adobe Photoshop (CS6 and earlier) is an example of one such app which suffers from this. The menus are very small and just readable at normal distances. There is a workaround, but it’s not ideal and I’m not sure how often or if I will use it. Keep in mind this is a common problem with ALL high dpi displays on Windows. Asus is not to blame, which is why I didn’t factor it in my rating. It’s the fault of Microsoft and many software vendors. But anyone buying a computer with a high dpi screen like this should be aware of this issue, and the higher the dpi, the worse the problem is. So if you’re considering getting an even higher dpi model than this, think again. -- Slight lag between the time the computer wakes up and the moment it recognizes the keyboard. This might bother some, but it’s minor to me. I only notice it on boot up or when it comes out of sleep. -- Fingerprints show up easily on the external case OTHER CONSIDERATIONS: -- The total weight is 3.14 LBS for the keyboard and dock. While there are lighter laptops out there, this is still relatively light and svelte enough to be taken anywhere. -- The battery life is decent. I tested it, using it just as a tablet without the dock, with moderate but constant use -- web browsing, downloading and installing Windows updates and a few applications -- no heavy use, though and no video. It lasted 8 hours on one full charge before it ran out. I was satisfied with this. SOME ADVICE/ RECOMMENDATIONS: This does not come with system installation disks. Instead, there is a 15gb hidden recovery partition on the hard drive which has an image of the factory installation. You can install this from within Windows 8.1, but as an extra precaution, I strongly suggest one of the first things you do if you buy this is to download Asus Backtracker (it’s free) and make a bootable flash drive that includes and will install these recovery files. That way if the recovery partition somehow gets corrupted, you have the flash drive to restore from. You will need a flash drive that is 16gb or larger for this purpose. I tested the bootable drive made this way and it worked fine for bootup, but you had to use the touchscreen for navigation. If you plan to use the T300 Chi for any significant image editing, I suggest you do a few things – 1) Uninstall the Asus Splendid Video utility which tends to over-saturate colors. I uninstalled it and am just using Windows for all color management. 2) Turn off adaptive brightness in the advanced settings of your Windows power profile. If you don’t, Windows will automatically adjust the screen brightness on its own. For image editing, you want a consistent screen brightness at all times that only you control. A BUG: If you are in tablet mode, have the taskbar on auto-hide, and have the option checked in the taskbar settings to “Show Windows Store apps on the taskbar” then the taskbar becomes stuck in the hidden position and it’s hard to bring it up, which you’ll need to do to make the onscreen keyboard appear and to input text. Simply unchecking that option fixes the problem and lets you easily unhide the taskbar by touching the taskbar area. CONCLUSION: A convertible gives you the best of both worlds – the power of a Windows laptop plus the ease, convenience and portability of a tablet. The tablet side of things can use a little work, but a lot of those issues have to do with Windows limitations or issues with software vendors and are shared by other Windows-based convertibles and PCs today. If you’re in the market for a convertible 2-in-1, the T300 Chi is one solid and beautiful performer that can meet most needs. I highly recommend it, despite the few issues, and It will become my everyday computer now. UPDATE 5/1/15: Since I wrote the original review, I have discovered that the touchscreen functionality and on-screen keyboard do work fully in Windows safe mode. So that mode is accessible right out of the box. And I discovered that if you attach a USB wireless keyboard, you can boot up normally with a Windows PE-based disk. Since one of the 2 concerns in my original review that caused me to dock it a star no longer exists, I would now rate this as 4-1/2 stars, but since you can't give half stars I will simply give it 5 stars as the other concern I had -- lack of optimization in the OS for touch navigation -- is more a Windows fault than anything else. I have noticed some complaints about the lack of a user manual. There is an e-manual supplied right on the laptop and you can access it via the Windows Metro menu (the one with all the rectangles). You can also download the manual in pdf form from the Asus website. I have also seen a few comments about how the screen could be brighter. This screen CAN be adjusted to be blindingly bright. However, by default adaptive brightness is enabled in all the power profiles that ship with the T300 Chi, and that has the effect of limiting how much you can manually increase the brightness. If this bothers you, go into the advanced power settings for all the power profiles you use and turn off adaptive brightness. Once turned off, you can increase the brightness by however much you want. UPDATE 5-9-15: I just discovered that the wireless adapter of the Chi supports the 5GHz wireless band. I've had a dual band Netgear router for a few years, but this is the very first PC or mobile device I've owned that supports the 5GHz band and can take advantage of the faster speed. Note that this may not mean faster internet browsing or internet download speeds as that is capped by your ISP. But in testing writing to a wireless NAS setup, the 5GHz band is 2-3 times faster in write speed and up to 5 times faster in read speed than the 2.4GHz band is. Wow! I was very surprised and impressed with the big difference. My NAS setup is just a USB drive attached to my Netgear router. I had only used this sporadically because access speed was so slow over the 2.4GHz band. Now with the faster speed, I find backing up critical files and data to the NAS wirelessly is so much more feasible. Keep in mind that some apps on a mobile device that sync wirelessly with your PC may not work if the two devices are on different networks. But in limited testing, I've had no problem syncing BitTorrent Sync, Send Anywhere, and Calibre Companion when my mobile device is on the slower band and my Chi is on the faster 5GHz band.