204
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #156,215 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
Great keyboard turns your tablet into a netbook.
I've had this keyboard for 2 days now. The build quality on the keyboard itself is great and really makes your transformer look like a netbook. There is no flex in the keyboard which I have seen on my expensive laptops. It is only 8% smaller than a standard keyboard so it's been pretty easy for me to type on. In fact I'm typing this review from my keyboard now. The chicklet keys are great and make it much easier to figure out which key your finger is on. The usb ports recognize my ntfs formatted usb hard drive. I don't have an SDXC card to test it out but from what I'm seeing it should be able to read those cards to giving you a big boost in memory in case you could only pick up the 16gb Transformer like most people so far. The trackpad is nice and responsive but a bit too sensitive. I have found my thumbs inadvertantly hitting the trackpad, but you can disable the trackpad and use a usb mouse or bluetooth mouse with your transformer, pluss the touchscreen still works great. There are plenty of dedicated android buttons. Including a screenshot button brightness, volume, media player wifi, bluetooth, home screen, internet, and menu buttons. Having the ctrl buttons are great when I'm using splashtop to control my PC from my Transformer. Too bad it's missing a recent apps key, but that's always on your screen to click anyway.
Now to the software glitches that keep me from giving this five stars. There are times I've had the keybaord stop responding and have had to remove the transformer and put it back in to get it back on. Also it inadvertantly disables wifi even though my finger was nowhere near that key. Others are having this issue to, and disabling the trackpad seems to reduce the frequency by which it happens, and we're hearing Asus has already heard of the issue and is looking into it. This should be able to be fixed with software considering the keyboard itself even has it's own firmware.
Also another thing to note is that since the Transformer is heavier than the dock it is a bit screen heavy but Asus seems to have alleviated most of this issue with the way that the whole part that connects to the transformer itself also protudes out the bottom to act as a stand to angle the keyboard and help shift some of the weight.
Overall it's a great accessory. Adds 7 hours of battery life, holds your screen up for you, has 2 usb ports and a full size SD card slot. It's obvious Asus really thought about the design of this dock, and it wasn't simply designed to be an added keyboard, but to give your Transformer that netbook feel with a screen that is better than any I've seen on a netbook.
Update 5-9-2011
I've been using the keyboard for 5 days now and wanted to post an update to the software issues I mentioned. For some reason mine have seen to gone away. I can leave the trackpad enabled and have no issues with it losing keyboard or trackpad connectivity, and it's stopped randomly disabling the wifi, so I upped my rating to 5 stars.
Update: 6-11-2011
Been over a month with the keyboard. Asus has an update to the keyboard firmware that fixed a few issues the keyboard was having. I wish there was a battery meter built in on the dock, but there are some widgets out over at XDA that handle this. Keyboard still types very solidly. The battery on the keyboard is great. Sometimes I'll charge just the dock so I can use the tablet away from the wall, then when the dock is done charging plug the transformer into the dock and charge while typing away with buddies on google chat. I probably dock and undock my keyboard over 3-6 times a day and the mechanism is still solid and works very well. This is a great sign since Asus has said this keyboard dock will work with future transformer tablets. That's great knowing I can use my most expensive and favorite accessory going forward.
May 2011 · Electronics