An Update on Transformer Prime Battery Life & WiFi Issues
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 2, 2011 11:14 AM ESTIn our review of ASUS' Eee Pad Transformer Prime I mentioned that I couldn't sustain speeds greater than 2Mbps over WiFi on my review unit. In practice, most web pages loaded at a meager 0.5Mbps. ASUS insisted the problem was limited to my unit however CNet referred to a similar issue in their testing:
Unfortunately, during the review process, we experienced some very suspect performance issues (detailed below), which led us to believe we were possibly in possession of a faulty unit. So, we are going to hold off on giving final ratings for the Prime, but check out our initial impressions.
At the same time, I had test data from both ASUS and NVIDIA that show the Prime is capable of reasonable WiFi speeds. Yesterday morning I received a replacement Prime which was tested prior to being sent my way. The good news is the 2Mbps cap and poor range are both gone, the new sample is much faster on WiFi. Clearly there was something wrong with my original unit and it's being sent back to ASUS today for an autopsy. The bad news is I was still getting numbers around half of the original Transformer.
Using Ookla's Speedtest.net web app I get a consistent 34 - 37Mbps on the original Eee Pad Transformer (our actual WiFi performance tests involve downloading a file from a local server, but Speedtest was a quick and easy way to verify the problem). My original Prime review sample averaged around 0.5Mbps, while the replacement Prime got around 10Mbps - all in the same test location. Fiddling around with location I could get the replacement Prime up to 16Mbps. My test area is riddled with challenging interference so I setup a separate test area in another room. Even after buying the same Netgear WNDR4500 wireless AP that ASUS verified 31Mbps+ operation on, I wasn't able to break 16Mbps.
I have four other APs covering my house, I turned all of the radios off as a last ditch effort. Boom - 36Mbps on the Prime.
The culprit appeared to be either my 3rd gen Time Capsule or 5th gen Airport Extreme, with those radios off and using the WNDR4500 I was able to get performance competitive to the original Transformer. Here's where things get interesting. The original Transformer was made out of plastic, through which RF travels quite nicely. The Prime's metal construction makes things a bit more finicky. Indeed this is exactly what I saw, where depending on tablet and AP orientation I'd see anywhere between 10Mbps and 36Mbps downstream (average speed tended to be in the 15 - 20Mbps range). Apple gets around this issue in the iPad by putting the WiFi antenna behind the plastic Apple logo, however it's not entirely clear to me where the WiFi antenna is on the Prime (I have this policy about not taking things apart until I'm done testing them).
As to why performance was lower with the Apple APs active, I'm not entirely sure. Chasing down RF interference issues can be a severe undertaking. One thing is for sure, the Prime is going to be far more finicky than its predecessor when it comes to reaching peak speeds over WiFi.
WiFi performance isn't the only thing that improved with the new unit - I'm getting much better battery life as well. Our video playback battery life test doesn't have anything running in the background, but we are actively connected to a WiFi network throughout the duration of the test. As I surmized in our review, it's possible that whatever was causing the WiFi issues also had a negative impact on battery life. Curious to find out if battery life had changed as well as how the TF Prime did in its Balanced power mode, that's the first test I ran upon receiving the new review unit. Things are starting to look a lot better:
I'm running the new unit through the test in Normal mode as well, I'll have updated results there by the end of the weekend. Given the rush to get the initial review out, you can expect a followup (along with a video review) sometime next week. I'll be working on it as well as some HDD/SSD caching stuff all weekend.
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JarredWalton - Saturday, December 3, 2011 - link
The more pertinent question: was the antenna even connected properly in the original unit? I'm betting "no".ATOmega - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
So the real question now becomes: Are any of the issues spotted so far ones that can be fixed given that the Transformer Prime is more or less a done deal?Reception issues due to the metal casing don't seem like something they can fix without recalling each and every one to apply a fix, no?
Do you think that given these findings, the Transformer Prime has an irreconcilably fatal flaw?
BugblatterIII - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Antennagate II : You're Pointing It WrongMarkLuvsCS - Sunday, December 4, 2011 - link
"Can you hear me n..........."bh192012 - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Well the other question might be, do we know that iPad isn't as sensitive to antenna alignment? If the iPad happend to be aligned well (randomly well with Anand's house/configuration, no neighbors with funky setup at the time) during the test, then there wouldn't have been any question and alignment wouldn't have been tested.Basically the only way to be sure is to do the testing at the same time, otherwise there's a decent chance something in the environment has changed.
ATOmega - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Good enough point, I've had strange reception with my iPad2 despite being a wooden floor directly above the AP.jamdev12 - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Hi Anand,A question for you. If your notion is correct, did you have issues with the Asus Zenbooks since they are made of the same material and the wifi antennas would be in the monitor casing?
Thanks,
Jamdev12
solipsism - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
That's more like it for Asus.Omid.M - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Anand,If you could show the screen in IPS+ mode OUTDOORS, that would be sweet. Just planting a seed here :)
Looks like Android tabs are getting competitive. I just wish they'd take better care to make more UI stuff GPU accelerated.
@moids
wouterkcs - Friday, December 2, 2011 - link
Do we have a WIFI gate issue similar to the Iphone gate?Will this be fixed with be retail units scheduled for shipments in two weeks?
Will we have more problems when we upgrade to ICS?
Should we wait till these issues are fixed?
Regards,