ASUS VivoTab Note 8 Tablet Review

Stylus but not stylish

by Greg Hook
Tech Review

3

ASUS VivoTab Note 8 Tablet Review
MSRP: £280.00

Introduction

Samsung showed what could be done with a larger screen device on their 12.2" Galaxy TabPRO, which boasted an impressive specification, excellent performance and bucket loads of features. Unfortunately it also came with a wallet-busting price tag of almost £550. We'd guess that would probably put it out of the price range of most casual tablet owners and possibly the large 12" size would be off-putting anyway. For those looking for something a bit smaller and also considerably more affordable, it's the 8" range of tablets that look particularly enticing. We've got many players in this market from the iPad Mini starting at £319, the Samsung Galaxy TabPRO 8.4" at £279.00 and a whole range of budget Android tablets all vying for a share of this lucrative market.

We also have a host of new tablets with the Windows OS, which has been around for some time but only became worth bothering with when Microsoft released Windows 8. Although even they would admit the Windows 8 release was poorly managed and got off to a very bad start on both PC and Tablet. Things improved with the Windows 8.1 update and keeping this positivity in mind, we've got a very promising looking tablet in for review. The ASUS VivoTab Note 8 comes in at a very reasonable £280 but offers a particularly impressive specification for that money. Including a Quad Core Intel Atom CPU, 2GB RAM, 32GB storage, a stylus pen and a 1280 x 800 LED 8" screen. Our previous reviews of Windows 8 tablets resulted in particularly frustrating user experience, so let's see if this ASUS VivoTab Note 8 with Windows 8.1 can do better.

Design and Connectivity

It's certainly not going to win any awards in the design category, if it weren't for the various ASUS logos you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd just picked up a budget Android tablet, but as this is a sub £300 Windows 8.1 tablet, is this a major issue? It's an all black affair with a rubberised plastic rear panel, black plastic edging and black bezel. It has a nice sturdy feel (once you've removed the multitude of stickers on the rear panel that is) and there was no noticeable flexing as we've found with several Samsung tablets. The bezel is large enough to have your thumbs sitting comfortably when in use and not fouling the screen. It does feel particularly chunky though and with a weight of 389g it's a fair amount heavier than the likes of the iPad Mini for example.

No home button on the front of the tablet with this VivoTab Note 8 but you do get a Windows button on the left side. Then to the right we have a power button and the volume control, so not particularly overflowing with controls here and the connection options aren't massively generous either. To the left we find the MicroSD card slot which can take cards up to 128GB in size, no connections along the right side or the bottom apart from the slot for the stylus pen and just the MicroUSB 2.0 port and speaker port to the top. A micro HDMI port would have been a welcome addition, no other display types are present either. The tablet does support Miracast thankfully.

ASUS VivoTab Note 8

Specification and Performance

The Vivotab 8 has a reasonable specification for the money, using a Quad Core Intel Atom Z3740 CPU with a clock speed of 1.33Ghz and a burst speed of 1.86Ghz, with Intel HD graphics (up to 667 Mhz) and DirectX 11 support. Coupled with 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and finally dual cameras in the shape of a 1.26MP front camera (720P video recording) and a 5MP rear camera. Additional storage is available via the microSD card slot up to 128GB and of course as this is a Windows tablet, providing you have the correct MicroUSB adaptor you can easily attach external hard drives for even more storage - which you will most likely need. The 32GB eMMC translates to 28.2GB in Windows, of which once you deduct 14GB for the Windows installation and about 4GB for other files, leaves you with barely 10GB to play with; so a microSD card is a recommended addition to this tablet.

The two cameras are nothing special unfortunately with the front camera, as the 1.26MP specification suggests, really only for webcam use and the 5MP rear camera with the absence of any sort of flash produced particularly grainy and low quality images, even in reasonably good light. The size of the tablet means you won't look as daft as someone with a 10 or 12" tablet trying to take photos at an event and completely obscuring the view of people behind them, but the quality is just not there and you'd probably do far better with your phone camera or a separate digital camera.

The main specification is very similar to other Windows 8 tablets in this price range such as the Dell Venue 8 and Toshiba Encore but what ASUS hope will set this apart is the inclusion of a Professional Wacom Stylus Pen that offers 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity. The stylus (hidden away in the bottom of the tablet) does add a much increased level of usability here as the small screen size with Windows 8 can present some pretty small icons or buttons and if you have particularly large fingers the onscreen keyboard could present some difficulties, but with the stylus it makes the tablet very easy to use.

Despite this being a Windows 8 tablet and allowing the installation of pretty much any Windows program, you do have to bear in mind the specification. The Windows gremlins unfortunately reared their ugly heads when accessing titles on the Windows store. Unlike our experiences with iOS and Android, the Windows App Store seems poorly designed with a particularly unhelpful layout. We tested with a few random games and applications and the first few failed to download and then the Store finally crashed. A reboot along with cancelling and retrying the downloads cured the issue but it wasn't an easy process. Our benchmark tests using the Ice Storm test on 3DMark gave just 15433 (16193 for Ice Storm Unlimited). We did try PC Mark 8 but it failed to install.

ASUS VivoTab Note 8

Features

As we mentioned above, one of the main stand out features of this tablet is the stylus and it's one not found on many other 8" tablets in this price range. It makes using the tablet a much more pleasant experience and adds a considerable amount of functionality. The tablet also comes with a free version of Microsoft Office Home and Student that amongst the usual Word and Excel also includes OneNote 2013, which works with the stylus and turns the tablet into a digital notebook. If you are arty or into photo editing the stylus again comes into its own with various applications such as the free Paint.

1000GB of free (for a year) cloud storage.

Another valuable addition is a free one year subscription to ASUS WebStorage with a 1000GB limit. A huge amount of online storage that we doubt you would ever use up. The only problem may come when the year is up as to continue the subscription the cost is £74.69 per year for 500GB, but even so for a year you would have all the online storage you could ever need, for free. Due to the storage size, the amount of pre-installed software is thankfully kept to a bare minimum as other than the MS Office that we've previously mentioned there is no other desktop software to speak of.

On the app side of things we have a trio of ASUS apps pre-installed. Firstly PhotoDirector is reasonably capable and covers all the basics as photo editor that works very well with the stylus, PowerDirector does the same for video files and YouCam is a standard camera app with a few extras. Other than those the only other one of note is Skype. No official YouTube app currently exists for Windows 8 tablets, there are many free versions but most appear to be browser based with many adverts and some that don't actually work at all. As far as app support goes, Windows tablets are still a considerable distance behind the likes of the iPad and Android tablets, but in many cases the desktop version will work as well, if not better, so we don't see this is a huge issue and Windows is catching up all the time. A well designed Netflix app is now available for example.

Display

The display is an 8" LED backlight WXGA screen using an IPS panel with a resolution of 1280 x 800. With a PPI (pixels per inch) of just 189 it gives this screen an identical PPI to the original Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and slightly above the non retina iPad Mini at 163. Not the highest resolution you will find on an 8" tablet, those can be found on the likes of Apple's retina display iPad Mini and Samsung's Galaxy TabPRO 8.4 but that increased resolution does come at a significant cost premium compared to the Vivotab's sub £280 price point and with the Windows desktop at a higher resolution you would struggle to see anything without a magnifying glass anyway! With no 'HD' used in the specs, prior to getting our hands on it we were concerned and just how the screen would look, especially as this review came immediately after the excellent (but pricey) 12.2" Samsung Galaxy TabPRO, but our concerns were unfounded.

Our overall impression was a surprisingly positive one with the screen showing strong and bold colours, clear text and no issues with backlight bleeding or stuck pixels at all and the screen passed the several basic tests on Passmark's Monitor test program. The viewing angles were reasonable thanks to the IPS panel, although you wouldn't really want to go much past 45⁰. The brightness level could be a bit brighter for our liking as we do like a bright screen, but that's only really a minor issue. For general use the brightness is fine and Netflix and YouTube 720P looked particularly good on the small screen. Unfortunately we couldn't test with our 720P movies on Flixster as the screen wasn't supported for 'protected HD content' and no Flixster app is available in the Windows Store.

ASUS VivoTab Note 8

Audio

As with the display we did have a few concerns about how the audio would perform prior to getting our hands on it. The audio always seems to be the most neglected area with tablets, even on the much more expensive ones so for a £280 tablet our expectations weren't high. The audio is provided by a pair of stereo speakers located on the rear of the tablet at each end and uses ASUS SonicMaster technology which claims to give the speakers 'smooth, rich and detailed sound in music, movies, voice and even gaming'.

Disappointingly poor quality audio.

In contrast to the display where our expectations were exceeded, with the audio our concerns were justified. About the only positive was that the maximum volume level is very loud, but due to the poor quality speakers you wouldn't want to listen to it too loud or your ears might start bleeding. The audio isn't the worst we have heard on a tablet but it isn't far off. It just sounds like a pair of cheap mobile phone speakers, not too much distortion at the louder volumes but a lot of tinny sounds and a distinct lack of umph, for want of a better word. A side-by-side comparison against an iPhone and the tablet sounds far worse. Given the price of the tablet it's no surprise that the speakers have been neglected again, it's disappointing that the audio appears to be such a low priority. Headphones are most definitely recommended here!

Battery Life

The battery used here is a 15.5watt Li-ion with a claimed life of up to 8 hours. As always, these claims need to be taken with a pinch of salt. In our YouTube video test with the screen at 100% brightness, balanced power mode and with all the other features on as standard, we received an underwhelming 4 hours 47 minutes. Using Futuremark's Powermark battery life test benchmark with the balanced setting which uses an even split of web browsing, word processing, video and gaming to give a real world, more accurate result we received 5 hours 31 minutes. So quite a distance from the 8 hours quoted. The battery takes about 4 hours to fully recharge.

Media Integration

The VivoTab 8 isn't bursting at the seams in this regard with no out-of-the-box connectivity via HDMI or any other display type for example. The tablet is Miracast compatible though, so should you have a Miracast dongle or a TV with Miracast built in, you can easily send the video and audio from the tablet. Also thanks to the full Windows 8 OS and via the remote desktop feature, should you have a Home Cinema Setup with a media server the tablet could be used to control your server. So a pretty basic offering in this section from the VivoTab and it would have been nice to see a mini HDMI port fitted at least.

ASUS VivoTab Note 8

Conclusion

Pros

  • Excellent Wacom Stylus
  • Good value for money
  • Free Microsoft Office
  • Full Windows 8.1

Cons

  • Uninspiring design
  • Average Battery Life
  • Poor quality audio
  • Basic connections
  • Low quality cameras

ASUS VivoTab Note 8 Tablet Review

For a sub £300 Windows 8 tablet, the Asus VivoTab Note 8 has a lot to offer. The closest competitor with very similar specifications, the Dell Venue 8, doesn't offer a stylus out-of-the-box or have a handy little slot to keep it in either and the stylus is the big selling point here and what sets the tablet apart from the competition. It turns a basic Windows 8 tablet into a full digital notebook thanks to Microsoft's OneNote and adds a great deal of functionality and ease of use to the tablet too.

The latest version of Windows 8.1 has come a long way since its initial release but from a home user point of view for a tablet we feel it still has a long way to go. The overall experience doesn't compare to the smooth and effortless OS you find with the iPad and Android tablets and the app support is currently miles behind. No official YouTube app currently exists for Windows tablets, but there are apps for the likes of Netflix. For a business user this tablet will walk all over the previously mentioned competitors. With the ability to install and use any Windows software (whilst keeping in mind the specifications), coupled with the pre-installed full version of Microsoft Office Home and Student and also the free (for a year) 1000GB cloud storage, makes this an attractive proposition for a business user.

The 8" LED display with an IPS panel and 1280 x 800 resolution surprised us at how well it performed. Strong colours, clear text and no issues to speak of made this a particularly high point of our review. The audio on the other hand provided by the pair of stereo speakers was well below par with a very poor quality sound making headphones an essential addition for any prolonged use. The design is basic with no Windows Home button on the front (that's relegated to the side) and it does come out a little heavier than the competition although with a nice solid, if slightly chunky, feel to it. The connection options are very limited with no HDMI or USB 3.0 ports and the battery life was not particularly brilliant either with just 5 hours 31 minutes in our real world test via Powermark.

To sum up the ASUS VivoTab Note 8 it very much depends on what your requirements are. For the home user looking for a replacement to their iPad or Android tablet, the Windows 8 OS is still a long way off in the usability and availability of app departments. Plus the annoying issues are still present such as the keyboard failing to open up when clicking on a text entry box, then failing to disappear when you've clicked go. That may sound like a very minor issue but if you are coming from an iPad or Android tablet experience, this and several other minor differences will sully the experience somewhat. But if you can look past those, the ability to use any Windows software plus the general features and specification may make this an interesting alternative to the competition.

However for a business user the VivoTab offers significantly more than you can currently get with the iPad and Android tablets. With the full Windows 8 operating system any software can be installed and the excellent Wacom stylus turns the tablet into a full digital notebook helped by the free Microsoft Office software as well. For £280 you get a lot for your money, but issues such as very poor audio, lack of connections and average battery life means the tablet just misses out on our AVForums recommended award.

Scores

Design

.
.
8

Usability

.
.
.
.
.
.
4

Operating System

.
.
.
.
6

Display

.
.
.
.
.
5

Email, Browsing, Calendar, Contacts

.
.
8

Media Support

.
.
8

Value For Money

.
.
8

Verdict

.
.
.
7
7
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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