 It has taken me forever to do this with all the complications on my channel and whatnot, but I am finally unboxing the ASUS EPAD TF-101 Transformer. This is the 16 gig model and I don't have the keyboard on me today, but I am still very excited to bring you this unboxing because even though everyone and their dog has pretty much done it at this point, I have not yet and I am still excited. The one that I had before when I did a little bit of content on the TF-101 back closer to launch was a demo unit, so I did not have a retail box I could not share with you. The retail box. Unboxing experience. The inside of the box is black, very stylish. The product itself is there and now I will remove it. The plastic that holds the product is also black. Ah, there is all the accessories. So, let's have a look at the accessories themselves. The first thing we find is a little EPAD paper thingamajiggy holder. It's a paper holder. There. Finally managed to spit it out. We have a user's manual, which is obviously not very complete. Really, you are using Android. So what you are going to have to do is you are going to have to browse the forums. Try things. Just try things. Because Android, what I discovered, was a little bit hard for me to get into. I spent a fair amount of time with Motorola Zoom over the last little while. And it doesn't feel quite right at first, but once you set it up the way that you like it, it's very, very natural to use. So this is Android Honeycomb. A couple tips for using your EPAD. So they show you how to use some of the included things, including the file manager, which allows you to manage your internal storage, removable devices, including the micro SD port, and removing the external storage devices. So there you go. There's a little icon there. So that's one of the more Android, transformer specific ones. You got a charger cable here. So that's just a USB charger cable. And you also have a wall wart. So you got a power to USB power adapter guy right there. Now, the transformer TF-101 itself. Actually, let's see what ASUS has to say for itself in terms of what they think are the best features right off the bat here. So 178 degrees. Now ASUS makes, they're not shy about advertising that they are using an IPS panel in here that is covered with Gorilla Glass. That is a premium feature. IPS panel means you not only have better viewing angles, so you can pretty much see what's on the screen, even from way over here, way over here, but you also have better color accuracy regardless of where you're looking at it from. So that is a great feature. They also claim up to 9.5 hours of battery life and that is with the screen at 60 nits as I recall in terms of brightness and playing back 720p video. Next SRS 3D stereo sound. Don't bother coming in. It's okay. I can read these. So it does have stereo speakers and they do have software on here that allows you to in theory enjoy surround sound. But my experience with those software solutions in the past is that they're not that compelling. I would still say though that compared to something like an iPad 2, having stereo speakers on the unit is a definite plus. That is a selling point for sure because using the iPad 2 to watch videos over the last little while has kind of annoyed me that it only has one speaker and that the speaker is hidden away on the back of the unit. Next we have a 10 finger multi-touch input so you can potentially put both of your hands on it and go like this should you so desire. If you want to like fruit ninja it up and you're like ahhh I just want to hit everything then you can use all 10 fingers if you want. Next we've got a keyboard dock with USB and SD card reader that is optional. So that also includes an extended battery. Like I said I don't have that today but that does use these latches right here as well as this input in order to connect not only the, oh yeah no I already said that, the USB SD card reader and the extended battery as well as the keyboard and then it folds up like a laptop and it also acts as a case slash screen protector. But there's also 680 grams light. Really they say 680 grams light. Well I would say it is 680 grams of weight or 680 grams heavy but you know everyone can interpret that the way they desire. So why don't we turn this baby on. Now like the Zoom which is one of the tablets that I have more experience with than this particular one, like the Zoom the transformer is intended to be used in portrait mode. So you can actually, here give me a second I'm going to grab my iPad. So like the Zoom the transformer has its webcam as well as its light sensor on the top. You can see that the logo here is right side up when you are holding it in landscape mode. So when you compare that to something like an iPad 2 where your camera is here, Steve Jobs clearly is expecting you to use the tablet more like how you would use a traditional notepad. Okay so actually you can see that mine is locked in landscape mode right now. You would be able to see that if I could figure out how to unlock it. Normally it's over here. Oh right right because I set up the button. So yeah I didn't even know how to get it to go into portrait mode because I predominantly use it for watching videos. Actually here's the thing I complained about before where the iPad 2's only speaker is on the back which means that if you are watching videos in a less than ideal environment you are not going to be able to hear very well. So let's get back to the TF-101. It's running with a Tegra 2 processor. This is something I haven't mentioned yet and this is a huge advantage that a lot of the honeycomb tablets running Tegra 2 have over something like an Apple iPad. So you have way more 3D performance out of a Tegra 2 than you are going to get out of any other chip on the market. Now there aren't a ton of games that take advantage of it but the titles are rapidly rolling in. So even something like Fruit Ninja looks better on Tegra 2 and I'm not even kidding because the fruit will actually be far more round and less polygon-y like this when you're slicing through. I mean does it make a huge difference to the gameplay experience? No. But it's still kind of cool that you do get better graphics out of the Tegra 2 platform. Now in terms of a few more spec things before I just finish up with the physical look of the unit. I've turned it on now. You've got a 1.2 megapixel camera in the front. The camera on the back is a 5 megapixel camera and that is also located in an ideal location for landscape mode use where as you can see once again on the iPad 2 it is configured more for portrait use. And I think that's pretty much it actually. Okay so physical layout. Let's have a look at the button. So here's our power button here on the side. This is a far more ideal location than the one on the zoom in my opinion which is on the back right here. I don't bother getting too close. It's okay. I'm just showing general things. On the side here it means that when you're using it whether you're using it like this or like this you can kind of reach it. Whereas when it's on the back it's very awkward to reach up here. It's not always comfortable. So on the top we don't have any buttons at all. On this side we've got a microphone port or rather sorry headphone slash microphone port so that can be used with like a headset style device. We have a mini HDMI that is such a cool feature. Mini HDMI is don't bother getting too close. Mini HDMI is great for playing games like that wave runner style game where basically you can go like this and then you can actually watch the big screen at the same time. So it does support 1080p output over HDMI. Finally we have a micro SD card. So this is the big reason why very few people are buying 32 gig transformers because you can buy the 16 gig buy yourself a cheap micro SD card throw it in there and all of a sudden you've got a bunch more storage. Now in terms of the oh actually Gorilla Glass what does that mean? It means you've got a very durable piece of glass on the front and on the back. This is a huge complaint I have about the iPad 2. So you can see the back of my iPad 2 I've only had this thing for about a month. I've got a big old scratch there that was actually from sliding it across a granite countertop. I just got generally the back looks totally grungy and horrible already. The back of the transformer I mean it's not real attractive it's brown let's be honest here but what it is is very durable very scratch resistant I guarantee you. You know I'm going to do this I'm going to take a brand new transformer and I'm going to go like this because I don't care because the textured back the textured appearance of the back is going to really mask and really hide things like fingerprints and small surface scratches much better than most other surfaces out there. So thank you for checking out my unboxing of the Asus Transformer TF-101 don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos. Sorry guys some clarification about the speaker that's cameraman by the way who's visiting us here. He's going out to lunch but I can't because I'm busy. So these are not the speakers sorry about that that's just a textured pattern on the side of the unit. The speakers are actually located here and here on the other side so while that is significantly better than being located on the back it's still not going to give you quite the sound performance of a front mounted speaker and I actually don't know if any of these tablets have front mounted speakers so I had originally thought these were in the front they're not so there small correction. Sorry guys one more note Asus also advertises one year unlimited web storage that comes with the TF-101 so that's kind of cool.