Asus Vivo Tab RT Review: Windows RT Takes Flight
Camera App, Performance, Battery Life
Though the camera app in Windows RT may look a little uninspiring, with it's simple box control panes, drop-down menus and sliders, I actually appreciated the simplicity, which is one of the primary attractions of Microsoft's new OS to begin with.
Microsoft Windows RT Camera App
Asus Vivo Tab RT Still Camera Samples
In brighter settings and with a steady hand you can realize better results, though. This appears to be an area that both Microsoft and manufacturers are still buffing out a bit.
In an attempt to quantitatively measure the ASUS Vivo Tab RT's battery life in a controlled benchmark environment, we ran a test in which we set up a webpage with a mix of graphics, Flash media and text. The page automatically refreshes every three minutes. This is a simple baseline test that measures up time while web browsing. Due to time constraints, we were only able to test the tablet itself and not the keyboard dock, which offers additional battery capacity.
For this test, we set the Vivo Tab RT's display to 50% brightness, which is still plenty bright and easy on the eyes.
RESULTS NOT FINAL
;)
;)
Microsoft Windows RT Camera App
;)
;)
Asus Vivo Tab RT Still Camera Samples
Unfortunately, even though there's an 8MP camera on board the ASUS Vivo RT, image quality definitely wasn't the best, especially in low light settings. Even with the flash on, auto-focusing was challenged and resulted in somewhat grainy, lower fidelity shots.
;)
In brighter settings and with a steady hand you can realize better results, though. This appears to be an area that both Microsoft and manufacturers are still buffing out a bit.
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In an attempt to quantitatively measure the ASUS Vivo Tab RT's battery life in a controlled benchmark environment, we ran a test in which we set up a webpage with a mix of graphics, Flash media and text. The page automatically refreshes every three minutes. This is a simple baseline test that measures up time while web browsing. Due to time constraints, we were only able to test the tablet itself and not the keyboard dock, which offers additional battery capacity.
For this test, we set the Vivo Tab RT's display to 50% brightness, which is still plenty bright and easy on the eyes.
RESULTS NOT FINAL
Now before you get all worked up with excitement, unfortunately the playing field is a bit uneven here. You see Flash support currently in Windows RT appears spotty depending on the website and thus the workload for web browsing may have been dramatically reduced for the ASUS Vivo Tab RT. All of the other times listed here are based on browsers and operating systems that support Flash media fully. We've been told that technically, Windows RT supports Flash in the IE10 browser but that currently there may be issues site to site. As a result, the Vivo Tab RT's time could be a bit skewed and exaggerated. For further reference, ASUS claims the device is capable of about 8 hours of use in continuous HD video playback.
** We'll update this graph in the next few days, as we've been told that Microsoft will be pushing a major update to Windows RT devices on October 26th, which will include a significant Flash update as well.
** We'll update this graph in the next few days, as we've been told that Microsoft will be pushing a major update to Windows RT devices on October 26th, which will include a significant Flash update as well.
