The Asus Eee Pad Transformer TF101 Tablet, when paired with its matching keyboard dock, morphs into a tablet that strikes an admirable balance between productivity and entertainment. 16GB Wi-Fi model is an inexpensive Android 3.0 tablet.

In its design, the Transformer shares some characteristics with other current tablets. The front face is dominated by a 10.1-inch display, with various buttons, HDMI and USB ports, and slots distributed along the edges. The Transformer has familiar-sounding guts, too - It runs Nvidia's 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 platform, carries 1GB of RAM, and uses Google's Android 3.01 (Honeycomb) OS.

Running along the bottom edge of the Transformer is the 40-pin dock connector. The tablet comes with a power adapter and a USB-to-dock connector cable. The dock connector can charge from the adapter or via the cable, when connected to a PC (for a trickle charge only). The cable can also handle data transfers from a PC.

At back is a 5.0-megapixel camera for still image capture and video capture at 720p. The Transformer uses a 1280-by-800-pixel IPS display, and has a widescreen 16:10 aspect ratio. As in Apple's iPad series, the use of IPS technology helps the tablet achieve excellent viewing angles (Asus says that the range is 178 degrees), improved color, and deeper blacks.

The Transformer has 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR connectivity.