Asus PadFone X

“The Asus PadFone X is one of the best-rounded high-end propositions available in the Android realm at the moment. It skillfully blends a powerful chipset, a good display, and a capable camera into a solidly built package, thus offering a mighty good alternative to the established players on the US market.The device surely is a welcome sight on the busy smartphone field in the United States by offering a combination of talents which none of its direct competitors can exactly match. Having a PadFone device offered by a major carrier such as AT&T ends years of anticipation and overpaying for grey imports to online retailers. It also gives Asus access to the vast, highly lucrative US smartphone market.”

“Device convergence is attractive in theory, but in practice, the added convenience often comes with compromise. With the PadFone X, that compromise crops up in the form of lag on the tablet side, and some jarring transitions between phone and tablet on the software side. I'm willing to give Asus and AT&T a pass on those for two reasons: One, I suspect some of these issues can be tightened up with software revving, two, and most importantly, the $199 price for the smartphone and tablet dock is just an unbelievable deal. The shareable data connection bridges a crucial functionality gap missing in many tablets, while the added battery in the dock helps mitigate one of the major concerns that stems from using your phone for everything. You could allocate $200 for a tablet and grab a smartphone for free on contract, but no free phone is going to be able to match the PadFone X, and you'd be hard pressed to find a solid large-screen tablet for that price.”

“The Asus PadFone X is a winner. It’s not the best phone, and it’s far from the best tablet, but for the price, it’s hard to beat it. You get a very good phone and a decent tablet attachment that lets you use your apps in a new way. We did have some issues with apps crashing if you yank the phone out of the dock while using them, but we got used to closing our apps before disconnecting.Even if you dislike the tablet and don’t use it much, for the price, this is a good phone by itself. We can’t wait to see what Asus comes up with next.”

“If I've seemed unduly harsh on the Padfone X, it's because I still think there's a place in the world for a hybrid like this. Sadly, despite years of tinkering with the same formula, ASUS couldn't completely stick the landing this time around. For all the gripes I've leveled at this thing, though, I've had to mentally repeat one sentence like a mantra throughout my weeks of testing: all of this is just $200 with a contract. For the same price as a single, shiny top-tier handset, you could nab yourself a very respectable smartphone and a tablet that (while flawed) still works. I'd wager there's a decent number of people out there who'd embrace that math wholeheartedly.But are you one of them? If you've got the means, you'll almost definitely be better served by buying separate phones and tablets. The promise of seamless syncing is a tempting one, and one worth getting right. ASUS hasn't done that here. To be honest, I hope it gets another chance at cracking the brutal US market -- the right sort of design and software tweaks could turn the next-generation Padfone into a gadget worthy of our collective drool. For now, though, ponder the arithmetic and see if you can do better.”