The apps bundled with the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA

Most hardware devices come with various apps bundled by their manufacturers. Some devices have way too many bundled apps, while others don't. ASUS Transformer Book T100HA is somewhere in the middle. ASUS bundled a few apps and some can prove to be useful to you:

• ASUS WinFlash - an application dedicated to updating the BIOS software of the device. You should keep it.

• ASUS Live Update - an application that you can use to manage the operating system updates. Very similar to the settings found in Windows.

• ASUS eManual - the user manual of the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA.

• ASUS Splendid Utility - an application that you can use to switch between color presets for the display.

• ASUS On-screen Display - turns on or off the on-screen display of notifications, other than those already shown by Windows.

• Netflix - depending on where you live, you'll either love this app or dislike ASUS for bundling it. In the US and a couple of other countries where Netflix is available, you will want to use this app and stream movies and TV shows to your device. In countries where this service is unavailable, you should uninstall this app as it will not provide any value to you.

• Flipboard - a popular news app which you can use to create customized magazines based on your news feed. You may want to experiment it with before deciding on whether to keep it or not.

• Twitter - the official Windows app for this social network.

The ASUS Transformer Book T100HA doesn't bundle too many apps and some of them are useful and you should keep them.

Performance in benchmarks

The hardware of the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA is less powerful than what you'd find in a laptop, but it's also quite a lot for a tablet. To get a clearer picture of its performance we've run a few benchmarks and compared the results with those we got on the original ASUS Transformer Book T100, those we got from the ASUS Transformer Book T200 and two similar devices from Toshiba: the Toshiba Encore and the Toshiba Encore 2.

The first thing we measured is the average boot time. To do that, we used BootRacer. As you can see from the chart below, our ASUS Transformer Book T100HA was quite slow. However, we must also mention that the T100HA is the only one that runs on Windows 10 and that may hold significance.. The other devices in our chart were all running Windows 8.1.

Next, we wanted to assess this device's performance in everyday computing situations, like when you're writing documents in Office, browsing the web, chatting on Skype or playing some casual games. We turned to the PCMark 8 benchmark and we ran a few tests with its Home accelerated preset. As you can see in the screenshot below, we got a score of 1646 points

Then, we ran the 3DMark, a popular gaming benchmark app, in order to measure the gaming performance offered by the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA when playing casual games aimed at tablet users. We ran the Ice Storm Unlimited tests and we got a score of 18792 points.

As you can notice in the chart below, the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA is definitely more powerful than all the other devices we've compared it to.

ASUS Transformer Book T100HA does quite well even in light gaming situations. After seeing that, we thought "What if… we'd actually try playing a desktop game? It should be a game that's wildly popular and one that does require average hardware resources. Let's play League of Legends!". It sounds awkward, right? Playing League of Legends on a device that's actually a hulked tablet. Well, we tried it! We downloaded the League of Legends client and we played a few games. The ASUS Transformer Book T100HA actually did OK!

We were able to play League of Legends on high settings at a medium frame rate of about 35 fps, with the lowest frame drop going to about 24. Changing the video settings to medium or low raised the average fps we got to about 50 - 60. This is great - a "tablet-like" device that's able to run games decent!

Finally, we ran PowerMark in order to see how well the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA does in terms of its autonomy. We chose to run the Balanced tests so that we'd get results for battery life when doing all kinds of stuff, like browsing the web, doing some light photo editing, watching movies or chatting online. After all the tests were ended, we got an estimated battery life of 5 hours and 40 minutes, which is OK in our opinion.

After we measured the battery discharge time of the ASUS Transformer Book T100HA, it was only natural to also check its charging time. It took 5 hours to fully charge this device back to 100% battery, which is exactly the amount of time it took for it to go empty. It's not a great result, if you ask us, even though it is on par with the first ASUS Transformer Book T100.

The ASUS Transformer Book T100HA offered good results in all the benchmarks we ran. It's a well-rounded device that can handle normal computing activities, like browsing the web, writing documents or video chat without any issue. Even more, it's also powerful enough for you to be able to do some casual gaming sessions on it.

Verdict

The ASUS Transformer Book T100HA is a good looking device, with a better than average build quality, a good level of performance and an affordable price tag that makes it stand out. There may be other similar devices out there that perform better or look nicer, but they will surely cost more. If you want a device that's easy to carry with you anywhere you go, with good battery life and powerful enough to do your work and even some light gaming, ASUS Transformer Book T100HA should be among your top choices. We liked the new version of ASUS Transformer Book T100 and we think that it deserves our "Budget choice" award.