Asus Transformer Book Flip TP300LA review

A rotating laptop that's as fast as it is affordable

Asus has a respectable track record with Windows convertibles, mainly thanks to its high-quality Transformer Book Chi detachables. The Transformer Book TP300LA, however, is the first of Asus' rotating-screen laptops we've been able to give the full review treatment.

Whether it would be able to stand up to its great 2-in-1 stablemates, especially with a relatively low-end price tag of £339.99, was a mystery. Thus, we spent a few days living with it, using it both at work and at home; here are our findings.

Design
Despite the price, the Transformer Book Flip TP300LA feels sturdy enough; other than a plastic underside, it's mostly built from aluminium, which resisted the wear and tear of a few days' usage and transit. The 360-degree hinge is also reasonably firm, though like most of these kinds of devices, the screen can wobble when being poked in the "stand" configuration.

The downside is that it's still quite thick, and a little on the heavy side. It weighs 1.75kg and measures 326x232x22mm, neither of which are too bad by conventional laptop standards, but they do make a cumbersome experience when using the fully-rotated touchscreen like a tablet. We much preferred it sat on a desk in either the laptop, stand or "tent" setups.

That thickness doesn't afford the Asus Transformer Book Flip TP300LA an optical disk drive, like we sometimes see on full notebooks. However, there is room for plenty of connectivity options, including two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, a full-size HDMI port and an SD card reader. This covers all the essentials - removable storage, wired peripherals, display connectivity - more than adequately.

For something over 2cm thick, it's also quite classy-looking, with a lovely brushed metal finish on the lid and around the keyboard. Speaking of the latter, the keys are relatively shallow but perfectly spaced apart, and the trackpad buttons have a satisfyingly forceful click to them.

We're not keen on the placement of the power button - it's on the left-hand edge about parallel with the trackpad, so we accidentally put the device to sleep when picking it up - but generally, the Asus Transformer Book TP300LA's design is quite literally one of its stronger points.

Display
The same couldn't be said for the display; it's a 13.3in LED screen at a barely-HD resolution of 1366x768, producing a low pixel density of 118ppi.

While it doesn't look terribly fuzzy, the Transformer Book TP300LA's display is therefore a significant step down in sharpness compared to its mostly full HD competitors, including the vast 15.6in Toshiba Satellite Radius 15. This makes it a lot less suitable for imagery-based tasks like photo and video editing, which usually deal with very high-res files.

Even more concerning is how washed-out colours appear; there are no individual hues that stand out, and the whole screen ends up looking dark and flat as a result - even on maximum brightness.

The anti-glare coating works to an extent, lowering the harshness of nearby light sources even if their reflections remain. Sadly, it also adds a grim, almost oily effect, which makes whites and light colours even less clean and clear. Viewing angles are quite restrictive as well, which is never ideal.

Next: Operating system, software and performance

Asus Transformer Book Flip TP300LA review

A rotating laptop that's as fast as it is affordable

Operating system and software
The Transformer Book Flip TP300LA runs Windows 8.1 out of the box. The touchscreen makes the system more suitable for navigating 8.1's tile-based Metro interface than most laptops, nullifying one of our biggest gripes with the OS, and while this isn't the latest version of Windows anymore, it still boasts extensive compatibility with key business software and legacy applications.

That said, the arrival of Windows 10 earlier this year makes Windows 8.1 out-of-date, and while updating to Windows 10 Home can be done for free after purchase, it's a shame that Asus couldn't save its customers some trouble and apply the upgrade itself.

In any case, sticking with the older version doesn't make much sense in the face of Windows 10's more frequent feature and security updates, as well as its UI improvements - including the ability to snap four windowed tasks to the screen at once, or switch between optimised desktop and tablet modes on the fly.

The Transformer Book Flip TP300LA also comes loaded with the same Asus bloatware as its detachable cousin, the Transformer Book Chi T300. This includes utterly basic media editing apps and utilities, which are far too popup-happy, with Asus LiveUpdate and Asus WebStorage being the worst offenders for cluttering up the desktop with nagging dialogue boxes.

A new addition named Asus Fliplock locks the keyboard when the screen is sufficiently rotated, preventing accidental presses when being carried around in, say, the tablet configuration. That's useful, but nothing special; every rotating convertible we've ever used does the same, and does it without Fliplock's self-congratulating popups informing us of the fact.

Performance
"Budget" hardware usually falls over in our performance benchmarks, but the Transformer Book Flip TP300LA does pack some capable-sounding internals, including 6GB of RAM and an Intel Core i5-5200U. This combination made for some very encouraging test scores: 236.8ms in Sunspider and 1,434 in Kraken, where lower scores are better, plus 2,628 single-core and 5,177 multi-core in Geekbench.

Impressively, the Asus machine's Sunspider and Kraken scores are even better than those of the much more expensive Satellite Radius 15, which was equipped with the same 2.2GHZ dual-core processor but an extra 2GB of RAM. It also beats the Transformer Book Chi T300, though that had a slower Intel Core M-5Y71 chip along with its 8GB of RAM.

We had no issues with basic tasks like word processing, web browsing and creating spreadsheets and presentations, and the Transformer Book Flip TP300LA stayed surprisingly nimble during photo editing too - though as we said, its resolution isn't suitable for professional-grade editing. It did suffer from some mild stuttering when adding multiple effects in Lightworks, though by and large it maintained responsiveness.

Next: Camera, battery, storage and conclusions

Asus Transformer Book Flip TP300LA review

A rotating laptop that's as fast as it is affordable

Camera
The 720p webcam captures decent colours, but both stills and video are hugely lacking in detail - edges appear fuzzy to the point of blurriness, and light sources in the background create large bursts of glare. That could be a big problem for those who sit in front of a window, for instance.

However, the camera does have one saving grace. Whereas webcam videos can often stutter, footage and feeds from the Transformer Book Flip TP300LA are slick and smooth. This doesn't offset the low detailing but does avoid compounding it, as well as helping ensure that this device can be usable - though not ideal - for video conferences.

Battery and storage
Unfortunately, the Transformer Book Flip TP300LA won't quite last a full working day, though it's not far off - we got a little over seven hours of mixed usage, which mainly consisted of typing up notes and doing internet research.

To be fair, this is much better than a lot of laptops and convertibles we've used, and credit is also due for its video loop burn test results: an average of eight hours and 11 minutes, which is again well above average. We suspect that the low-spec display has the positive side effect of a longer battery life, due to the relative lack of pixels and brightness that needs powering.

As for storage, a supposedly 500GB HDD is broken down into two partitions: one 186GB in size, the other 258GB - with system files and the aforementioned bloatware taking up an additional 28GB. Ultimately, that leaves 416GB of usable space.

That will be good enough for most users, and confers a big advantage for the Transformer Book Flip TP300LA over most detachables, which typically rely on much smaller - though faster - SSDs. Even so, we can't help but notice the huge gap between the advertised HDD size and the actual capacity, a difference of 84GB.

Overall
It may be cheap and chunky, but the Transformer Book Flip TP300LA is no slouch, outpacing both rival convertibles and Asus's own Transformer Book Chi series in performance as well as battery life.

However, you get what you pay for, and so you'll have to contend with a sub-par screen, an old operating system and a form factor that is far heavier than most 2-in-1s. Even with these issues in mind, though, this flip-flopping laptop is a great balance between power and value.