Asus VivoTab Note 8 review

Asus’ newest arrival, the VivoTab Note 8, is as potent as compact tablets come. It squeezes Windows 8.1, an Intel Bay Trail Atom CPU and a stylus into an 8in tablet. The even bigger news is the price: for a smidgen more than £300, this compact contender follows in the footsteps of its larger stablemate, the Transformer Book T100, and throws in a free copy of Microsoft Office as well. See also the 11 best tablets of 2014

You’d be hard-pressed to recognise the Note 8’s talents right away, though. The matte plastics are noticeably cheaper-feeling than Asus’ Google-branded Android tablet – the lithe, rock-solid Nexus 7. It’s inoffensively styled, and reasonably light at 380g, but this isn’t a tablet to lust after. If it weren’t for the Windows 8 sticker on the rear, it would be easy to mistake the Note 8 for a dull, budget Android tablet.

Putting pen to pixel

Until, that is, you start looking at the Note 8’s rather impressive feature list. In contrast to other 8in Windows tablets, Asus has partnered the Note 8’s touchscreen with a Wacom digitiser and passive stylus. The digitiser delivers more than 1,000 levels of pressure sensitivity and, handily enough, the small plastic stylus stows away in the tablet’s lower edge.

In many ways, the stylus is a perfect addition to a compact Windows 8 tablet. It makes it possible to scribble handwritten notes into apps such as the bundled Microsoft OneNote, sketch and paint in art applications, and edit photos more accurately. Admittedly, there’s little need for the stylus during casual use – taps and swipes of the finger are accurate enough for flicking through Metro apps or exploring the internet – but where desktop applications and taskbar icons are often fiddly to control with a finger, the stylus provides pinpoint cursor control where it’s most needed.

Unlike the pixel-packed HD and Retina screens of the latest Android and iOS compact tablets, the Note 8 has a humble 1,280 x 800 display. This isn’t a bad thing, however. In usability terms, the lower resolution means onscreen dialog boxes and menus present a larger target for finger taps and stylus prods. Quality is above par, too: the IPS panel ensures colours are bright and bold; the LED backlight reaches an ample, if not class-leading, 307cd/m[sup]2[/sup]; and the contrast ratio of 1,094:1 is enough to make sure images have plenty of get up and go.

As ever, the Intel Atom Z3740 CPU delivers a surprising kick for the money. A result of 0.35 in our Real World Benchmarks is fast enough to keep desktop applications ticking over smoothly, and we had no problems with responsiveness during our time with the Note 8. The 32GB of eMMC storage is modest, but by far the biggest limitation is the 2GB of RAM. Fire up too many applications at once, or leave memory-hungry apps such as Google Chrome or Picasa running in the background, and you’ll soon find the Asus’ limits.

Battery life is good – enough to keep the Note 8 running for a full day of work. Tasked with our light-use battery test, the screen dimmed to a low but usable 75cd/m[sup]2[/sup], the Asus lasted a huge 11hrs 29mins.

Connectivity

We were pleased to find dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4 included as standard, but Asus has been less generous with the physical ports: there’s a microSD slot (which comes filled with a 4GB card for restoring the Note 8 to factory defaults), a 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro-USB socket – and that’s your lot. Asus has also taken the bold move of moving the hardware Windows button from its traditional position beneath the display to a position on the tablet’s edge. We’re not sure this works: we often found ourselves dumped back in the Windows Start screen after pressing the button by accident.

It’s the lack of connectivity that really limits the Note 8’s potential, however. Unlike Asus’ other pint-sized Windows 8.1 device, the Transformer Book T100, the VivoTab doesn’t come with a keyboard, nor is there one as an optional extra. It’s possible to connect a third-party Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, or hook up USB devices via an OTG cable, but because there’s only one micro-USB port, it’s necessary to disconnect them every time the tablet needs charging.

Connecting a secondary display requires a Miracast-compatible wireless display, since there’s no dedicated video output. Given that the quad-core Atom CPU and Windows 8.1 are such a potent combination, it’s frustrating not being able to take full advantage of them by connecting a secondary monitor or TV.

The Note 8 is a great compact tablet, but it could have been so much more. All it would take would be the addition of a keyboard case to turn it into a superb miniature hybrid, and an HDMI output to turn it into a viable mobile workstation. Nevertheless, it still has its charms: it’s affordable, compact and surprisingly powerful, and the addition of a stylus makes it more versatile than other compact Windows tablets we’ve seen. If you’re after a companion device that can fulfil note-taking duties and run full desktop apps, at £303 the Asus VivoTab Note 8 is well worth the outlay.

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