The keyboard design relies on a hinge mechanism that felt sturdy in my tests. The best part is that it does so without requiring the user to lug around extra attachments. But I have no doubt that this setup will improve anyone’s tablet productivity. My small, touch-typist fingers flew over the keyboard with only one recurring difficulty: The space bar is recessed too low beneath the outside lip, and as a result my thumb continually banged into the lip, instead of striking the space bar. I also appreciated the keyboard’s four Android keys for Home, Back, Menu, and Search. Its Back and Enter keys are comfortably large, however, and the island-style keys were easy to type on. The small keyboard reminds me of some external Bluetooth keyboards. I found the tilt angle of the display appropriate both for typing and for reaching up to use my fingers for navigation–a necessity because the keyboard lacks a built-in pointing device. In landscape mode, a small lip along the top of the Eee Pad Slider, just above the front-facing camera, provides a grab space to catch the top half of the tablet pulling it up and out reveals the keyboard beneath. But the trade-off is worth making if you value productivity and efficiency. Likewise, the Slider weighs 2.1 pounds, versus 1.24 pounds for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and an average weight of 1.5 to 1.6 pounds for first-generation Honeycomb tablets. That’s more than double the thickness of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. At a time when many tablets are becoming thinner, the 10.1-inch Eee Pad Slider is 0.72 inch thick in its tablet state (closed up, with a normal slate profile). That innovation comes at the cost of increased thickness and weight, however. The Slider ($479 for 16GB, $579 for 32GB prices as of September 27, 2011) is notable for its sturdily hinged slide-out keyboard. The Asus Eee Pad Slider SL101 eliminates the need for both of those accessories, while retaining the portability that tablet buyers crave. Tablets can be great companions for lots of things, but if you want to use one for work, you’ll probably need a case that props up the screen on an angle, plus an external keyboard for efficient typing.
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