Asus Eee Slate EP121 review (32GB)

Juice box
Asus Eee Slate EP121	Avg watts/hour
Off (60%)	0.67
Sleep (10%)	1.06
Idle (25%)	6.85
Load (05%)	28.38
Raw kWh number	31.88
Annual power consumption cost	$3.62

Battery life is arguably more important for a tablet than any other kind of portable computer, as one would very rarely use a tablet while it's plugged into a wall socket. When it comes to Windows tablets, we've seen better and we've seen worse, and the Asus EP121 ran for 3 hours and 33 minutes in our video playback battery-drain test. That's low for a 12-inch laptop of any type, and also pales in comparison with the iPad, which is a totally different kind of tablet but has set a new benchmark for tablet battery life.

Asus supplies a one-year mail-in warranty for the EP121, and while navigating the Asus Web site looking for support information can be a bit confusing, we were pleased to find a helpful section on this specific tablet, including downloads and FAQs, here. The toll-free 24-7 support phone number is 1-888-678-3688.

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System configurations:

Asus Eee Slate EP121
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.33GHz Intel Core i5-470UM; 4,096MB DDR3 SDRAM 667MHz; 64MB (Shared) Intel GMA HD; 64GB SanDisk SSD

Archos 9 PC Tablet
Windows 7 Starter; 1.1GHz Intel Atom Z515; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 400MHz; 250MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 500; 60GB Toshiba 4,200rpm

Acer Iconia Tab W500P
Windows 7 Home Premium; 1GHz AMD C-50 Dual-Core; 2,048MB DDR3 SDRAM 667MHz; 384MB (Dedicated) ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6250; 32GB SanDisk SSD

ViewSonic ViewPad 10
Windows 7 Home Premium/Android 1.6; 1.66GHz Intel Atom N455; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB (Shared) Mobile Intel GMA 3150; 16GB SanDisk SSD

Dell Latitude 2120
Windows 7 Home Premium; 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 Dual-Core; 2,048MB DDR3 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB (Shared) Intel GMA 3150; 250GB Seagate 5,400rpm