ASUS PadFone mini

This is Asus’ small Android smartphone-tablet combo, where the 4.5” phone slips into the 7” tablet dock to transform into a tablet. The tablet dock has a 1280 x 800 IPS display and you can send and receive calls when the phone is docked in the tablet.

The 1280 x 800 resolution on the 7-inch display is much easier on the eyes and greatly improves the reading experience in all apps. Neither the phone's display nor the tablet's is very bright at 100%; both look good with minimal distortion when viewing them off center with no major darkening or color distortion.

It’s not every day that a phone can instantly turn into a tablet, and vice versa, so we really appreciate the PadFone X mini’s versatility in doing so. Just as before, all that’s required is to slide the phone into the slot in the back of the 7-inch tablet. Essentially, it’s the phone that powers the tablet – though, technically, it’s the phone that gets charged in the process.

The PadFone X Mini is powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2560 dual-core processor and 1GB of RAM. It’s not the fastest phone I’ve ever used, but it’s not terribly slow either. Sometimes you’ll encounter a slight delay when opening apps or loading search results from Google, but that’s to be expected from a device in this price range.