My experience with the Asus Vivotab 8 M81C is much different than opusthecat's...
Well I just got mine yesterday, bought from Microsoft store online on Black Friday. I've got to say I'm not too keen on it. Not to say it's not a good tablet but I run a 1520 and the 8" screen really is a disappointment when compared to my 1920x1080 phone screen. The 8" tab is 1280x800 and you can definitely see the difference in ppi, it's actually harder on the eyes for reading than my 1520.
At 189 DPI I find the screen to be crisp, clear, and evenly lit from edge to edge. My points of comparison are my Surface Pro (220 DPI) and Lumia 925 (332 DPI). (The Lumia 1520 has a 320 DPI screen.) I looked at the HP Stream 7 and 8, and all store models I've seen show increased brightness along the short edges of the screen. I suppose some people will notice the lower DPI, but in my experience most people will not.
There's no stylus, which I missed when ordering, I definitely would have ordered the Asus M80T instead had I seen that. The power and volume buttons are terrible to get to. They're almost flush with the body so I can't seem to run my fingers over to find them quickly, or even slowly, I have to turn the darn tablet on it's side so I can visually find them and then push them...annoying. But the back has a nice black matte feel to it, reduces slippage.
I don't miss the stylus. But then my aim for the tablet is more consumption that production. The onscreen controls are plenty adequate without any kind of stylus, although if you want to use the handwriting keyboard, you're typical lower-quality iOS stylis will work. Yes, the the older M80T models do include a Wacom stylus, at the expense of a slightly heavier device. Also the M80Ts are known to have stylus issues if you put the tablet in a case with magnetic closures.
The buttons do admittedly take a little getting used to, given that they are near flush with the body. As opus stated, the back has a very nice feel to it.
The cameras blow. Horrible. If you're not painted in light, good luck...I bought this tablet to Skype with at night in the house and even with all the lights on it's terribly noisy and dark. Outdoor daylight, might be decent.
I have to agree that the cameras are on the lower end of the spectrum. I have only tried them in dimmer lighting, by the Christmas tree, and the images were very grainy.
Screen sensitivity is fairly good. There's a few more missed taps than my phone but not too many, maybe there's a setting in here I haven't seen yet.
I haven't really had much of an issue with missed taps, certainly not any worse that my Surface or Lumia.
There's no capacitive buttons. I kept looking for my windows home button to quickly go back but alas. No back button of course.
This might seem detrimental at first, but Windows 8.1 takes care of that with either a quick swipe from the right edge (modern or desktop modes) or the Windows Start button (desktop view) in the lower left.
Being new, there are no covers available.
There are plenty of covers available. Search Amazon for "asus vivotab 8 m81c case" and you'll find some made specifically for this tablet. Some even have magnetic closures ("smart" covers), allowing the tablet to go to sleep/wake automatically when you close/open the cover. Otherwise, there are plenty of generic covers available.
Other problem I have is more the Windows 8.1 desktop (nothing to do with Asus here), my 1520 utilizes most available space for tiles, etc, but the 8.1 desktop has big borders and a lot of wasted space so essentially, I can hold my phone up to the tablet and there's no screen real estate advantage for tiles. Not until you open an app like OneNote or email. I think I'm going to return this and wait it out for Windows 10 and an 8-9" screen with 1920x1080 resolution. Still won't solve the huge annoying borders of 8.1 but oh well. I just wish I could get my 1520 in a 9" tablet version, that would be ideal. One last thing, one of the most used apps on my 1520 is Spotify. Windows 8.1 app store only has a 3rd party version of Spotify which is horrible, hard to believe the Phone store has a better app than the desktop store...
Maybe you just want a Surface Pro? Really, 7-8" Windows tablets are meant more to be companion devices, not your primary driver. Sure I could run Visual Studio adequately on the Vivotab 8 (with the addition of a storage card), but that's what my work desktop machine and Surface Pro is for. The smaller tablets really shine regular handling of lighter, more consumption-oriented tasks, and occasionally filling in when you need the functionality of full-version Office applications.
I was really hoping for something to replace my iPad 3 and get away from Apple products but Windows Tablets aren't anywhere close to being where I'd hoped they would be by now. Reluctantly I'll need to continue using my iPad.
It all depends on what you need/want in a tablet. For me, there is no iPad that comes close to what I need out of a tablet.
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