Asus Vivotab Smart ME400 experience

I just picked one of these up at Best Buy and my first initial impressions were the build quality is quite good. It feels sturdy and the soft touch backing is nice. The screen seems fine but the viewing angles are a bit strange. You can still see the screen fine if you tilt it, but the brightness deteriorates quickly at an angle. Also the screen reflections are quite bad compared to other tablets I've used, it's like a mirror.

Other than that, just your normal Atom based win8 tablet, performance is roughly the same (comparing to my Thinkpad Tablet 2). I ran windows update and that went fine, but when I ran the Asus update utility it said there was a BIOS update as well as a driver update. I ran the BIOS update and it pretty much killed the OS... on reboot Windows said it couldn't start correctly and I should restore using a restore point which I'm doing now. Will update this later...

Edit: well the restore completed and I'm back to when I updated windows previously. The BIOS update seems to have worked though, installed the rest of the driver updates from the asus utility and everything is up to date finally.

The speaker (yes, only 1) on this thing is quite bad too, low volume and a bit tinny. I actually compared it to my phone (Galaxy S3) and the phone is almost twice as loud from the same distance!

 

I'm quite interested to know what drivers Asus is pushing for this device via LiveUpdate. Would you be able to tell me your current Graphics driver version?

 

The graphics drivers I have say 9.14.3.1099

 

Thanks for that. Hope they push something a bit newer for the TF810C when they finally get around to it.

 

Mine is freezing and BSODing on the regular. Is anyone else experiencing this? I don't wanna do an exchange if the new one's going to have the same problems. The error is usually kernel driver power state failure, but sometimes it's different.

I thought I did the LiveUpdate. I know I did Windows Update. How can I check that I have the latest drivers, firmware, BIOS, whatever I should? I see that the Intel graphics driver is at 9.14.3.1082 which I guess is not the latest.

 

Since the device has a SOC, the graphics, sound, power management etc. drivers all get updated together. You're running the stock graphics drivers, so it sounds like your VivoTab Smart didn't update correctly over LiveUpdate. Your symptoms are what us VivoTab TF810C owners experience with the stock drivers. Asus haven't even released anything over LiveUpdate for us, so we're stuck with using other OEMs drivers.

Run LiveUpdate again, if you don't see the updates, try a refresh then run it again.

 

Thanks Breed,
since posting, I did 3 things:
- I found your TF810 thread, decided it would work for me and downloaded the hp chipset driver
- I actually ran LiveUpdate, it gave me a BIOS and "drivers"
- I checked the hp exe, it says my drivers are the same or newer. A scan shows that my display driver is a little newer (3.1099, Oct), etc.

So your comment makes sense to me, thanks. I'll wait for a while to see if I have any more issues. Hope LiveUpdate comes thru for you guys

 

Are the live update drivers downloaded to your hard drive or just executed directly? Could be better to load those ones onto the 810, maybe would fix the screen flickering that the HP and other drivers cause. Any chance you can check and upload them if so? Thanks.

 

Can't find where Asus put them but I zipped them up with Double Driver.
Download ME400C LiveUpdate DD backup 1-27-2013.zip from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

Looking at the log from running the HP exe though, it seems to say that the drivers inside are almost all newer than mine. Thoughts?
IntelAtomz2760Drivers.log Download IntelAtomz2760Drivers.log from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

Example:
Scanning Graphics\igd_gfx32_clv.inf (Name: Graphics\igd_gfx32_clv.inf, Version: 9.14.3.1102)
14:34:19:747: Section with the best match: KMD.Mfg
14:34:19:778: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08C7 (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:794: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08C8 (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:809: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08C9 (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:825: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CA (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:840: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CB (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:856: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CC (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:872: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CD (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:887: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CE (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:903: Device: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CF (Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator)
14:34:19:965: Matched with: PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_08CF&SUBSYS_85621043&REV_05
14:34:19:981: Current driver: oem42.inf
14:34:19:997: Name: Graphics, Provider: Intel(R) Corporation, Version: 9.14.3.1099, Section: generic32_VEN_8086&DEV_08CF

OR

Scanning Audio\rtii2sac.inf (Name: Audio\rtii2sac.inf, Version: 6.2.9200.53)
14:34:18:262: Section with the best match: Realtek
14:34:18:262: Device: ACPI\INTCCFFD (Realtek I2S Audio Codec)
14:34:18:309: Matched with: ACPI\INTCCFFD
14:34:18:325: Current driver: oem34.inf
14:34:18:340: Name: , Provider: REALTEK, Version: 6.2.9200.46, Section: Codec_Device

 

Hello guys, im seriously considering buying this model, it will be my first tablet, now i have a doubt about cases and keyboards, im buying from abroad, did you bought the tablet + keyboard + case bundle? where did you got it, it seems most online stores dont have it... or have you found an alternative? does the cases for vivotab rt, fit this one? or any other?