Is there any tablet that’s hotter than the Transformer Prime right now? (Please, don’t say the Kindle Fire.) For weeks we geeks, early adopters and people who love their tech toys have been awaiting this, and none too patiently. Make no mistake: this will be one of the slickest products we test this year and it isn’t just because the original Transformer had such an inventive design. The Prime is the first device packing NVIDIA’s hot-off-the-presses Tegra 3 SoC, making it the world’s first quad-core tablet. This comes with promises of longer-than-ever runtime and blazing performance (five times faster than Tegra 2, to be exact), all wrapped in a package measuring just 8.3mm (0.33 inches) thick — even skinnier than the iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab 10.1. Throw in specs like a Super IPS+ Gorilla Glass display, eight megapixel rear camera and a confirmed ICS update in the pipe and even we seen-it-all Engadget editors were drooling.

All of which means we dropped just everything when a 32GB Prime showed up on our doorstep earlier this week, and soon enough, you’ll have your chance to nab one too. ASUS announced today that the WiFi-only models will be available through online sellers the week of December 19th, and in retail the week after. (No word yet on 3G versions for the US just yet.) It’ll start at $499 for the 32GB model — not bad considering five hundred bucks is the going rate for a high-end tablet with 16GB of storage. From there you can get a 64GB number for $599, while that signature keyboard dock will set you back a further $149. Worth it? Read on to find out.

Hardware

The Prime looks familiar and no, it’s not just because we’re looking at a device that’s dominated by a 10-inch slab of glass. If you’ve been following the recent explosion of Ultrabooks as obsessively as you have Ice Cream Sandwich, then you know the second-gen Transformer shares its industrial design with ASUS’ line of Zenbooks, which went on sale back in October. Like those skinny laptops, the Prime features a spun metal aluminum lid, this time available in “amethyst gray” and “champagne gold.” Sure, there will be some who think these brushed metal digs would look more appropriate on a trendy kitchen appliance, but many of you will appreciate how distinctive this tablet looks — and how nicely that faint circular pattern masks fingerprints and scuffs. In case it wasn’t obvious when we reviewed the UX31, you can count us among the second group. We think it looks great.

If, however, you think the Zenbooks are a little too fashion-forward, the whole spun metal thing manages to look less aggressively industrial in this tablet form. Maybe it’s because the Prime comes in a warmer, more inviting gold. Maybe it’s just that the Zenbooks have a severe, pancake-flat shape that makes them look painfully futuristic. Whatever it is, the Prime is just as lovely, though something tells us it’ll be somewhat less polarizing.

The Prime is every bit as well-made as you’d want your $500 tablet to be.

Moving past aesthetics, there’s no denying the Prime is every bit as well-made as you’d want your $500 tablet to be, and we just can’t get over how thin and light it is. Oftentimes, we make excuses for metal tablets, such as the 7-inch T-Mobile Springboard and HTC Flyer (hell, let’s throw the first-gen iPad in there, too). We’re used to saying, “Well, yeah, it’s kind of dense, but at least it’s well built.” In the case of the Prime, though, its 0.33-inch-thick frame makes it a smidge skinnier than the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and, at 586 grams, it’s a wee bit lighter, too. Despite that it manages to feel considerably more premium. That’s at least partly thanks to that metal construction, which we can’t help preferring to the feel of plastic — at least, that is, when this is both thinner and lighter than something made of the stuff. That’s not to say the 10.1 feels flimsy, just that this feels better.

It must be said, though, that it doesn’t necessarily feel better in the hand. While the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has gentle, rounded edges that respect your meaty mitts, the Transformer Prime is instead a tapered curve with a somewhat sharp edge. It’s the same sort of shape as the iPad 2 and, while it certainly isn’t uncomfortable to hold, the terminating edges of this device can cut into the more vulnerable bits of your palms after a long period of use. This does, at least, help the tablet turn into a nice clamshell shape when paired with its dock, the accessory that turns this thing from being a merely very nice tablet into a potential laptop replacement.

As far as ports and other such trappings go, the optional dock naturally steals the show with its full-sized USB 2.0 socket and SD card reader. The selection on the tablet itself is a little light — but no more or less than most slates. Pick this guy up in landscape mode and you’ll find a 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera looking at you, with an eight megapixel, f/2.4 shooter ’round back, coupled with an LED flash.

On that top edge you’ll find a lone power / lock button with a wee tiny LED indicator built-in, tucked over in the left corner. Look down on the opposite side and you’ll see the proprietary connector that allows the tablet to slide neatly into the dock. This handles all the data exchange with the dock itself and, if you want to get data off the thing, this is how you’ll have to do it. There’s no standard micro-USB connector here.

There are two other openings on the bottom that serve as receivers for a pair of latches built into the dock. These come plugged up with bits of rubber when you unbox the tablet, so be sure to clear them before your slate has its first curious encounter with the dock. Still holding it in landscape, you’ve got a 3.5mm headphone jack on the right side, which cuts a rather drastic profile thanks to the heavily tapered edges, while the left edge houses a volume rocker, mini-HDMI socket and — happy day — an unoccupied and uncovered microSD slot.

The single tweeter exactly where your palm is likely to go should you be holding it with your right hand.

Rounding things out is a single finely cut speaker grill, sitting on the right side under the back. This of course dismisses any hopes of stereo sound but, more troublingly, places that single tweeter exactly where your palm is likely to go should you be holding it with your right hand. Of course, you can always just flip the tablet over should the dialogue from that episode of SVU you’re streaming get a little more muffled than usual, but we’d have preferred the speaker somewhere on the top. Or, even better, facing right at you, as on the new 10.1N. We are happy to report that, when unimpeded, the volume coming out of the lone speaker is actually quite good.