Asus Launches Eee Pad Transformer Tablet with Keyboard Dock
Asus Launches Eee Pad Transformer Tablet with Keyboard Dock
Posted 03/25/2011 at 8:15am
| by Paul Lilly
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Asus is calling its new Eee Pad Transformer "an innovative tablet with an expandable keyboard dock," but could this also be the netbook evolved? A physical keyboard isn't something that comes with any other major tablet, however it sits front and center on the Eee Pad Transformer, when you want it to. When you don't, simply detach the head and you're rocking a portable tablet PC with up to 9.5 hours of battery life (up to 16 hours with the dock).
Let's take a look at the feature-set. The Eee Pad Transformer sports a 10.1-inch IPS panel with LED backlighting (1280x800 resolution), 10 finger multi-touch support, scratch resistant Corning Gorilla Glass, Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip, 1GB of memory, 16GB/32GB of storage plus unlimited Asus WebStorage, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 1.2MP front-facing camera, 5MP rear-facing camera with auto focus, microSD card slot, internal microphone, headphone and mic jacks, two USB 2.0 ports, G-Sensor, Light Sensor, Gyroscope, E-compass, GPS, and an optional 3G radio.
All this comes wrapped in Google's Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) platform with Asus' Waveshare UI. By all means, Asus has come out swinging. Looking at the spec sheet alone, the Eee Pad Transformer is portable, it's powerful, and it transforms into a netbook on the fly.
Asus said the first shipments are already underway, but didn't reveal a price or release date. Bummer.
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Fallen23
March 26, 2011 at 9:36am
Finally, a tablet with a detachable keyboard. I was against these tablets, because I appreciate resting my fingers on the keys when I'm typing, instead of hovering my hands over a touch-screen. I have tons of faith in ASUS to create a quality product. I do agree with Don2041 that the dock should have ports for HDMI and SATA (SATA most definitley). I personally can't wait for ASUS to release this product into the wild.
bart3385
March 25, 2011 at 8:57pm
Would be nice to have Windows 7 (or 8) sitting on top of this contraption.
don2041
March 25, 2011 at 12:00pm
That dock should have the following HDMI,DVD burner,hard drive ,a real gpu ,a real cpu . OH SHIT I should have bought notebook instead of another one of those MAXIPADS, and we all know where they hide out right!
bloodgain
March 25, 2011 at 10:51am
This is certainly a new solution to the convertible laptop. I'm not sure it's much more utilitarian than the "twist-and-fold" convertible tablet idea, but I certainly give them credit for creativity. Dropping the extra weight when you don't need it is nice, but I just see it becoming a situation of not wanting to carry the keyboard piece around and not having it when you wish you did.
Synux
March 25, 2011 at 9:49am
We've used Asus products happily for many years. This is a welcome addition to their catalog. I hope they offer a WiFi only version.
jgrimoldy
March 25, 2011 at 9:19am
WOW! Let's hope that Asus doesn't f**k this all up by charging wayyy too much or by requiring a wireless contract.
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