Asus Demos Four New Tablet PCs at CES

Posted 01/05/2011 at 12:23am | by Michael Brown

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Asus Chairman Jonney Shih demonstrated four new tablet devices at the company’s CES press conference on Tuesday, including one model that runs Windows 7 Home Premium.

The Asus Eee Slate EP121 features an Intel Core i5-470UM dual-core processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 12.1-inch LED-backlit IPS multi-touch display delivering resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, and either a 32- or 64GB SSD. The EP121 comes with a Wacom digitizing pen with handwriting recognition and a virtual keyboard. It can also be controlled by a Bluetooth keyboard. The Slate features an integrated 2.0-megapixel camera.

Two other tablets are based on Nvidia’s Tegra 2 dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU and run the Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) operating system. The Eee Pad Slider, shown below, combines the features of tablet and notebook PCs, pairing a 10.1-inch IPS multi-touch screen with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

The Eee Pad Transformer tablet, shown below, features a 10-inch capacitive touch-screen that can be converted to a tablet PC with a full QWERTY keyboard when you plug it into an optional docking station.

Both the Slider and the Transformer Slider feature a 1.2-megapixel camera in front and a 5.0-megapixel camera in back, rendering them useful for videoconferencing.

At the other end of the power scale, Asus’ new Eee Pad MeMO, shown below, is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and runs the Android 3.0 OS. It features a seven-inch capacitive touch-screen and also comes with a stylus pen.

The Transformer, Slate, and MeMO all feature mini-HDMI ports and can output 1080p video to an external display.

Prices for the Eee Slate will range from $999 to $1,099 when it ships later this month, and the Eee Pad Transformer will start at $399. Prices for the Eee Pad Slider will start at $499 when it goes on sale in May, and the Eee Pad MeMO will start at $429 when it becomes available in June.