Asus prices up netbook-convertible Android tablet

Qwerty will cost you

By Tony Smith, 28th March 2011

Asus' tablet-meets-netbook, the Eee Pad Transformer, will cost the best part of £500 when it goes on sale here on Wednesday.

The Transformer is a 10in, 1280 x 800 tablet running Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system - onto which Asus has slapped its own UI, Waveshare - and driven by a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor.

The gadget has a front-facing 1.2Mp webcam and a rear-facing 5Mp sensor for snaps and video, for which a mini HDMI port is provided for HDTC hook-ups. The Transformer also has a pair of USB 2.0 ports, and and SD card reader. There's 16GB of on-board storage.

Anyone hoping the Transformer's clip-on Qwerty keyboard accessory, which "transforms" the tablet into a netbook at a click of its plastic latches, is part of the package will be disappointed - it's an "option", making the Asus offering really no more a transforming tablet than Apple's iPad with its keyboard dock accessory was.

There's no word yet on what the keyboard accessory will cost you, but it extends the tablet's battery life to an "estimated" 16 hours "under certain conditions", Asus said. The firm didn't say how much extra the keyboard will add to the 217 x 177mm Pad's 13mm girth. ®

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COMMENTS

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All Reader Comments (15)

Highly Rated

Posted Monday 28th March 2011 09:54 GMT

spegru

Something Wrong with Tablet prices

At the same time as this I can see a nice slim ASUS netbook with 1.66GHz Atom Processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 10" Display, Bluetooth, Windows 7 Starter OS, & up to 6 Hours Battery Life for about half this.

Yeah shame about the Win7. Without that I think it's possible to spot a hardware price of around 200 - alot of which is the same as this tablet.

Good luck to em of course, but I think we can see why tablets are so popular with the makers. The profits must be huge.

Why? It can only be because the lack of keyboard means 'it's not a PC'

Any they said Linux netbooks didnt work out for mass sales......

Posted Monday 28th March 2011 11:40 GMT

nemo20000

Madness breeds madness

Silly price. Very silly price.

If it was running RISC OS though, fair enough.

Posted Monday 28th March 2011 10:38 GMT

Santonia

Priced to sell?

I seem to remember an earlier article suggesting this would cost something like £350. Seems that dream didn't come true.

Re: the comment 'bout the Vega. Given the news last week that Google will not be releasing Honeycomb as AOSP, and the pricing of all current available details on other Honeycomb tabs, I'm beginning to suspect some level of price collusion, or cosy arrangement between major brands and Google. Effectively Google are saying that Billy Chinese OEM Android tabs cannot get hold of the Honeycomb OS. Therefore there is no price competition coming from the cheap no-brand end of the spectrum. This effectively gives Samsung, Motorola, Asus, Acer, LG and so on some protection for their overpriced Honeycomb tabs. The Advent Vega is a no-brand tab with absolutely the specification to run Honeycomb, but by not releasing the AOSP it is being held back on the non-tab Froyo.

Apple has nothing to fear from this of course, so it can set pricing and watch the profits roll in. Android vendors are always at risk of lower priced competition, which may well mean a certain reluctance to invest - something which Google can encourage by holding back Honeycomb.

Hmmm.