Asus outs two new Transformer tablets
Alongside the Padfone, Asus has announced two new Transformer tablets. Or rather Transformer Pads, as the Eee Pad brand is gone from the front of the full name and “Pad” added to the back. Why? Likely because the Eee brand isn’t very strong in these “post-netbook” days, and that law suit from Hasbro over using the Transformer name might have something to do with it too.
Anyways, the new top-of-the-line model is the Transformer Pad Infinity, which is likely replacing the Transformer Prime HD that we heard about at CES. You have essentially the same tablet as the Prime, but with a higher resolution 1920 x 1200 screen, slightly larger battery, and different brains. The WiFi version will still use the Tegra 3, but running it at a higher clock speed. The 3G/4G versions will use the new dual core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chip, which despite being dual core may prove to be at least as fast – as the Tegra 3 – benchmarks will show when stuff starts shipping. If the specs aren’t just incomplete, there won’t be a microSD slot in the Infinity, which is a peculiar choice.
The other new Transformer Pad tablet is the 300. Think of it as a low cost Transformer Prime: the aluminium chassis has been replaced with plastic, it’s slightly thicker, slightly heavier, and it has a normal IPS display instead of Super IPS+. Again, no microSD slot mentioned in the specs, but that might be a result of the way the specs have been listed.
The 300 series will retail at $399, which probably means a $499 Prime and $599 Infinity price structure. Any more than that, and people might just remember that it’s still just a tablet.
[Anandtech 1 | 2]
