Taiwanese company ASUS has taken the mantle of championing 2-in-1 convertible tablets for a while now and according to our editor Adam Oxford (who has owned a bunch of ASUS Transformer tablets) they’re very, very good at making them.
At CES ASUS has taken the wraps off of three new Transformer Book Chi tablets all running Windows 8.1 with some on Intel’s latest generation of ultra low powered Core M processors that allow for some super thin fanless designs. Our good friends over at Mobile Geeks are at this year’s CES and have had a look at all of the new Transformer Books Chi in the videos below.
At the top of the range is the 12.5 inch Transformer Book T300 Chi which comes with a choice of two IPS displays, a full HD 1 920×1 080 resolution unit or a rather impressive 2 560×1 440 WQHD panel. ASUS’ president Jonney Shih was quick to compare the new Transformer Books to Apple’s MacBook Air range which, with their low resolution displays, are starting to lag behind the industry.
The T300 uses either a 0.8GHz or a 1.2GHz Intel Core M processor with either 4GB/8GB of RAM that may seem like it won’t be able to handle much but the truth is that the average web tasks of web browsing email and video watching can easily be dispatched with modern processors running at low speeds.
Next up is the 10.1 inch Transformer Book T100 Chi which is both the thinnest of the new models at just 7.2mm as well as the model promising the longest battery life, which ASUS pegs at 10 hours on a single charge. It has a full HD display and runs on an Intel Bay Trail tablet chip at 1.46GHz similar to the one used in the Transformer Book TF3003CL that we reviewed last year along with either 1GB or 2GB of RAM depending on the configuration. It comes with a one year subscription to Microsoft’s Office 365 Personal package which includes Unlimited OneDrive storage as well as bundled Skype minutes.
Last up is the 8.9 inch baby Transformer Book T90 Chi which runs on the same Bay Trail processor as its 10.1 inch sibling and has the same choice of RAM configurations with the only difference coming in the display resolution which drops down to 1 280×800. It too comes with the one year Office 365 subscription and weighs in at just 750g when clipped into its dock which accounts for 350g of that total.
