CES 2011: ASUS Press Conference Notes

CES madness started today. I attended the ASUS press conference at the lovely Aria hotel. ASUS CEO Jerry Shen introduced several tablets:

ASUS Eee Pad Slider

The Slider sports a 10.1-inch IPS LCD with a 1280x800 pixel format. Like the name, the display slides up as you push it back revealing a QWERTY keyboard and slides back into slate form when pushed forward. The Slider will be running on Google's Honeycomb Android OS. The 10.1-inch tablet features dual cameras: 5 megapixel on the back with LED flash and a front-facing 1.2 megapixel. It can playback 1080p HD content. Connectivity options include a mini-HDMB and mini-USB ports with a micro-SD card slot. The Slider weighs just 2.2 pounds and is 0.5 inches thick. Pricing isn't official but expect to be around $500 to $800 with availability in the April-May timeframe.

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer

The Transformer sports the same 10.1-inch IPS LCD as the Slider. What makes the Transformer different is that the display on the netbook/tablet can be detached. The tablet portion of the Transformer will run Android 3.0 and make use of a dual-core Tegra 2 CPU and packs two cameras. Like the Slider the Transformer can playback 1080p HD content. The tablet by itself will run eight hours and 16 hours aided by the battery that's on the chassis. Pricing hasn't been officially announced but will be between $400 and $700 with availability in the April-May timeframe.

ASUS Eee Slate EP121

The Eee Slate EP121 is a powerful 12.1-inch tablet packing an Intel Core i5-470M CPU, 4GB RAM, and 64GB SSD. The 12.1-inch 1280x800 IPS LCD sports capacitive touch and works with a Wacom digitizer. The Slate EP121 runs Windows 7, has a front-facing 2 megapixel camera with LED flash and outputs video via HDMI. Pricing is around $1000 and availability is expected to be later this month.

ASUS Eee Pad MeMO

The Eee Pad MeMO is a 7-inch tablet running Android 3.0 powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 8260 CPU. The capacitive touch 7-inch LCD sports a 1024x600 pixel format. Other features include: dual cameras (5 megapixel in the rear with LED flash and 1.2 megapixel in the front) and a capacitive stylus. Pricing starts at $499 and will be available in June.

ASUS is serious about the tablet market. The Slate EP121 is seriously powerful with an i5 CPU. Both the Slider and Transformer tablets are unique and should fill the hole left between a netbook and a slate tablet. It is also interesting to see that ASUS has selected IPS as the technology of choice for its displays on the larger three.