Eee Slate EP121 heads Asus' tablet push

The Gadget Show  Wednesday 05 January 2011

It's all about power

Trust Asus to do things differently. The Eee brand may have taken laptop computing to new levels of portability and budget-friendliness, but now Asus has turned its hand to tablets – as it promised it would – and delivered one of the biggest, most powerful slates yet seen.

We’re talking about the Eee Slate EP121, a “no compromise” 12.1in tablet running Windows 7 that’s aimed at business users and sports an Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of solid state storage on board.

But while the impressive EP121 heads the Asus tablet charge with impressive clout, the other three new arrivals also announced at CES yesterday are probably more interesting. And none more so than the Eee Pad Slider, with its IPS touchscreen and Google’s Honeycomb set to be the on-board OS.

As the name suggests, the Slider is rather like a tablet-sized slider phone, with the 1280×800 cantilevering upwards in landscape orientation to reveal a full five-deck keyboard underneath.

Then there’s the Transformer, which has the same screen dimensions but sees the keyboard move to a removable dock which can be transported separately. That allows for a more laptop-like feel, complete with optical touchpad below the keyboard.

In both cases, Intel’s Tegra 2 processor does the heavy lifting, and you get a pair of cameras, mini-USB and mini-HDMI connectivity along with a microSD card slot.

Lastly we have the Eee Pad MeMo, the smallest of the new devices at 7in, and powered by a Snapdragon processor. Honeycomb is the OS of choice here too, and you also get 1080p video playback and support for a stylus.

The Eee Slate EP121 will be first to hit the deck later this month, priced from $999, with the other new arrivals pencilled in for the months to come. We’ll give you more details on local prices and availability once we know more.