ASUS' Transformer Book T100: Atom Z3740 Inside, Available October 18th at $349
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 11, 2013 8:16 PM EST
Earlier today, ASUS CEO Jerry Shen teased their first Bay Trail tablet: the T100. Today at ASUS' IDF press conference we got some more details on the tablet. The official name is the Transformer Book T100 and it's a 10.1-inch Windows 8.1 tablet. The IPS display features a 1366x768 resolution. Normally I'd complain about that, but the T100 starts at $349 for a 32GB model.
Internally, ASUS settled on the Atom Z3740, a quad-core Bay Trail SKU clocked lower than the one we previewed earlier today. The max non-turbo frequency on the Z3740 is 1.33GHz, with a max turbo of 1.86GHz. Since this isn't a D-SKU, ASUS settled on a dual-channel (2x64-bit) LPDDR3 memory interface.
Much like the Bay Trail FFRD we tested, the T100 is equipped with 2GB of LPDDR3. NAND storage options include 32GB or 64GB eMMC. There's also a single microSD card reader.
Other IO includes a micro USB port for charging (and/or external USB devices), a micro HDMI output and a headphone/mic jack. There's keyboard dock included (!!) that adds a USB 3.0 port. ASUS claims they used the Thinkpad and MacBook keyboards as the benchmarks to evaluate the T100 against.
The T100 ships with an integrated 31Wh battery. ASUS promises up to 11 hours of battery life thanks to the Bay Trail silicon inside. The tablet measures 10.4" x 6.7" x 0.41" (0.93" thick with the dock) and weighs 550g/1.2 lbs (2.4 lbs with the dock).
On the software side, in addition to Windows 8.1 you get a pre-installed copy of Office 2013.
The T100 is extremely interesting as it's truly a reimagining of the netbooks of 5 years ago. It's thinner, lighter and much faster.
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teiglin - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
That was my first thought as well. The Windows directory alone on my (win8) laptop is just shy of 23GiB (and that seems to include some compression--explorer reports the size on disk as 22.9GB and size as 23.5GB), and almost 26GiB on my desktop. Given that "32GB" of storage is normally just under 30GiB, that hardly leaves anything, especially once you add in a full Office installation--maybe enough free space to keep the eMMC running smoothly. I guess 32-bit Windows is probably lighter--but still, didn't they have huge outcry about the 32GB Surface RT? And Windows RT is probably smaller still. Having just 32GB on Windows is just a terrible, terrible plan.nerd1 - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
It is actually quite usable. I once used 32GB win8 tablet, installed win8 32 bit and office, and I got 8GB left. That's not too bad, considering you still have SD slot for medias.extide - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
It's not compresseion, it's that some of the files (the ones in winsxs) actually have 2 names and are counted twice in the size measurement, but not size on disk measurement.Visual - Friday, September 13, 2013 - link
I'd pay over $1000 for a 1080p (or 1920x1200) version with Wacom digitizer and Haswell CPU with Iris GPU, even if they have to make it bigger and a bit heavier for the extra cooling. I could even see myself paying way more if they up the resolution even more, add an optical trackpad or a joystick and a few programmable buttons on the bezel, maybe even a touchpad on the back side, a battery in the dock, a keyboard backlight, etc...Sadly, no one wants to take my money.
thedom - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
The venue pro does ALL of that. The digitizer is synaptic though, which I believe is just as good as wacom's.loaddown - Thursday, September 25, 2014 - link
How about a T300?http://www.asus.com/in-search-of-incredible/us-en/...
jospoortvliet - Monday, September 23, 2013 - link
Install a modern linux and get the equivalent in functionality (though better performance, stability and more familiar interface) in 8-12 gb ;-)uditrana - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
Dell is supposed to have an event on October 2nd unveil a good 1080p Baytrail tablet.sri_tech - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
Anand,Keyboard dock included in that price?
GTRagnarok - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
From the article:"There's keyboard dock included (!!) that adds a USB 3.0 port."