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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danielfranklin - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
Dear Asus,Please give me a 1080P version with the top end CPU and 4GB ram.
Please dont make us wait 9 months + for it.
I will pay you $600 today.
Regards,
Tech head community.
fredbloggs73 - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
Isn't anyone excited that they used the Thinkpad and Macbook keyboards as a benchmark?meacupla - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
the layouts used on those keyboards are quite good.If the arrow keys were smaller on the transformer, it would allow a larger R-shift key, which is better for typing.
fredbloggs73 - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
thanks for pointing that out. That's a real shame about the smaller right shift key.euskalzabe - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
FYI - I use this keyboard in my VivoTab RT and it works pretty much fine. Yes it is a bit cramped but it's certainly usable if you don't have big hands.Visual - Friday, September 13, 2013 - link
Does it matter what they used as a benchmark if you don't know how it scored anyway?euskalzabe - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
Ahm... how would you measure keyboard scores???linux4me - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
I'd rather see it ship with Debian 7.0 and all open source drivers with either LXDE or XFCE. This thing is useless under windows 8.1 with only 32GB storage.stadisticado - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
Because I'm sure a SKU with a niche software stack that's going to sell (optimistically) 100k units would be a smart move for ASUS.Flunk - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
You're free to configure yours as you like when you get it. The Windows tax is pretty low on these low-end machines.