Hands on with Asus's Eee Tablet

• 
• 
• 
• 

 1 of 4

Gallery

Posted on 2 Jun 2010 at 11:42

Asus is rethinking the new tablet-pad-slate concept already and has launched what basically amounts to an eReader on steroids. At its Computex press conference, we got some time to use its genuinely innovative Eee Tablet, and we’re really impressed with what we saw.

Asus has decided that students and business fold need an interactive touch-screen device, but this is not just some rehashed product – it’s been specifically designed with a glass, capacitive touch screen with an ultra-high 2450dpi resolution to get some fine detail accuracy. On the downside it does require a specific stylus to use, rather than your fingers, and with its 600MHz Marvell ARM chip inside it’s still almost fast enough to keep up with one’s scrawling.

The display is not backlit because Asus feels that it’s easier to read and work for long periods without eye-strain on an e-reader style device. We certainly agree with this chain of thought, but using an LCD instead of e-ink means the response times are also ten times faster too. Future Asus Eee Tablets will use colour screens but this first version is only black and white.

On the back there’s a webcam so students can take photos of the whiteboard or lecture notes and add annotations to those photos. This doesn’t really work that well though, as the 2MP webcam is the Achilles heel of this whole product. It takes five to ten seconds to line up a decent shot and hold it still enough, but the sub-500g Eee Tablet makes up for it elsewhere with its aluminium body and glass front that feels great to hold and use.

Asus claims ten hours of use is possible from the 8in device, and at just $199 to $299 (probably £150 to £250 in the UK) depending on the model, it’s easily competitive with other e-readers and far more versatile. If Asus can get the hook up with the right software and books, then it's definitely worth keeping an eye out for it!

Author: Richard Swinburne in Taipei