ASUS Announces Eee Pad and Eee Slate Tablets

The Slider is the quirky one in the family. It’s a convertible tablet of sorts, with the screen sliding and tilting to reveal a netbook-sized keyboard. The specs are identical to the Transformer (the slides indicate there is optional 3G here), though the 64GB option is sadly missing. What this means is you get Tegra 2, Honeycomb, 512MB/1GB RAM, 16/32GB flash storage, a 10.1” IPS WXGA panel with capacitive touch, and two cameras (1.2MP front, 5MP back, no flash). The base price is $499, one hundred more than the base Transformer slate (sans keyboard dock), and it’ll ship in Q2 alongside the Transformer.

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty much head over heels for the tablet slider form factor. Intel released a concept notebook at IDF 2008, called the UrbanMax, with the same basic design premise as the Slider, and I fell in love with the idea then. Now that was a Wintel system, so even though I’m thrilled to see a production tablet with the same form factor, I have my doubts.

I don’t know how useful it’ll be to have a full keyboard with Android, since the OS isn’t built for use with a keyboard and mouse like Windows is. It’s worth noting that the Slider doesn’t have a mouse, but that just makes it more awkward to control the OS (reaching over the keyboard to touch the screen, etc). It seems like it’d be similar to the iPad keyboard dock, except more portable and always attached. If you’re a keyboard junkie, that’s awesome news. If you’re not, this is basically a pointless device.

But even if you are someone who writes a lot, I’m not too sure that the Slider is as attractive as the Transformer with the mobile docking station (what ASUS is calling the netbook-style keyboard dock). The Transformer is more modular, so you can leave the keyboard behind when you don’t need it and save the extra bulk, but perhaps more importantly, it has a lot more battery life. See, the Slider is rated for 6 hours of battery life. This is undoubtedly a problem—even ASUS’ Core i3/i5 ultraportables are getting more life than that. The Transformer is rated for 8 hours, while the mobile dock is good for another 8 (totaling 16 hours of battery life, for those of you keeping score at home). And the Transformer + mobile dock combo should be priced similarly to the Slider too. On paper, while the Slider seems like a cool form factor, there doesn't appear to be a compelling reason to choose it over the Transformer, no matter what your use case is.