14 DAY TRIAL // Last month we told you that ASUS joined hands with Microsoft in order to bring a cheap Windows 8.1 with Bing laptop to the market, which arrived in the form of the Vivobook F200MA.
Like many Chromebooks out there, the device comes with an 11.6-inch display and an Intel Celeron (Bay Trail) processor. The laptop will probably go on sale for about $250 / €189, but it appears ASUS has plans of going even cheaper.
The folks of Mobile Geeks have stumbled upon an interesting retail listing. They found the so-called ASUS F205TA in a European online shop, priced at €205 / $271 (including VAT taxes).
This is a good indication that, when it comes to the US, the F205TA will be sold for about $199 / €148, which is exactly what the recently unveiled HP Stream 14 laptop retails for.
We should point out that since we’re not being offered any images of the device, there’s a possibility the product could turn out to be a tablet, instead.
However, given that ASUS uses the F2xx nomenclature to describe its notebook (see the Vivobook F200MA mentioned above) and not tablets, it’s pretty safe to assume another cheap Windows laptop is headed our way.
In terms of specifications, the F205TA is not a lot whole different from the Vivobook F200MA. It arrives with an 11.6-inch display with the standard laptop resolution (1366 x 768 pixels) and draws power from an Intel Atom Z3735F Bay Trail processor fitted with 4GB of RAM (which is more than you’ll see on most notebooks).
ASUS will also be offering 32GB of internal storage and, naturally, Windows 8.1 with Bing out of the box.
Since IFA 2014 is on our door step, we shouldn’t be too surprised if ASUS comes equipped with a whole host of cheap Windows laptops to put on display, including the F205TA. We’ll keep an eye out for them at the event.
In the meanwhile, for those who are not yet familiar with this fact, HP has just launched the Stream 14 laptop which sells for $199 / €148.
As opposed to the ASUS laptop we talked about before, the Stream 14 runs on AMD’s A4 Miro-6400 “Mullins” processor working in concert with Radeon R3 graphics.
The notebook is equipped with 2GB of RAM and either 32GB or 64GB of eMMC solid state storage. Other specs include 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI out, 1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0, four speakers with Beats audio and SDXC card reader.
So if you don’t want to wait for the ASUS F205TA, you can always pick up the HP Stream 14.