CES 2012: Asus Preps $249 (€194) 7-Inch Nvidia Tegra 3 Tablet

With the arrival of CES, we can now finally put a name behind that mysterious 7-inch tablet that Asus has teased in the last couple of weeks, as during the fair the outfit has presented an early prototype of what is to become the ME370T later this year.

The look of this Wi-Fi only device doesn’t seem to differ too much from the pictures that we presented in these last couple of weeks, but most of its specs are still vague at this point in time.

What we do know however is that Asus is saying that this will become the world’s first 7-inch quad-core tablet thanks to the inclusion of an Nvidia Tegra 3 system-on-a-chip (SoC) device.

Running at yet-undisclosed frequencies, the Nvidia chip will also be accompanied by an 8MP rear cam and probably 16GB or 32GB of storage space.

The resolution of the 7.7-inch display used by Asus for this tablet is also unknown, but if we were to guess we would say that 1280x800 is definitely one of the top contenders.

As far as software is concerned, the ME370T will run Android 4.0, which was to be expected considering that the tablet will arrive later this year and that Asus has already started to roll out the Transformer Prime ICS update.

Moving to pricing, Asus was also pretty secretive in this regard, but thankfully Nvidia’s CEO and president Jen-Hsun Huang came to our help and revealed during his keynote speech from CES that the tablet will hit retail for $249 (roughly 194 EUR), as AnandTech reports.

This throws it into the same league with the Nook Tablet, but Asus’ creation sports a more powerful configuration, access to the Android Market as well as a rear camera at the same price point.

It goes without saying that 2012 will definitely be an interesting year for Android tablet fans.