14 DAY TRIAL // The Computex 2014 show in Taiwan was dominated by the presence of multiple tablet/notebook convertibles that arrived with the 12.5-inch form factor.
At the event, Intel teased a 2-in-1 prototype with the same screen size that ran on the company’s upcoming Broadwell platform. ASUS also showed the Transformer Book Chi T300, which is one of the first few devices to run on the platform.
However, the mass availability of such products is expected sometime next year, although Intel promised that Broadwell powered products would make it out in time for the holiday season.
Anyway, back at Computex, there wasn’t a lot of talk about pricing. Intel mentioned the $700 / €514 price, tag but nothing seemed definitive at that point.
Now, a new report coming Fudzilla claims that price for these high-end Android tablets relying on the Broadwell platform won’t necessarily break your piggy bank, as they will apparently be priced between $299 / €222 and $499 / €371.
For this amount of money, customers will be getting a tab with a screen varying between 9.6 inches and 12.5 inches with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution (at Computex, Intel said that the resolution would be 2560 x 1440 pixels).
The slates will be equipped with 4GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, optional SSD, and will be only around 10mm / 0.3-inch thick. The report mentions that the tablets should offer up to 8 hours of battery life.
Not only that, but in 2014 Broadwell-powered tablets will be accompanied by products running on the Skylake platform as well.
Moving along, Intel also plans to push out new Bay Trail-T and Bay Trail-M chips by the time this year comes to an end and tablets bundling the architecture are expected to sell with a price tag between $179 / €133 and $249 / €185 when they finally make it on the market in 2015.
These devices will come with less impressive specifications, which means we won’t be seeing FHD resolution onboard and only the standard 1366 x 768 one.
What’s more, the Cherry Trail Atom will also become available, which is the next-generation Atom family. Last but not least, Chipzilla wants to introduce the tablet version of the Braswell Atom architecture, which is, as you might remember, a 14nm system for entry level-products such as budget laptops.
Given the fact that these tablets are still months from being released, we should be taking the information with a grain of salt, because there’s a lot that can happen in the meantime.