14 DAY TRIAL // Like Samsung, ASUS has a high-end computing, portable device up for order, although this one won't be arriving in the mail for a while: Transformer Book, a convertible laptop.
Truth be told, the ASUS Transformer Book can be called a convertible tablet more readily than it can be branded a convertible laptop.
While the screen size is consistent with ultrabooks and other ultraportable notebooks (13.3 inches in diagonal), the two-piece design is what tablets use nowadays.
And by two-piece design we mean that the half of the device that has the keyboard and various connectors is actually a dock.
The tablet half can be detached at any time and used like any other slate out there (Apple iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Galaxy Note 10.1, Lenovo Idea Tab, etc).
The price of the Transformer Book is $1,480 / 1,120.36 – 1,480 Euro, which is more than even that of the Samsung Series 7 Chronos notebook.
The Windows 8 operating system isn't the reason. The hardware is, starting with the CPU and ending with the storage.
More specifically, an Intel Core i7-3517U CPU (central processing unit) acts as the central director, with its two cores (four threads) of 1.9 GHz / 3 GHz Turbo Boost and 4 MB cache memory. It is made with the 22nm manufacturing process.
4 GB of RAM back it up, while storage space is provided by a 128 GB SSD (solid-state drive), though the keyboard dock has a 500 GB HDD as well (hard disk drive). The resulting 628 GB of storage is quite a lot.
Furthermore, the screen is an IPS panel with Full HD resolution (1080p). As for the keyboard dock, it has Bluetooth and USB 3.0
The pre-order listing can be found here. Deliveries will only start on March 7, by which time a few more configurations could make their appearance. From what we can gather from reports, 11.6-inch and 14-inch Transformer Books will be unleashed at some point, along with Core i5-powered laptops.