ASUS' Transformer Book T100: Atom Z3740 Inside, Available October 18th at $349
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 11, 2013 8:16 PM EST
Earlier today, ASUS CEO Jerry Shen teased their first Bay Trail tablet: the T100. Today at ASUS' IDF press conference we got some more details on the tablet. The official name is the Transformer Book T100 and it's a 10.1-inch Windows 8.1 tablet. The IPS display features a 1366x768 resolution. Normally I'd complain about that, but the T100 starts at $349 for a 32GB model.
Internally, ASUS settled on the Atom Z3740, a quad-core Bay Trail SKU clocked lower than the one we previewed earlier today. The max non-turbo frequency on the Z3740 is 1.33GHz, with a max turbo of 1.86GHz. Since this isn't a D-SKU, ASUS settled on a dual-channel (2x64-bit) LPDDR3 memory interface.
Much like the Bay Trail FFRD we tested, the T100 is equipped with 2GB of LPDDR3. NAND storage options include 32GB or 64GB eMMC. There's also a single microSD card reader.
Other IO includes a micro USB port for charging (and/or external USB devices), a micro HDMI output and a headphone/mic jack. There's keyboard dock included (!!) that adds a USB 3.0 port. ASUS claims they used the Thinkpad and MacBook keyboards as the benchmarks to evaluate the T100 against.
The T100 ships with an integrated 31Wh battery. ASUS promises up to 11 hours of battery life thanks to the Bay Trail silicon inside. The tablet measures 10.4" x 6.7" x 0.41" (0.93" thick with the dock) and weighs 550g/1.2 lbs (2.4 lbs with the dock).
On the software side, in addition to Windows 8.1 you get a pre-installed copy of Office 2013.
The T100 is extremely interesting as it's truly a reimagining of the netbooks of 5 years ago. It's thinner, lighter and much faster.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
102 Comments
View All Comments
dragonsqrrl - Sunday, September 15, 2013 - link
...that and there's only 2GB of memory. The fact that Atom now supports 64bit instructions is irrelevant. The memory and storage capacity alone are enough to infer that this will be running 32bit Windows.euskalzabe - Friday, September 20, 2013 - link
Not really. A 64bit CPU will process the same 32bit instruction faster than a 32bit CPU in many cases. Going 64bit can have a positive, if minimal, impact.euskalzabe - Friday, September 20, 2013 - link
I guess you could always get a device now and when 8.1 x64 is updated to support connected standby you can reinstall windows - the same key will be valid for your device, whether the installation is x86 or x64. That's what I'm planning on doing.duzenko - Saturday, November 23, 2013 - link
Are you going to pay for a copy of 64-bit Windows to upgrade to? Because surely Asus won't.clemsyn - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
I don't think they will include a recovery partition for the 32GB. They might just include a few recovery CD's to save space on the 32GB.AgeOfPanic - Wednesday, September 18, 2013 - link
You don't really need recovery cd's with Windows 8. You can just do a factory refresh that's build into the system.damianrobertjones - Thursday, September 19, 2013 - link
You can disable system restore, hibernation file, virtual memory and a few more things to gain spacemax1001 - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
$450 with full HD and 64 GB eMMc and I will buy it on day one.sri_tech - Wednesday, September 11, 2013 - link
I don't mind paying $499 for FULL HD, 64GB and keyboard dock like this.JNo - Thursday, September 12, 2013 - link
Dell Venue is 1080p. But not sure if it will be dockable or not and that is the bigger issue for me...