Hasta La Gadget!

Just in time for spring, ASUS has refreshed its Lamborghini VX7, a staple in the company’s line of premium notebooks (and fugly smartphones) inspired by the storied Italian car maker. Available in orange and a more staid black, this 8.4-pound beast packs a quad-core Sandy Bridge Intel Core i7 processor, Full HD 15.6-inch display, discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M graphics with 3GB of video memory, up to 16GB of RAM, an 8-cell battery, one USB 3.0 port (along with three USB 2.0 ones), HDMI output, a 2 megapixel webcam, and hard drive space ranging from 500GB to 750GB with speeds of either 5,400RPM or 7,200RPM. Or, you can opt for an SSD as large as 1.25TB. (ASUS likens the speeds to a 10,000 RPM drive.) No word yet on pricing or availability, though we’re pretty sure Valentino Balboni won’t be ponying up to type on one of these either way.

Update: A couple sites are taking pre-orders, with the VX7 consistently priced at $2,269. Have at ’em!

ASUS refreshes Lamborghini VX7 with Sandy Bridge, mercifully offers a black option originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink MobileTechReview  |  Softpedia, ExcaliberPC, XoticPC  | Email this | Comments

Never mind the cringe-inducing advertising, ASUS has given us a much better reason to care about its Tegra 2-toting Eee Pad Transformer: a $400 price. The 10.1-inch Honeycomb tablet (with 1280 x 800 resolution on an IPS display) has quickly moved from its Taiwanese release, through yesterday’s UK pricing announcement, to today showing up at Best Buy in the US, so we suspect its global shipping can’t be far off at all. With a sticker that’s a clear $99 less than the cheapest iPad and a good deal more affordable than its Android competition like the Xoom and G-Slate, the Transformer could yet take the tablet world by storm. Do take note that the keyboard dock that inspires this slate’s name is an optional extra, but given the starting price, the whole package might still end up less than what others will ask.

Update: Whack attack! Best Buy has pulled the Transformer page and it no longer shows up in search results on the site. Was the price too good to be true? Thanks, Jaime!

Update 2: It’s looking likely that the price info was accurate, as 16GB and 32GB versions have shown up elsewhere on the web for $400 and $500, respectively, though both are currently out of stock. Thanks, Sam and James!

Update 3: Ah, and now we have the price for the dock alone: $149. Thanks, Peter C.!

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer shows up at Best Buy for $400 (update: dock price) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Netbook News  |  Best Buy, Newegg  | Email this | Comments

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. How well can a tablet OS run on a laptop?

Looks like Asus couldn’t decide whether it wanted to make a tablet or a netbook, so it made both. The Eee Pad Transformer is a tablet which docks itself to a hinged keyboard and offers a long, long battery life of 16 hours.

It will be very interesting to see if this actually works. The tablet component uses the 1GHz Tegra 2 processor, has 1GB RAM, a Gorilla Glass multitouch screen (10.1 inches), 1.2 and 5MP cameras, gyroscope, compass, GPS and so on. The keyboard is little more than a dock with a trackpad and battery (without the dock, the battery life drops to 9.5 hours).

It seems like a great idea, but I wonder just how well the Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS plays with keyboard and trackpad. Anyone who has teamed the iPad up with an external keyboard knows that it works great if you have some text to type, but anything else is a pain. The OS just isn’t designed to be controlled with a keyboard.

Still, if you’re going to carry a keyboard with you, the extra battery life is nice.

Prices are still unannounced, as are U.S launch dates, but you can see a full spec sheet in the linked press release, and if you live in Taiwan, you can pick one up today.

ASUS Transformer Eee Pad Official Taiwan Release Coming Friday [Netbook News]

See Also:

• Topic Page for ASUS Eee Pad
• Upcoming Asus Tablets Will Run Android Honeycomb

Never mind the fact that Intel’s outing a mid-range laptop CPU long after the highest of high-end — the 2.53GHz Core i5-2520M is shaping up to be a lovely option for those who’d prefer a budget choice with plenty of horsepower for churning through HD video. The benchmarking gurus over at Hot Hardware recently grabbed hold of the new silicon, and they noticed an “unmatched performance-per-watt profile for mobile CPUs,” not to mention a robust graphics core, “ridiculously low idle power consumption,” a respectable price point and plenty of power for any software title not named Crysis 2. ASUS’ 15.6-inch K53E was the test machine, and with a starting tag of just $899, it’s definitely a compelling package. Based on their testing, this particular CPU was around 15 to 25 percent faster across the board compared to its previous generation 2.5GHz Arrandale counterpart, and that’s with around the same power draw, too. Hit the source link for more charts than you’d care to see on an average workday, and be on the lookout for this chip to hit a whole slew of new rigs in the coming weeks.

ASUS’ K53E laptop gets reviewed, 2.53GHz Core i5-2520M CPU gets praised originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Hot Hardware  | Email this | Comments

While we’ve yet to see other Honeycomb tablets materialize in the shops after the Xoom, news has it that ASUS is about to debut its Eee Pad Transformer back in its home country this Friday. There’s still no final pricing to be seen for this Tegra 2 device, but some of our watchful readers have already spotted the stricken-through $799 label — in US dollars, oddly enough — on ASUS’ Transformer countdown page on Facebook, and hopefully this price tag will cover the docking kit as well. Anyhow, anxious Android fans will be able to order this peculiar 10.1-inch slate — in 16GB or 32GB flavor — later this week, so that Taiwanese pen pal of yours will finally come in handy.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: We just heard from our ASUS rep here in the US and it looks like the Transformer will be hitting the US market in early April. No word on pricing yet, but we will keep you updated.

ASUS to debut Eee Pad Transformer in Taiwan this Friday, Honeycomb confirmed (updated: coming to US in early April) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 07:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Netbook News, Engadget Chinese  |  ASUS (Facebook)  | Email this | Comments