Asus Announces New EeePad Tablets, Nothing We Haven’t Seen Already

Asus isn’t playing around. They’re running straight into the tablet market with three separate devices, one 7″ Android, one 12.1″ Windows 7-based tablet, and a laptop-esque device with a removable keyboard. The first, the EeePad Memo runs a qualcomm snapdragon processor, undoubtedly the same model we’ve seen in recent Android phones and tablets, though it does boast 1080p playback, a front and rear camera, an IPS capacitive touchscreen, and it works even with a stylus. The Memo is expected to release in May for $499-$699.

But frankly, that’s not so special. We already have some Android tablets. The EeePad Slate EP121, a 12.1″ Windows 7 tablet, is beyond a workhorse. It runs an i5-470UM CPU, Win7 Home Premium, and we witnessed it run Photoshop live, albeit barely. It comes with a 64GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and supports Wireless-N and Bluetooth 3.0, works with a stylus, and has HDMI, USB and a media card reader. It’s a bit ridiculous. You thought the iPad was big. Asus also claims that it’s twice as fast as the iPad. The Slate is expected to release this month for $999-$1099.

Then there’s the EeePad Transformer, a tablet that comes with a keyboard that plugs directly into the bottom of the tablet to make it into a laptop. Asus claims 16 hours of battery life, and the Transformer boasts a full size QWERTY keyboard, all the ports and outputs of the Slate EP121, and even better dual cameras (5MP rear camera with autofocus, 1.2MP front camera). Oh, and it comes with Tegra 2, which is Nvidia’s dual-core full-on processor, which works as the CPU and GPU. The Transformer is expected to release this May for $499-$799.

Finally, there’s the EeePad Slider, a tiny 2lbs .66″ thick tablet slider. That means it comes with a built-in and slide-out keyboard, but interestingly doesn’t run Windows 7, instead using Android 3.0 (Honeycomb). And it does all this with the same Tegra 2 processor as in the Transformer, a 10.1″ IPS display, the same cameras as the Transformer, and all the built-in goodies as the previous two tablets.