Asus prices up netbook-convertible Android tablet

Asus' tablet-meets-netbook, the Eee Pad Transformer, will cost the best part of £500 when it goes on sale here on Wednesday. The Transformer is a 10in, 1280 x 800 tablet running Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system - onto which Asus has slapped its own UI, Waveshare - and driven by a dual-core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 …

[Francis Boyle]

Nice try

but without a full set of ports on the keyboard section and pc compatiblity it fails at being a netbook replacement. That and the price.

C- Asus, we know you can do better.

[spegru]

Something Wrong with Tablet prices

At the same time as this I can see a nice slim ASUS netbook with 1.66GHz Atom Processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 10" Display, Bluetooth, Windows 7 Starter OS, & up to 6 Hours Battery Life for about half this.

Yeah shame about the Win7. Without that I think it's possible to spot a hardware price of around 200 - alot of which is the same as this tablet.

Good luck to em of course, but I think we can see why tablets are so popular with the makers. The profits must be huge.

Why? It can only be because the lack of keyboard means 'it's not a PC'

Any they said Linux netbooks didnt work out for mass sales......

[DrXym]

Advent Vega

Dixons sell a 10" tablet with dual core Tegra 2 processor for £250. If they can do it then so can everyone else. I believe that the big names are just looking at the Apple iPad and chancing their arm while they still can, jacking up the price and lamely justifying the price with extra storage or superfluous trinkets like rear facing camera and what not.

It's still early days of course but we're starting to see brand names tentatively undercut the iPad. Hopefully when the market fleshes out a bit they'll start competing with each other.

With regard to the Transformer, it's a nice idea but I suppose it depends on how useful the keyboard turns out to be and how expensive. For $500 it really should be included in the price. I think the Slider looks like a better conceived piece of kit for people who might like a tablet but also need to type a lot such as students, managers, salesmen etc.

[Arnold Lieberman]

£500 + the cost of a keyboard?

Why would you?

[Neill Mitchell]

I was the same.

I started off reading thinking "Why the title? - £500 sounds pretty good to me". Then saw that was without the keyboard. I guess expensive licensing has pushed up the price.

[DrXym]

Hoping £500 is a mistake

Tech radar puts the price at a more (but not completely) reasonable £379-399.

http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/asus-eee-pad-transformer-uk-release-date-announced-938618

I hope the £500 is a typo seeing as $505 was the supposed US price (without keyboard)

[Bruce 3]

And thats my pre order cancelled

FFS i am so sick and tired of being ripped off by multi nationals. This is a US$503 product in Taiwan at launch. I wanted two of these and hoped it would mean i could avoid getting shafted by PC World for the Xoom. Can anybody tell me why that whole grey market is such a bad thing again?

[John H Woods]

Let me explain ...

We, as giant multinationals, may do research, manufacturing or outsourcing anywhere in the world that suits us. You, as lowly serfs^H^H^H^H^H consumers may only buy goods in your own regions.

[Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik]

So I guess that means...

I'll wait until the touchbook v2 is actually out(whenever that is)...

[Santonia]

Priced to sell?

I seem to remember an earlier article suggesting this would cost something like £350. Seems that dream didn't come true.

Re: the comment 'bout the Vega. Given the news last week that Google will not be releasing Honeycomb as AOSP, and the pricing of all current available details on other Honeycomb tabs, I'm beginning to suspect some level of price collusion, or cosy arrangement between major brands and Google. Effectively Google are saying that Billy Chinese OEM Android tabs cannot get hold of the Honeycomb OS. Therefore there is no price competition coming from the cheap no-brand end of the spectrum. This effectively gives Samsung, Motorola, Asus, Acer, LG and so on some protection for their overpriced Honeycomb tabs. The Advent Vega is a no-brand tab with absolutely the specification to run Honeycomb, but by not releasing the AOSP it is being held back on the non-tab Froyo.

Apple has nothing to fear from this of course, so it can set pricing and watch the profits roll in. Android vendors are always at risk of lower priced competition, which may well mean a certain reluctance to invest - something which Google can encourage by holding back Honeycomb.

Hmmm.

[David Gosnell]

£350

Are you meaning this one, with £300 mentioned? Different beast, though not quite sure how they've got it so much cheaper, potentially. Much preferable overall I would say, too.

http://www.reghardware.com/2011/03/15/preview_tablet_asus_eee_pad_slider/

[DrXym]

Price collusion

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be a bit of that. I think a less conspiratorial reason is they want to give their partners a bit of breathing space before an army of clones turn up and in the meantime they'll do what they said about merging 2.x & 3.x.

[nemo20000]

Madness breeds madness

Silly price. Very silly price.

If it was running RISC OS though, fair enough.

[Wang N Staines]

£250

is the right price. Next!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pricing

Telegraph suggest it will be £379 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8417586/Asus-to-launch-first-Android-Honeycomb-tablet-next-week.html

Amazon offer pre-orders for release on the 18th at £379 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-EeePad-Transformer-Tablet-Android/dp/B004TB0EMK/ and £429 with dock http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-Transformer-Android-docking-station/dp/B004TB0EXY/

Tempted...