ASUS Transformer Book (T300 with Haswell) Hands-On

Posted on 15 September 2013, Last updated on 15 September 2013 by

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I had hands-on with the new version of the ASUS Transformer Book at IDF13 this week and while it excites me to see Haswell pushing down into this form factor I’m of the opinion that, for now, Baytrail-based 2-in-1’s will better meet the average requirements in this space. Price is one factor but weight of tablet is a huge problem for consumers – the type of customers that should be targeted by 2-in-1’s to help turn round the PC business.

Having said that…

…if you’re looking for occasional lap or table-top tablet use and a huge amount of CPU power, storage speed, security and features then the ASUS Transformer Book T300 beats the consumer-focused Baytrail devices hands-down. The T300 has a Haswell CPU and a slight re-design. This version had no additional storage in the base and it wasn’t possible to confirm any additional battery either. This high-quality 2-in-1 should be available soon and we’re expecting the price to match the existing TX300 which starts at about $1000.

Take a look at the video and see what you think. What’s the target customer here? You?

 

8 Comments For This Post

  1. Alchemist says:

    I think you might be onto something with baytrail being the sweet spot for 2-in-1 units. If performance pans out the way it looks for baytrail a little 10″ 1080p baytrail unit would be perfect for me. The asus $350-$399 is almost there if not for the weak screen. Spending $1000-$1500 you want more processing power which can’t help but hurt battery life and add weight.

  2. Adam says:

    Chippy,

    Has Intel put monitor-size restrictions on BayTrail devices?

    (This was their old technique in the netbook days for creating differentiation and I’ve heard whispers that it’s back.)

    BayTrail can support high resolutions and they’re kinda pointless on 10″ and 11.6″ devices; I’d love to see BayTrail-t in a 13″ tablet. But I’m expecting Intel to continue to defend that 60% profit Core U space hard.

    Adam

  3. Steve Chippy Paine says:

    This is a question I’ve been pondering. I haven’t seen any evidence of restrictions apart from the Microsoft Small Screen Touch program which offers low license-fees and includes Office on devices of 11.6″ and under.

  4. Mickael says:

    Hi Steve,
    The T300LA just arrived in France in pre-order, the first version with Core i5 and 256GB hard drive will be available for 999€ :

    http://www.comparatif-ultrabook.fr/asus/transformer-book-t300la-c4004h-439.html

    Thank you for your video !

  5. Steve Chippy Paine says:

    Thanks for the info!

  6. Antonio says:

    For me, a device like this is perfect. I have a small, 13.3″ vaio-z which was a bit costly three years ago (twice as the i7, C4017H version). I do a lot of photo editing on the go, so I need a small and capable laptop. This thing with the i7, is almost twice as fast, if it does not suffer from massive thermal throttling as the tx300 did, I’m getting one of these as soon as it hits the stores.

  7. footstep002 says:

    It seems that tx300 haswell refresh version will not come out soon. So I was wondering if I could use this tablet(t300) with the dock of tx300. I really liked the tx300’s dock that it has many functions on it.

  8. John says:

    Does anyone know, when it will be available in europe?
    Month and a half passed and still no words about availability?

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