The Hottest Products of CES 2011
The Tablets of CES 2011
Regardless, we took time here to wrap-up our show favorites from the major players, in this Hottest Products of CES 2011 showcase. These were the stand-outs in our opinion, in a sea of technology deep and wide enough to make any self-respecting geek grin from ear to ear.
Asus Slider and Transformer Tablets:
Is it a tablet? Or a notebook? The Eee Pad Slider is a little of both and features a 10.1” IPS touch-screen, but also a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Powered by a dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2 SoC, it also sports built-in digital cameras on the front (1.2MP) and rear (5MP) for video chat and digital photography. Mobile users will appreciate the Android 3.0 operating system, though the demo we saw was based on FroYo 2.2, since Honeycomb isn't quite ready for prime time obviously. There were a number of slate manufacturers at CES in fact, tapping their feet impatiently in anticipation of Google's upcoming tablet OS. If you want something with a bit more spacious keyboard an convertible netbook feel , Asus is also working on the Eee Pad Transformer. With a slim lightweight design and 10.1” capacitive touch-screen, it is for people who want to enjoy multimedia on the move, but still want to have a full computing experience and access to the web, email and other productivity applications.
Asus Slider Android Tablet - Click for high res.
Asus Demos Slider Android-Based Tablet PC
Lenovo’s new IdeaPad U1 Hybrid is a 2-in-1 device that combines a slate with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and Android with a keyboard base and full Windows 7 functionality driven by an Intel Atom processor under its hood. The slate portion of the U1 Hybrid has a 10.1-inch panel and feels smooth and solid in your hand. The base unit turns the slate into a netbook with 92% full-sized keyboard. It's sort of the best of both world for the ultra-portable crowd, considering a thin-and-light notebook but augmenting with a tablet solution as well. When detached the switch to Android is seamless and though our demo was running 2.2, we're told Honeycomb will be available upon Google's release.
Although we won’t see the IdeaPad U1 for a little while here in the States, we’re definitely anxious for this baby to hit the market. China pricing for the U1 Hybrid is right around $1300, and it sounds like it will be about the same when it hits our shores. We're hopeful Lenovo will see clear to sharpening the pencil on that pricing though.
Lenovo Demos The U1 Hybrid for us behind closed doors...