Asus at CES 2014 – The Verge

Asus packs a Wacom stylus into its new $299 8-inch Windows tablet

2014-01-06T15:30:02-05:00

Asus VivoTab Note 8

Asus is making its VivoTab Note 8 official today. The 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet includes a 1280 x 800 display that packs in a Wacom digitizer. It's the standout feature of this otherwise fairly standard small Windows 8.1 tablet. While other competitors like Lenovo's Miix 2 and Dell's Venue 8 Pro have offered optional stylus support, none have opted to include full Wacom capability with a pen that sits inside a holder attached to the tablet.

Wacom support is the standout feature of a fairly standard 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet

Asus is aiming this particular tablet at sketchpad users or those who like to jot down notes, making it an obvious compani …

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Asus launches the small PadFone mini, and ZenFones of all colors and sizes

2014-01-06T15:20:24-05:00

Asus PadFone mini

The PadFone is no gimmick. It's been widely met with some combination of confusion and mockery, but Asus's transforming phone / tablet hybrid has spawned successors, and now even has a second model in the lineup. Asus just announced at its CES 2014 press conference the $249 PadFone mini, a 4-inch phone that docks into the back of a 7-inch tablet and becomes an entirely new device. It's very clearly the inferior model in the lineup - the phone's 800 x 480 display reeks of three years ago, as does the tablet's 1280 x 800 screen - but it's largely compelling otherwise, and makes a surprisingly good case next to some of the comically large phone …

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The Asus Transformer Book Duet hybrid can instantly switch between Windows and Android

2014-01-06T15:10:39-05:00

Asus Transformer Book Duet

Back at Computex in June, Asus introduced its Transformer Book Trio - a computer that could function as both a laptop and tablet and dual-booted between Windows 8 and Android. Now, the company's announcing a new version with a similar mission: the Transformer Book Duet TD300 is a convertible laptop / tablet hybrid that can dual boot between Windows 8.1 and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Beyond Asus' earlier effort, Samsung tried this dual-boot trick last year with its Ativ Q, though the new Asus model looks more like a traditional ultrabook at first glance. It has the standard folding form factor rather than the sliding keyboard that Samsung used …

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Asus’ transforming PadFone X is coming to the US on AT&T

2014-01-06T13:30:02-05:00

padfone

Asus is unveiling the PadFone X today, the first of its transforming PadFone devices that's headed to a major US carrier. Though there's no word on exactly when it'll come to the US, AT&T has announced that it will eventually begin carrying the new device. That isn't the only first for this phone though: when it does launch on AT&T, it should be among the first devices with support for Voice over LTE (VoLTE). Whether or not AT&T will actually enable VoLTE at launch isn't clear, but the PadFone X will be ready for when it does.

A smaller gap between phone and tablet

Full details for the PadFone X haven't been revealed yet, but it looks almost …

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