Asus Chairman Jonney Shih and Intel Vice President Tom Kilroy took to the stage yesterday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco to showcase two new Transformer Book ultraportables—the Transformer Book T100 and Transformer Book Trio. Both feature the Asus signature two-part dockable design that turns the laptop into a tablet. But the Transformer Book Trio takes this further with a keyboard dock that has its own processor that can be used as a self-contained desktop PC while the display is detached as a tablet.
The Transformer Book Trio runs on 4th-gen Intel Core processor and has an 11.6-inch Full HD IPS panel. The display-cum-tablet is an Android-powered device with its own Intel Atom dual-core processor. If it is docked, the Transformer Book Trio can easily switch from Windows 8 and Android 4.2 by pressing the dedicated Trio button on the keyboard. And as mentioned, the PC Station keyboard dock, with the use of an external display connected via mini DisplayPort or micro-HDMI, is a self-contained Windows 8 desktop PC.
The Transformer Book T100, on the other hand, is a 10.1-inch hybrid device that runs on Intel’s new Bay Trail-T Z340 quad-core processor. It has a lightweight keyboard dock with multi-touch touchpad and full Windows 8.1 gesture support. Its high-def IPS multi-touch display is more than ready to work as a standalone Windows 8.1 tablet. And carrying it around won’t be too tiring as it weighs a mere 2.4lbs when attached to the dock and 1.2lbs if used as a tablet.