Asus Transformer Book T90 Chi hands-on
The Transformer Book T90 Chi is the most entry-level Windows tablet ASUS announced at CES. It's a 8.1-inch hybrid device that comes with the keyboard included. The whole package is pretty thing and lightweight. You can hold the tablet by itself and it will feel hollow, almost as if there is nothing inside.
Design
The body is made of plastic with a gunmetal look to it. It's pretty sturdy for the most part, and amazingly lightweight. At 9.53 x 5.39 x 0.30 inches (242 x 137 x 7.5 mm) and just 26.46 oz (750 g) weight with the dock, ASUS ended up with a very compact device overall. On the top edge of the tablet, you have your physical buttons - power button and volume control. Strangely, there's no start button in sight, but there are a microSD card slot, a headset jack, microUSB and speakers.
The keyboard dock itself has the standard chicklet keys and feels pretty cramped. There's no trackpad and no battery charging mechanism to power the tablet. Although the one here's a little difficult to use, the option of having a tacktile keyboard on hand will be appreciated by some people.
Display
There's a 8.1-inch 1280x800 IPS display on the T90 Chi. It looks nice, it maintains natural viewing angles, and it's overall pleasant, although it's a bit on the saturated side. It also holds a lot of smudges, but you can hardly get away from that on most devices nowadays.
Processor and memory
The tablet is powered by a Quad Core 64-bit Intel Atom Z3775 processor clocked to 1.46 GHz, paired with 2GB of RAM and either 32 or 64GB of storage. It doesn't seem to have much of a problem running Windows 8.1, although heavy software like Photoshop or AutoCAD won't be a walk in the park for it.
Camera
There are a front-facing 2MP camera and a 5MP auto-focus main cam on this Transformer. This is pretty great for a entry-level tablet and a nice pair of cameras to have at your disposal.
Expectations
Considering you get, essentially, a full-blown Windows computer with the Transformer Book T90 Chi, the $299 base price tag is pretty aggressive. It seems like an excellent budget PC and tablet all-in-one device, and a great value for money proposition.
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