Linus Tech tips coverage of computex 2013 is powered by Western Digital our
trusted gaming gear partner is Corsair Vengeance and our trusted retail partner
is nc.com so it's time to check out some isus systems we're going to be starting
with a couple of tablets that are very closely related so these are memopad 302
series tablets both of them and the key difference is okay this one's got LTE
okay this one is a Wi-Fi only model this one's got eight hours of battery life
this one has 10 hours of battery life and this threw me for a bit of a loop
because I wasn't expecting an Android-based tablet to have an Intel
processor inside it so it's an Atom z2560 Processor running at 1.6 GHz that
enables ASUS to achieve the battery life that they have on this and it's not
because of skipping on other components they're both using full 1920x 1200
resolution displays which I personally love I like having the extra vertical
even when I'm using it in a horizontal configuration and with a 10-hour battery
life you're now getting all day Computing out of it now this is something that as spent a lot of time on
with this tablet and I personally love it I actually preferred the original
Transformer the 101 to almost anything
that came after it with the exception of the Nexus 7 and the reason for that is
because I personally prefer a textured finish on the back so if I could get you
to check this out they have brought back the golf ball textured experience to the
back now the great thing about a metal backing is it looks fantastic in
pictures which is fine and good but at the end of the day you're going to bring
the thing home you're going to stain it with your fingerprints it's going to get
warm to the touch and what a plastic backing does is it is more comfortable
to hold you can easily hold it with one hand and not worry about accidentally
dropping the thing I think I'm making people nervous shaking the tablet around
like this but awesome love to see The
Innovation it's also going to be in a number of different colors so this is a
black one I think this is the first time we've seen a black backed tablet from
ASUS at least in my territory so it might not be the first time here but
it's going to come in a number of different colors including white black
as well as sort of a pinky peachy color
I was wrong okay so I'm still happy cuz
it looks like black and I personally love black tablets but apparently it is
actually a very dark blue so my bad and
I also should have mentioned before that both of the tablets have two gigs of RAM
built in which means you're going to be able to get a much more satisfying
multitasking experience now my big problem with lowcost tablets in the past
has always been that you kind of look at the thing and you go okay I guess it's
kind of built okay and uh you know it's
fast enough I could probably use this just for some basic functionality but
the problem is that the screen is always terrible just absolutely terrible so
this is where the memopad hd7 comes in from ASUS this is a relatively lowcost
tablet and when I sell okay so I'll reveal the price later but it uses a
lowcost Qualcomm CPU it's got 1 gig of
RAM it runs Android Jelly Bean 16 gigs onboard memory 16 gigs of web storage
it's got the usual expansion so you've got a Micro SD slot here on the left
side it's quite slim I mean not super slim it's kind of about like a Nexus 7
Up on the top this is neat you've got USB on the go support so you can plug in
whatever it is you need to do via USB but this is the kicker it has a 1280 by
800 IPS display which means you get that viewing angle and that content
consumption enjoyment that you just can't get from a cheap TN panel and all
of that is coming in at a price that's below $150 from a brand that you can actually
trust as opposed to one that you've never heard the name of before you have
no idea if you can get warranty support the game's pretty much changed now
because there's going to be no reason to buy a low-end tablet from anyone other
than as now the first time we saw this
concept was at CES with the Transformer AIO which was a Windows-based all-in-one
but when you disconnected the display it
turned into an Android-based 18 1/2 in tablet now we're seeing what I
personally find to be a more refined version of that Concept in a very very
usable form factor so check this out this is the Transformer book Trio which
Jus is calling the world's first threein one Notebook tablet and desktop PC so
you can you can use it three different ways right here they've got it demoed
attached to a keyboard so it is a multi-touch Windows notebook running an
Intel Core i7 up to a core i7 fourth generation Haswell processor you can
have up to a 1 tbte hybrid drive inside
so that gives you that performance that you need from an SSD but with that mass
storage that you like from a hard drive okay then okay usage case number two you
detach it from the base and all of a sudden you've got yourself an Android
tablet now this is running an Intel Atom Processor you can have up to 64 gigs of
flash base storage on it and you can see right here if I pull out my uh my usual
phone thickness comparison we can't get these things out of the case but that's
okay we can make do with what we have it is a very reasonable size tablet in
spite of having all that extra connectivity that goes into making it
compatible with the base station now let's move on to use case number three
you can actually use it Standalone without the dock without the Android
operating system as a Windows-based PC
so we've got an ASUS monitor here this is from their MX Series this is the MX
2798 we've actually checked this out this features their bang and Olson
speaker technology so this gives you the ability to use it as a dock without
basically plugging anything into it at all so there's a single cable running
between the base station here and the ASUS monitor although of course if you
wanted to use a mouse or something like that you'd have to hook that up
separately so very very cool product giving you the flexibility to use either
a Windows or Android operating system and anything from a notebook to a tablet
to a sitting at a desk type of usage scenario by now you're probably pretty
familiar with ASUS's Zenbook line of Ultrabooks but this one is a little bit
new now I whine and gripe and complain
incessantly about Metal fin es on the backs of tablets on the tops of
notebooks because the problem with them is that they always get all stained and
fingerprint and ugly check this out right here this has the same kind of
circular design hopefully you can get a couple different angles there and you
can check it out as we've seen on some previous ASUS products such as the
TF700 but the key difference here is
that ASUS has Corin Gorilla Glass 3 on
not only the touch surface of the notebook but also on the back of it so
what they're calling it as as their tagline is clearly brilliant The
Notebook that never loses its shine so it will look like that from the day you
get it to the day you no longer need it anymore for whatever reason and all
you'll have to do to keep it clean and looking beautiful is give it a wipe down
so we can't get it out of the case unfortunately but just for the sake of
size comparison if we can get kind of a look at it it's a pretty familiar form
factor from what we've seen from ASUS and their Zenbook line it also features
Intel's new fourth generation Haswell core i7 processor meaning you're going
to get better battery life better performance and with Gorilla Glass 3
better durability so it's much more scratch resistant than Gorilla Glass 2
in fact there have been complaints out there that oh Gorilla Glass 3 doesn't
improve much over Gorilla Glass 2 from guys that are more interested in phones
because it can tend to be a little bit more breakable but it is much more
scratch resistant which personally I don't drop my notebook that often so I'm
more worried about it getting scuffed up and dinged up when I'm putting it in and
out of a bag very cool stuff now right now behind us there has to be the most
obnoxious stage display that I've ever
seen before in my life but fortunately this product isn't so much about the
audio experience and is more about the visual experience this is the PQ 321
ASUS has already teased this so there's a little bit of information that's been
available already but it is a 4K display
that means it runs at four times HD 3840
by 2160 so effectively this is four
1080p displays stretched out now there
are some technical complications with 4K
that do make it inherently more expensive in addition to just the
increased pixel density because this is only a 31 and A2 in display compared to
I mean obviously it's a lot easier to put you know in a 24in display only 1920
x 1080 pixels so there's that there's the increased amount of image processing
that needs to go on and remember if you're going to Market a display for
consumers and intend for people to watch movies and play games on it it's going
to have to have fast enough pixel response time meaning faster processing
in order to make sure that you don't get any motion blur or ghosting or input leg
that's going to take away from the experience one of the other challenges
is inputs it supports a dual HDMI input
which means you're actually using two HDMI ports in tandem but there are some
technological limitations there the display interfaces haven't really all
caught up so the alternative is to use DisplayPort which means you're going to
be able to run at the full 60 HZ refresh rate of this display without any sort of
Funky Monkey Business it's using a sharp
exop panel which means that if you've ever seen one of those you should have
some idea what to expect in terms of viewing angles as well as color
reproduction but we might as well play around with it a little bit here so we
can show you guys it does have pivot it
has height adjust so yeah whatever it's it's sort of secured so I'm sure they
won't mind if we move things around too oh okay I see it has height adjust but
apparently I can't move it right now for whatever reason you can actually see all
the display inputs here on the side if you want to check it out so ASUS
generally recommends using DisplayPort in not the dual HDMI input there's also
an audio in and audio out pass through check out all that cooling on the back
of the display as well so that should give you some idea what I was talking
about before with the increased uh with the increased processing that's going on
here I don't think we're going to get pivot out of this one so it is a bit on the heavy side because that tends to
happen when you get these large format displays and personally I'm incredibly
excited about more than anything else the gaming experience that this is going
to enable on the desktop PC there was a thread on the Linus Tech tips Forum not
that long ago about how no games support 4K yeah no console games pretty much any
PC game going back to like you know Quake free you can manually key in a 4K
resolution you can run that at extremely high res ultra high def 4K so thank you
for checking out our coverage of the ASUS monitors and notebooks and tablets
don't miss any of our show coverage from computex 2013 and as always don't forget
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