Asus held a press event in New York City today, announcing their new Windows 8 computers including a 23-inch all-in-one desktop, the ET2300, a line of lightweight, touchscreen laptops, the VivoTab RT a Windows RT convertable tablet, and the Asus Taichi, a dual-screen convertable.
The 2300 all-in-one has a display that can be pushed down to nearly lie flat. It has horizontal viewing angles of 178 degrees and runs on a Core i3, i5 or i7 processor, with either integrated Intel graphics or NVIDIA’s GT 630M GPU. Other specs include up to 8GB of RAM, up to 2TB in HDD storage, a slot-loading DVD drive, Intel Wireless Display and optional Thunderbolt connectivity.
ASUS also announced a line of lightweight, touchscreen laptops. The new VivoBook family features bargain prices on touch-screen notebooks. The line includes 11, 14 and 15-inch models. The 11.6-inch Q200 (aka the X202) starts at $499 with a Core i3 processor. The 14-inch S400 will start at $599, and the 15-inch S500 will go for $649 and up. The design is similar to their current Zenbook Prime family, though they lack some higher-end features — like 1080p screens and solid-state storage.
The dockable ASUS VivoTab RT will be available on October 26th, starting at $599 for the 32GB model, keyboard included. The 64GB tablet with docking station go for $699. An LTE version is coming to AT&T.
The VivoTab RT is similar to the Android-based Transformer tablets, except it runs Windows RT. It includes a quad-core Tegra 3 chip (the new T30), 2GB of RAM, NFC and an 8-megapixel rear camera with an auto-focusing f/2.2 lens. The keyboard dock has a USB 2.0 port and built-in battery rated for seven hours.
The 2.75 lb. Asus Taichi, is a convertible with 11.6-inch 1080p IPS displays on both sides of the lid. That secondary display becomes the primary display when you close the Ultrabook and convert it to tablet mode.
