Samsung Ativ Q

Giving its own spin on the rising trend of tablet/laptop hybrids, ASUS has announced its Transformer Book Trio at IFA 2013. This, according to the company, is the world’s first three-in-one ultraportable, providing not only a tablet and a laptop, but also a complete desktop PC.

ASUS first unveiled the device back in June at Computex and seems to have been refreshed a bit. The tablet part of the duo sports an 11.6-inch Full HD IPS LCD and 178-degree viewing angles. It has a storage capacity of up to 60 GB and, alone, is expected to have around 19 hours of battery life. It still runs on Android 4.2 but the 2.0 GHz Intel Atom Z2580 processor that we saw back then could have been upgraded to a higher Atom model.

Perhaps the more interesting part of the Transformer Book Trio is the keyboard dock, which ASUS more properly calls a PC Station. With a fourth generation Intel Core i5 or i7 Haswell CPU running Windows 8, the device is able to function standalone as a desktop replacement. All it needs is a monitor attached via Mini DisplayPort or micro-HDMI. Of course, it also functions as a keyboard dock for the Android tablet, but a simple press of the “Trio” key transforms it into a Windows 8 laptop which shares an internal storage of up to 1 TB with the tablet.

The integration between the two operating systems sounds not as seamless as the Samsung ATIV Q, but hopefully it also doesn’t step on any patents that would delay or even kill the product. No pricing or availability details have so far been released, but it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if this three-in-one two-for-one device would cost an arm and a leg.

SOURCE: ASUS