Asus Dates and Prices Eee Pad Transformer: Cheaper than iPad 2

Asus introduced its line of tablets and convertibles earlier this year. Among the lineup was Eee Pad Transformer, which is a Honeycomb hybrid tablet. The tablet was released in Taiwan on March 25^th and now has been priced and dated for the UK consumption. The convertible tablet will be available from April 6^th and has been priced at £379 for the barebones model.  Comparable iPad 2 Wi-Fi only model is priced at £399. Eee Pad 32 GB will set you back by £429 and if you want to have the keyboard dock, then be prepared to shell out additional £50. The aggressive pricing by Asus has taken some sting off the pricing jibes made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Asus did not provide any pricing details about its 3G models.

Quashing the earlier doubts, the tablet comes equipped with Android Honeycomb OS. Under its hood, Eee Pad Transformer has Nvidia Tegra 2 dual core processor and 1 GB of RAM. Among other standard features are two cameras, where its rear facing camera is 5 MP strong and front facing camera comes with 1.2 MP resolution. The tablet is powerful enough to play solid HD at 1080p. You can also stream HD videos to your TV using HDMI out option. The one surprise feature is that its keyboard has its own dedicated battery and thus can be used for supplying power to the main tablet unit. Asus has claimed total 16 hours of battery life. Whether this feature proves to be iPad 2 killer or not is yet to be seen, but it certainly is an impressive stat. There is also an SD card slot which may be used for augmenting on board storage, although you can also use Asus's WebStorage portal for storing unlimited content on cloud servers.

Asus has also announced the UK launch date for Slate EP 121. Slate is more expensive at £999 and will hit the store shelves on April 10^th. In the beginning, Slate will be exclusively available through Amazon UK. Slate also grabs the spot for being the biggest tablet around. With its 12.1 inch size, slate may be a bit awkward to maneuver, but it can also prove to be a good work horse, thanks to its bigger screen real estate. iPad 2 made an expectedly impressive debut in the UK, so let's wait one more week to see how these tablets fair!