I’ve just ordered a Windows 10 2-in-1 with Atom X5-Z8500, 4 GB RAM, USB 3.1 / USB C and 64 GB storage for 379 Euro. (Amazon Germany.) That’s just under $350 in pre-tax USA pricing and having had some hands-on with the Transformer Book T100HA last week I’m confident that it’s a bargain 2-in-1 and that it will be very popular this quarter, unless I find some gotchas. The entry-level model with 32 GB storage and 2 GB RAM is being offered at just €309 – $280 (pre-19% tax conversion.) My T100HA will be here in 5-6 days and yes, there will be plenty of coverage here at UMPCPortal.
Update: The delivery estimate went from 5-6 days to infinity and I haven’t found an alternative retailer yet.
There are a number of reasons why I’ve bought the T100HA [specs here] but the screen isn’t one of them. 1280 x 800 isn’t my idea of high-end but it’s enough for my testing plan with evolves around the Atom X5 Z8500 (mid-range, up to 2.44 Ghz) and USB C / USB 3.1. Can the ASUS Transformer Book work as a tablet, laptop, blogging / travel PC and dockable workstation? My experience with a similar specification on the Lenovo Thinkpad 8 tells me that i’ll have no problem getting through a day of blogging and image management. As for simple full-HD video editing, we’ll see.
The 64-bit build and bootloader should be Linux-friendly but that’s something I’ll test too.
Total weight is 1KG / 2.2 pounds and there’s a 30 Wh battery inside. I don’t expect more than 6 hours of WiFi-on productivity but video playback efficiency should be better than on 2014-2015 10-inch Windows tablets.
I’ll also be testing the new Gen 8 HD Graphics GPU as the 3D performance should be way ahead of Baytrail-T Gen-7 GPUs. Quick-Sync video encoding should also get a boost and could enable a smoother Full HD video editing experience.
It doesn’t look like the ASUS T100HA is up for pre-order in the USA yet but if you spot it, please drop a comment for the readers below.
In the meantime, watch my hands-on at IFA last week. FOr my Germany readers, check the T100HA link on the right here. (Aff. link)
Looking forward to the review- ordered the Chromebook Flip instead of waiting for this, will be interested to see whether that was a mistake!
I’m not confident about the performance of that. Web pages are largely single-threaded operations so i think this quad-core is going to have much less performance than, say the Acer R11 (which I really like.)
Keep us posted though, please. (Sent from a Lenovo N20p Chromebook ‘flip’ !)
Chippy if you have a chance look at the Anandtech article evaluating heterogeneous CPU architecture.
It paints a great picture of how internet browsing is not a single threaded process- with anywhere from 3 to 8+ threads spread over multiple cores and more thread work that could have been parsed out to a higher core count.
I will, thanks!
Hey Chippy, another suggestion for you to investigate:
Chris over at Techtablets recently did a really good series of videos of a tablet with the X5 Z8500 SoC, the same as in the T100ha. He noted it was more prone to throttling than its Bay Trail predecessor because of an inadequate heat sink (he also fixed this by replacing the stock heat sink with a copper one). It would be neat if you could check if the same throttling occurs with the X5 Z8500 inside the T100ha. Here’s two videos demonstrating the issue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVNsQotL4i4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMgqvHncwv0
I’ve been following them as it’s a good series.
Of course I’ll be testing the T100HA for Turbo issues in my tests. I’ll also be doing deep-dive battery life testing and even some gaming. I’m really looking forward to it and having a discussion about it.
Great to hear, looking forward to it!
This one you’ve bought from Germany, will it be coming with a QWERTY or QWERTZ keyboard? please let us know!
QWERTZ – unless i’m lucky. For Qwerty see US, UK or NL.
so… have you received it yet? Keyboard?
I’ve just updated the top of the post. The delivery date got changed and at the moment there’s no indication of availability. I know that one has gone to Notebookcheck.net though so i’m going to be tracking that. (I’m in contact with the reviewer.)
How is it? Are you happy with it? Does it do what you expected it to do? Does it let you down anywhere?
I’d rush to the store to get one since it is nicely discounted tonight. :)