During its CES 2011 press conference Asus announced some of the products in its Eee Pad series, including the Eee Pad Transformer, a 10-inch Tegra based tablet that has a keyboard dock. In addition to the Transformer, Asus also announced the Eee Pad Slider, a similar device that has a slide out keyboard.

We honestly can't say that Eee Pad doesn't remind us of Lenovo's Ideapad U1 Hybrid but unlike Lenovo, Asus kept the device a bit simpler. The keyboard dock is more of a dock rather than a different system. Asus decided to keep the things simple yet practical as the keyboard dock comes with a battery. It will provide additional power (up to 16hrs) as well as extra card reader/USB ports.

 

The tablet itself has a 1280x800 capacitive/IPS touchscreen and is based on Nvidia's Tegra 2 chip. It will have either 512 or 1GB of memory, up to 64GB of flash storage, two cameras (5MP on the back and 1.2MP on the front for video calls), 802.11bgn WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 and mini HDMI output. The device runs on Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS.

The Eee Pad Slider sports the same specifications as its "transformer" brother, except, of course, the noted slide-out keyboard.


Both of these Eee Pad's look pretty good. However, we'll have to wait a bit longer for them as Asus announced that the Eee Pad Transformer is scheduled for April. It will be priced between US $399 and US $699, depending on the configuration. The Slider is scheduled for May and should sell for between US $499 and US $799.