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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Features/  Gizmo Guru | Laptop, Desktop, and Tablet
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Gizmo Guru | Laptop, Desktop, and Tablet

The Asus Transformer Trio tries to solve all your computing needs at once, but falls a little short of the mark

Asus Transformer TrioPremium
Asus Transformer Trio

A windows laptop that can become an android tablet, without being too heavy or bulky in either form, sounds like the perfect device to have, right? That’s what the Asus Transformer Trio promises, and to a degree, it does work. As you can see here, it looks like a sleek and stylish Windows PC, and there’s a little knob you can use to separate the screen from the keyboard and you’ve got an Android tablet.

There’s also a key on the keyboard, that lets you switch between operating systems without separating the halves. HP and a few others have hybrids with a similar design, but what makes the Trio unique is that it has two sets of hardware — the CPU etc of the Windows laptop and the Android tablet are separate, and you can actually use it as a Windows desktop by connecting it to a monitor, while someone else is using the Android tablet!

The 11.6-inch display is big and crisp, and the Windows 8 computer has an Intel Core i7, with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD. The Android tablet uses an Intel Atom CPU, 2GB RAM and 16GB of storage which is easily accessed while in Windows mode.

On paper, all this sounds great, and actually using it, for the most part, is great.

But there are some key caveats. For one thing, having separate processors definitely ups the weight of the device. It’s 1.7 kilos, and that’s a fair amount of weight these days.

Secondly, the switch between Windows and Android isn’t always smooth, specially when you’re trying to use Windows. And there’s also the price — the Trio costs 98,099.

At that price, it might make sense to buy a laptop and a tablet instead — you’re not saving much in terms of money or convenience here.

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Published: 27 Dec 2013, 10:30 PM IST
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