The world’s first quad-core Android tablet, Asus’ Eee Pad Transformer Prime, is now available to pre-order in North America.
Asus is looking to capitalise on its impressive performance with the orginal Eee Pad, which received rave reviews for both its functionality and price.
The 10-inch tablet is now on pre-order in the US & Canada through a host of different retailers including Best Buy, B&H and Future Shop – Amazon will be selling the Transformer Prime, but hasn’t set up a pre-order page just yet. The device is expected to begin shipping around December 16.
The new quad-core tablet, a successor to the Asus Eee Pad Transformer released in early summer, will be the fastest tablet available, coming with 1200×800 display, Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB Ram, an 8 megapixel rear facing camera, capable of 1080p video capture, a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera and a microSD slot.
The Transformer Prime will come with the current 3.2 version of Android Honeycomb, but Google is promising that the upgrade to 4.0 Ice Cream will be coming to the Prime first.
The device is more expensive than its predecessor, starting at $499 for a 32Gb and $599 for a 64Gb version. The main party piece of the Transformer range is the attachable keyboard, which will cost $149 and comes in two colours: amethyst grey and champagne gold.
Part of the reason why the original Eee Pad was so successful was the price, it remains to be seen whether the quad-core sequel will be as successful considering the $100 price hike over the original.
Although it’s strong on hardware, the $100 increase in price will make it a more difficult to sell given that the entry-level (16GB) iPad is also priced at $499.
Details on UK price and release date hasn’t been confirmed at the time of writing, but it’s expected to land in North America on December 16 and Europe soon after.
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