ASUS has launched the ASUS Taichi™ 31 with Dual 13.3-inch Displays. This is a follow up, a bigger brother of, the Taichi 21 released last October; a very similar but more portable unit with an 11.6-inch full HD screen. The newer, larger Taichi will benefit from a bigger battery and this boosts the battery life from around five hours to seven, despite the larger screens.
ASUS provide an interesting take on the Ultrabook tablet hybrid convertible with the Taichi, which is designed with a screen on both sides of the laptop lid. Facing the keyboard user you have a regular HD screen and facing away from the keyboard, and also accessible when the laptop hinge is closed, you have an HD touchscreen. Under the headline of One TAICHI, Two Screens – Endless Flexibility, the promotional blurb describes the Taichi like this: “ASUS TAICHI™ is an incredible fusion of notebook and tablet for unparalleled mobile flexibility. Lid open, TAICHI is a powerful notebook with a crystal-clear Full HD screen, Intel® Core™ processor and backlit keyboard. Lid closed, TAICHI is a lightweight tablet with a slim, tapered profile and a multi-touch Full HD screen for intuitive fingertip control with Windows 8.”
What is the utility value of this combination of screens? The ASUS marketing department have done a bit of brainstorming and come up with four reasons why you need the Taichi Ultrabook. First of all we have the obvious “Notebook mode” and “Tablet mode” (both modes demonstrated in the above video), however these qualities are shared by many other Ultrabook convertibles by the likes of HP and Lenovo etc.
Now the added value of an ASUS Taichi rests on the next two reasons for buying/using one of these hybrids. “Mirror mode” allows you to use both screens to show the same information on the back-to-back screens. That’s useful for presenting to people facing you and the IPS screen has a wide 178 degree viewing angle. “Dual-screen mode” allows the two screens to work independently, one with a keyboard and multi-touch touchpad, the other with multi-touch screen and stylus.
ASUS has kitted out the Taichi 31 with a good selection of hardware as you might expect on a cutting edge Ultrabook convertible design. The processing power is supplied with your choice of either Ivy Bridge Intel Core i5 3317U or i7 3537U /3517U chip. It is equipped with 4GB of DDR3 RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4000. You can choose a 128GB or 256GB SSD storage option. Both screens are 13.3-inch full HD 1920x1080 pixels, with the tablet side offering 10-point multi-touch. There are also a good selection of connectivity and network interfaces. Also notable is the audio spec which is branded as Bang & Olufsen ICEpower. The Taichi 31 measures 33.92 x 22.8 x 17.4 cm (WxDxH) and weighs in at only 1.56Kg. The stylus is an optional extra.
Unfortunately the official announcement mentions neither pricing nor availability. The 11.6-inch ASUS Taichi 21 with i7 processor and 256GB SSD currently costs £1,499 at John Lewis which may serve as a pricing guideline. A review of this 11.6-inch Taichi by Cnet found it to be “a solution in search of a problem”. However if you were fond of the smaller version you may like this new 13.3-incher even better.
(travel battleships game)
