ASUS Eee Pad Slider arriving at month’s end, starting at $475 (video)

It has been greater than eight months because the ASUS Eee Pad Slider was born at CES and because then, we’ve seen listings online and heard endless promises that it’s coming ” soon .” Today, though, at a media event here in Ny city, we managed a prolonged hands-on with the item — in addition to assurance that it’s going to hit the united states before month’s end. In line with an ASUS rep, it’ll ship with Android 3.2 and begin at $475 for the 16GB model ( roughly as leaked ) with the beefier 32GB number fetching a different hundred bucks. That suggests we’ll be putting it through its paces soon enough, but meanwhile, head past the break for some early impressions.

The Slider weighs 2.2 pounds and measures half an inch thick, that’s pretty darn compact once you remember this can be a slate with a whole keyboard attached. We’re told it’ll only be available in that brown-and-white combo you spot within the photos, that is just fine by us — in person, it has a classy, but not-too-industrial look, and though it’s made up of plastic, its non-reflecting surfaces lend it some gravitas. (That metal piece at the back, however, is a hopeless fingerprint magnet.)

To show the keyboard, you will have to discover ways to lift the display, in preference to pushing it back toward the hinge. Likewise, flattening it into slate mode involves pushing the display forward, not down. That sliding mechanism has a bouncy, spring-loaded feel, which initially inspires confidence inside the build quality — until, perhaps, you already know it’s accompanied by a noisy, metallic noise. Some might just like the aural feedback, though we’d have preferred something a little quieter.

You’ll notice that the keyboard in this thing is understandably smaller than the only you will find at the Eee Pad Transformer. We are saying “understandably” because half the capability key space is eaten up by that namesake sliding mechanism. On condition that, it is a comfortable ‘board — a minimum of for brief bursts of typing. Although ASUS clearly needed to cut some corners here, the backspace key remains amply sized. We did find, however, that as we were typing, or thumbs often missed the narrow space key, landing instead at the table on which we rested the tablet.

In case you recall, the tablet has a ten-inch (1280 x 800) IPS display, which, as you’d expect, translates to strong viewing angles from the perimeters. Software-wise, there is not much to put in writing home about — here’s stock Android 3.2, and excluding pre-loaded wallpaper, the corporate hasn’t mucked with Honeycomb. Interestingly, that wallpaper — an animated wall of water — actually doubles as a battery life indicator, with the water level rising because the battery rating does. A subtle, why-didn’t-we-think-of-that-touch, we need to say.

So, folks, that’s about all shall we glean after spending only some minutes with the Slider. As per usual, we’ll reserve judgment until we will get a review unit in and spend greater than ten minutes with it, but until then have a gander at our gallery of hands-on shots.

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This post is tagged: confidence, eight months, fingerprint, impressions, new york city, reflecting surfaces