Only recently, ASUS unveiled its Vivo Tab line of tablets, and now it has shown off a brand new laptop that will serve as the big brother to these tablets. This new laptop, called the VivoBook X202, has all the touchscreen functionality of its tablet brethren, but with the extra features users expect in a laptop.
This new ASUS laptop features all the touch gestures that people would want from a smartphone or tablet such as tapping to open a file, pinching to zoom, and swiping. On top of these, it has a keyboard and trackpad that lets users go back to the traditional laptop controls for some functions.
The VivoBook X202 comes with Windows 8 Home Premium installed. Windows 8 offers a new interface that is tailor-made for touchscreens, and this new ASUS laptop looks to take advantage of those features.
The laptop comes with an 11.6-inch HD LED screen capable of 1366 x 768 resolution. The capacitive touchscreen offers all the functionality you would expect from a tablet or smartphone in a much larger device. It supports multitouch, which should open up all kinds of options for Windows 8 developers. It is also extremely light, weighing in at only 2.9 pounds (1.3 kg).
The laptop has a 3rd Gen Intel Core i3-3217U (1.8GHz) processor and 4GB of RAM out of the box. It also includes a 500GB HDD. It's not exactly the most powerful laptop of the market, and it is clearly trying to leverage the touchscreen as its main selling point. The VivoBook X202 also includes USB 3.0 for faster data transfer.
The battery life is not overly impressive, promising only five hours from its two-cell battery. It's not the worst battery life on the market, but it certainly is nothing to write home about.
Interested buyers can preorder the new ASUS from major retailers such as Amazon, Newegg, and TigerDirect for US$599. It ships October 26th of this year.
