Review: Asus Taichi

A few weeks back I was invited along to the Asus launch at the Novotel Hotel Ellerslie to see Asus’ new offerings.  They had your standard tablets and laptops that nearly all the manufacturers are pumping out at the moment.  I had the impression that Asus didn’t really know what was going to take off next, so they were hedging their bets by having product offerings in just about every category imaginable (the 18.4” ASUS Transformer AiO P1801 tablet/desktop running both Android and Windows 8 deserves a mention).

The Asus Taichi was the product that stuck out the most to me.  It is a hybrid of notebook and tablet.  Open it up and it’s your standard 11.6” notebook; close the lid and it becomes a tablet.  In notebook mode, you can turn on mirror mode, so the lid mirrors what’s on the screen.  The practical application of this is you could show a Powerpoint presentation to someone sitting opposite you – they would see the slides, and you could see presenter mode.

This was the one feature I was most excited about, however there is a small issue I hadn’t thought about: it would be rare for you to use the notebook with the screen set completely vertical, but you need to do this for the other person to be able to easily see their screen.  Angling the screen to either yourself or your partner puts the other person at a disadvantage.

If this one feature isn’t a biggie, this is a great combo.  It has a good form factor, isn’t that heavy and is well spec’d with Intel Core i7-3517U, 4GB of RAM and 256GB SSD hard-drive.

If I was being picky, it could be a little lighter, it’s too thick when closed as a tablet, and the laptop screen should be touch screen as well (it gets annoying when you’re used to the touch screen tablet, and the laptop screen isn’t).  Having two touch screens on this device would increase it’s weight, thickness and price, so I can understand why these decisions were made.

All in all, a good device, and perfect if you can’t decide whether to buy a notebook or tablet.  With this, you can easily have both.