Windows tablets

When it comes to Chinese tablets, it's often worth expecting the worst rather than hoping for the best!

That said, though older generations of cheapo China-tabs had notoriously bad wifi connectivity, Onda is a decent brand and the more recent devices seem to actually be pretty decent for a change.

I ordered a Teclast X98 Air 3G yesterday (around £125 delivered) so it will be interesting to see how this performs - when it eventually arrives! Will probably be over a month before I receive it.

This tablet comes with Android but it is possible to flash it with Windows 8.1 and it apparently still has decent performance even with the retina display. A Z3736F Baytrail in there which clocks a little higher than the Z3735F.
 
Damn...Asus is on a roll...

http://techreport.com/news/27596/asus-transformer-book-chi-family-goes-up-to-12-5-and-2560x1440

The Transformer Chi T300. Thinner than a Mac Book air when in clamshell mode with the keyboard dock. Thinner than an iPad Air when in tablet mode without the keyboard dock. All with a better screen (colors and resolution/pixel density) than either the Mac Book Air or iPad Air. And all for only 849 USD with keyboard dock in the maximum configuration.

That's a combo device that certainly is quite beautiful. Hopefully Techreport is correct about an optional Active digitizer pen. If so, I'm quite likely to pick this up. Other than that the only major downside is that battery life is only rated for 8 hours. But for a device that thin, I'm not sure they could have done better with the Core-M + 2560x1440 IPS panel.

The Baytrail based T100 isn't bad either with the same ridiculous thinness and a nice 16:10 instead of 16:9 aspect ratio. But with Cherry Trail around the corner, I'm not sure I'd want to throw down on a Baytrail tablet.

Regards,
SB
 
t300 chi
- slow cpu
- microUSB3 port instead of full-sized port

it seems they too focused on the thinness
Slow CPU compared to what? It's a Broadwell chip, the "low end" is 800MHz / 2GHz turbo, the "high end" is 1.2GHz / 2.9GHz turbo and they're both dual core quad thread. It may not be the absolute fastest chip in Intel's mobility stable, but it's far, far different than "slow". There are a very large number of much slower and yet current CPU's from Intel.

Oh, and why wouldn't it be a micro USB port? Seems that anything driving for "thin" should also aim for "micro" ports where applicable.
 
slow compared to other with the similar price range. Surfare Pro 3 and VAIO Tap 11.

About the USB port, it was a huge convinience for me when i was using Vaio Tap 11. I can simply plug mouse or flashdisk or hdd. To do that on my phone (MicroUSB), i need to keep bringing MicroUSB to FatUSB adapter that visually un-appealing and sometime i forgot to bring. Although, i can simply multiple MicroUSB to FatUSB adapter and place it on more places (thats what i do with flashdisk lol. have it inside wallet, car, bag, everywhere).
 
slow compared to other with the similar price range. Surfare Pro 3 and VAIO Tap 11.
For $849, you're only getting the most basic Surface Pro 3 with an i3 4020y. The Chi's 5y20 lines up pretty closely with the i3 4020y: http://ark.intel.com/compare/83610,76609
The Vaio Tap 11 with the "high end" processor is also pretty much spot on with the Chi's base processor: http://ark.intel.com/compare/76611,83610,76609

So, "slow" is nothing of the sort.

I guess for some people the micro USB can be irritating, but that's just part of the tradeoff for minimum thickness. Given that an "A type" connector is 7.5mm by itself, you couldn't possibly cram one into a tablet as thick as an iPad air. Sorry, that's just part of the deal.
 
And I'm sure there will be some Broadwell based tablets that don't attempt to go as thin as possible and may include a full sized USB port.

Regards,
SB
 
@Albuquerque
seeing the TDP, SDP, base clock, turbo clock. Yeah the Core M in t300 chi is slower.

heck, my i5 Vaio tap 11 is slower than i3 Surface Pro 3 due to for some reason Sony decided to throttle more agressive than what Intel recommends (from my experience and reading it on Intel XTU), while Microsoft throttle less lax than what intel recommended (from what the benchmarks looks like compared to my tap 11).

T300 use passive cooling, low TDP, low base clock. I suspect it will have very hard time sustaining its performance.

but if it was used only for tablet suff and wordprocessing im sure it will be already fast-enough. Even my brother's Asus t100 with Atom is fast enough.
 
Any info for surface pro 4?
With Microsoft back I the game of Windows games, it will be a dream come true if surface pro 4 have docking station with optional external gpu
 
Actually, with Skylake-U coming as soon as late Q2 2015, I wonder if Microsoft will just skip Broadwell and go with Skylake for Surface Pro 4.
All they have to do is wait a year after Pro 3 got out (June 2014).
 
Actually, with Skylake-U coming as soon as late Q2 2015, I wonder if Microsoft will just skip Broadwell and go with Skylake for Surface Pro 4.

That would make sense. Skylake U/Y, unlike Broadwell U/Y, supports DDR4 with the inherent boost in system bandwidth, less important for CPU performance, but very important for graphics.
 
Surface 2->3 was mostly a cosmetic and screen change. Surface 3->4 could be a big performance boost while maintaining everything else.

Actually, the Y and U parts aren't expected to bring DDR4 compatibility, just LPDDR3.
OTOH, Skylake will have a 15W part with 48EUs and 64MB eDRAM.
 
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Actually, the Y and U parts aren't expected to bring DDR4 compatibility, just LPDDR3.
OTOH, Skylake will have a 15W part with 48EUs and 64MB eDRAM.

Even better. As long as they alleviate the bandwidth requirements of the GPU. The Core i7 scores about 15% higher than the i5 models in graphics tests, despite having twice as many EUs; Limited by bandwidth and TDP.

I read speculations about a mixed DDR3/4 capability for U/Y devices, - but that was a while ago.

Cheers
 
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