The ASUS Eee Pad Slider has finally gone on sale in the US after a long gestation following its first unveiling at CES in January. The new tablet is unique for its sliding design, much in the vein of an oversize full QWERTY sliding design smartphone. Where the relatively popular ASUS Eee Pad Transformer offers a full docking keyboard, the Eee Pad Slider offers a more seamless and integrated solution.
However, as might be expected the penalty in the design is its weight, which comes in at 906 grams, or about a third more than an iPad 2 or Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.
Beyond the intriguing design, the tablet contains standard Android tablet hardware that was first introduced in the Motorola Xoom in January. That is to say that it incorporates an NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, matched with 1GB of RAM and running Android 3.1 (Honeycomb).
The device is finished in Corning Gorilla glass protecting an IPS display with a 178-degree viewing angle. A 5-megapixel camera is built-in to the rear of the device, while the front facing camera is 1.2-megapixels. The battery is rated for eight hours of productivity, while high quality Supreme SRS Sound is also included.
The Eee Pad Slider comes in two capacities, at 16GB ($479) or 32GB ($579), as well as two color choices in Pearl White or Metallic Brown. They are all currently on sale through ASUS’ US online store.
