ASUS had to do something special at CES 2012 to trump its Transformer Prime, which was the first quad-core Android tablet, as it hit the market just weeks before the big show. It also had to meet the lofty expectations it set at CES 2011, where it introduced the Eee Pad Transformer and other tablets, firmly establishing itself in the Android tablet market.
So what did the Taiwanese device maker do? It introduced an even more powerful version of what was already the most powerful Android tablet, called it the Transformer Prime 700 series, and announced along with NVIDIA a $250, quad-core, Tegra 3-powered, seven-inch MeMO Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablet. To put that in perspective, if the Tegra 3 MeMO launched today, it would be the most powerful 7-inch tablet available, and trail only the new-and-improved Prime in the spec sheet, for the same cost of a budget Android tablet, and the popular Barnes & Noble NOOK Tablet.
Insanity
That’s insane – Tegra 3 performance at such a low cost, and maybe too good to be true, at least for the time being. Neither ASUS nor NVIDIA announced a release date, and ASUS did not have a working model to share with CES attendees. In addition, we are still waiting on the glasses-free 3D MeMO ASUS unveiled at Computex. After this CES, we doubt we will ever see that on the market. In fact, ASUS reps suggested the company decided to instead ply its efforts on the $250 Tegra 3 MeMO, though nothing official has been announced regarding the 3D model.
