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Asus T300 Chi is a highly mobile hybrid for less

2015-03-22
this is a high-end feeling hybrid for less I'm Dan Ackerman and this is the assist transformer book t100 this is a hybrid laptop tablet combo and unlike a lot of the yoga style ones that kind of bend over backwards this is the more traditional take the screen off version is actually held on with a magnetic latch as opposed to one of those little kind of hook latches we have to move a little button back and forth or hold down a switch so you just kind of give it a tug and it pops off like this behind the screen of course because this is a hybrid you have all the components the the processor the memory the hard drive the battery so it gets a little bit top-heavy inside you've got an Intel Core and processor that's the same thing that's going to be in Apple's upcoming 12-inch MacBook and that's good for having kind of a very light very premium fanless design it's not as fast as having a standard Core ICU CPU and frankly battery life we found with the first couple of core M systems we've tested ok not great but ok certainly not as long as you'll get using a regular full power CPU with a larger laptop with a bigger battery so here the keyboard has its own battery inside but it doesn't help you power this it's strictly to keep the keyboard powered when you have it separate because you can flip this little switch and use it in Bluetooth mode put the tablet over here just the keyboard over here or if you connect them then it makes a physical connection and you don't actually need the bluetooth for that so if you want to have this plugged in and fully charged you'll need the regular power cable for the for the screen which is the actual computer and you'll need a separate micro USB charger for the keyboard down here the t300 starts that are very reasonable $6.99 especially considering its metallic construction and fanless design we've got to say the upgraded version here that's got eight gigs ram instead of four and has a 2560 by 1440 resolution instead of the normal 1920 by 1080 all the models currently seem to have a 128 gig SSD there are a couple design quirks that drove me a little bit crazy using this the main one was that the power button is right up here so every time I'd reach out to adjust the screen to kind of change the viewing angle I'd accidentally turn the system off and that happened to me several times so that combined with the only so-so battery life and the fact that the quorum just is not a speedy is a regular full power processor you might be used to means that this may not be the high end hybrid for everyone I'm Dan Ackerman and that is the assist transformer book t100 cheese
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