Asus brings its new Zenbooks and Transformer books to Australia

Zenbook
Asus unleashes some different types of beasts.

Asus has announced that the Transformer Book T100 and Transformer Book Trio, as well as its refreshed Zenbook range is headed to Australia.

Available from today for $599, the Transformer Book T100 is Asus' 10-inch budget convertible ultrabook with a detachable keyboard and a battery life of 11 hours.

Most of the power sits in the tablet half, running Windows 8.1 and powered by Intel's Bay Trail Atom quad-core processor, with 2GB RAM and 64GB of storage.

Not quite as thin as the iPad Air, it weighs in at 550g, but adds another 520g for the keyboard.

The tablet does however have a microUSB, mini HDMI and even a microSD slot to expand storage. There's also Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, while the keyboard dock sports USB 3.0.

The 3-in-1

Asus' so called "3-in-1" Transformer Book Trio can magically switch from an Android tablet to a Windows 8 PC - though you can change back to Android if you wanted to.

It sports twin processors - one for Android and one for Windows - and the keyboard dock has 500GB hard disk with 4GB RAM. An Intel Atom sits in the tablet, while a fourth-gen Intel Core i5 lives in the PC dock.

You can also plug a monitor via micro HDMI or Mini DisplayPort into the dock, allowing you to use the dock as a Windows 8 PC and the screen as just a tablet, which sports an 11.6-inch Full HD IPS screen with 16GB of storage.

The Trio hybrid device, which really just sounds like two devices that can be stuck together as needed, will be available from late November for AU$1599 - which does make it cheaper than the 512GB Surface Pro 2, but also clunkier.

A Zen refresh

Asus has refreshed its Zenbook range with the UX301 and UX302, available from will be available from November with starting prices of $1799.

The new pair replaces existing models of the flagship Zenbook range, and are available in two screen sizes - a 1,920 x 1,080 Full HD display and a very large 2,560 x 1,440 WQHD display, both with multi-touch for Windows 8.

They also sport Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and come in a variety of configurations.