Asus Eee Pad tablet range: UK release dates announced

Asus has been showing off its Eee Pad range at CeBIT this week, elaborating on details revealed about the Eee Memo, Eee Transformer, Eee Slider and Eee Slate EP121, including UK release dates for all four tablets.

The four tablets were unveiled at CES earlier this year, but there's been little further information since we dragged ourselves home from Vegas.

The tablets come in a range of sizes and OSes, intended to combat the narrow range of choices offered in the tablet arena by other companies, like Apple.

Squeee Pads

The Eee Slate EP121 comes running Windows 7 Home Premium on its 12.1-inch LED screen, with an i5 dual-core processor and either 32GB or 64GB of SSD storage and has a UK release date of early April.

The remaining three tablets are Android affairs, all aiming to ship with Android 3.0 (Honeycomb).

The Slider offers a slide-out QWERTY under its 10.1-inch touchscreen, and a dual-core CPU, heading to the UK in mid April.

Autobots, transform and roll out!

Also set to hit in mid-April is the Eee Pad Transformer, which has an NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset behind its 10.1-inch touchscreen.

There's also an optional docking station with a full-on keyboard for the touchscreen-phobic, essentially 'transforming' (see what they did there) into a notebook.

Also running Android 3.0 will be the Eee Memo – although you'll have to wait a little longer for this dual-core Snapdragon-toting bad boy. It has micro-HDMI port for 1080p playback on the big screen, front and rear-facing digital cameras and all on a comparatively dinky 7-inch screen.

Handy accessory

According to SlashGear, there's also Bluetooth handset accessory which works with the Memo, allowing you to take and make calls using the tablet without looking like a moron holding a 7-inch slate up to your ear.

The Eee Memo has a UK release date of early Q3.

Sadly UK pricing for all four tablets has not yet been announced, but the US has had its pricing confirmed and, if ours follow suit, we should see the slates hitting price points from £300 to £825.