Asus Transformer Pad Infinity launches in Australia. At $999, is it worth the cost?
While the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T has been out in the US for about three weeks now, the Infinity has just now finally made its way to Australia, with sales starting tomorrow.
The news about the Infinity’s arrival came by way of a special media event in Sydney, earlier this morning, which we have been expecting for a while now. The one catch to the launch is that Asus has decided to only sell the unit paired with the keyboard dock, and at the relatively high price of $999, which is bad news for those that like the freedom to choose whether or not to get add-on accessories.
Considering that Asus customers in other markets can buy the Transformer Pad Infinity with or without the keyboard dock, this seems like a rather curious move on Asus’ part. Their cited reason is simple enough though — in the past, most Australian users of the Transformer Prime tablet ended up paying for the separate accessory anyhow, so it just made sense to save consumers the trouble of a separate purchase with the Transformer Pad Infinity. The next downside with the Australian version is that it costs around $205 more than the tablet plus dock bundle would cost in the US. This has to do with the retail and advertising costs in Australia, according to Asus.
High cost aside, the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity is a pretty impressive tablet, featuring a 10.1-inch 1920×1200 pixel display, a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB of RAM, Android 4.0 ICS, an 8MP rear camera, and a 2MP front-facing camera. Best of all, the company says that Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is on its way to the device within the next few months.
The news about the Infinity’s arrival came by way of a special media event in Sydney, earlier this morning, which we have been expecting for a while now. The one catch to the launch is that Asus has decided to only sell the unit paired with the keyboard dock, and at the relatively high price of $999, which is bad news for those that like the freedom to choose whether or not to get add-on accessories.
Considering that Asus customers in other markets can buy the Transformer Pad Infinity with or without the keyboard dock, this seems like a rather curious move on Asus’ part. Their cited reason is simple enough though — in the past, most Australian users of the Transformer Prime tablet ended up paying for the separate accessory anyhow, so it just made sense to save consumers the trouble of a separate purchase with the Transformer Pad Infinity. The next downside with the Australian version is that it costs around $205 more than the tablet plus dock bundle would cost in the US. This has to do with the retail and advertising costs in Australia, according to Asus.
High cost aside, the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity is a pretty impressive tablet, featuring a 10.1-inch 1920×1200 pixel display, a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB of RAM, Android 4.0 ICS, an 8MP rear camera, and a 2MP front-facing camera. Best of all, the company says that Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is on its way to the device within the next few months.