Asus Launches Temash Powered VivoBook X102BA
The Asus VivoBook X102BA offers an AMD A4-1200 “Temash” APU, a 10.1-inch touch sensitive display at an attractive price point.
If nothing else, the launch of the Asus VivoBook X102BA may demonstrate that there’s still some life in the market for “netbooks” since the laptop features an entry-level price point and the familiar 10.1-inch TN panel display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 and multi-touch capabilities.
The VivoBook X102BA is powered by an AMD Elite Mobility (Temash) A4-1200 dual-core APU with an integrated Radeon HD 8180 GPU clocked at 225 MHz, up to 4 GB of RAM, and is available with either a 320 GB or 500 GB mechanical hard drive. With regards to connectivity, the laptop offers two USB 2.0 connectors, one USB 3.0 port, Gigabit LAN, an SD card reader, Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI and VGA outputs.
The Asus VivoBook X102BA is expected to be on sale next month with a starting price of €330 ($440) and will be bundled with 32 GB of cloud storage via Asus’ WebStorage service and Microsoft Office for Home Use and Students which includes Microsoft Excel, OneNote, Powerpoint and Word.
Despite the resolution it still has 155 ppi, which is more than my 17" @ 1080p (and it still looks great at 140 ppi). I think that's worth keeping the cost down
It's a 10.1" display. I'm failing to see the need for a higher resolution screen especially at this price. Not every display needs to be smartphone sharpness, really (and imagine the cost).
Yeah, totally man... I mean, can't those chinese slaves do any better? Really now, are we expected to survive in this day and age without a 10 inch full HD display? It's against my human rights and stuff...
Things like that are usually cost related. When calculating the price, manufacturers will sometimes make changes that might, to us, look trivial but for them it's a way to get the cost to exactly where they want it. Don't forget that they will make thousands of these, so for them even a few cents less in manufacturing costs will add up.