For a while, rumors of a new 8 inch Windows tablet from Asus have been floating around. In mid December, some specs got leaked, and recently, a user manual for the Asus VivoTab Note 8 randomly popped up on Asus.com.
The new tablet hasn’t been announced by Asus yet, and no one knows when the manual was published on the website or if it was mistake or not. Either way, it leads us to believe that there may be a big announcement about the new tablet at the CES trade show in a few days.
The manual that popped up didn’t mention anything about the specs of the tablet, but the previously leaked information said that the device will be powered by a 1.33GHz Intel Atom “Bay Trail” Z3740, an 8 inch display with 1280 x 800 resolution, 2 GB of RAM, 32GB or 64GB of internal storage space, a microSD slot, a 1.2 megapixel front facing camera, and a 5 megapixel rear facing camera. It also comes equipped with Windows 8.1 and a free version of Microsoft Office 2013 Home and Student.
The specs are almost identical to the Dell Venue 8 Pro and the Lenovo Miix 2. Throwing another tablet in the mix with basically the same exact specs, it makes it seem like we will have the same problem we had with the early Windows Phones. There will be literally nothing to differentiate one from the other besides the name of the manufacturer printed on it somewhere. The newly discovered online manual confirms this, but does not mention Wacom. Other competing 8 inch tablets offer styus support, but Wacom is the best and would be the main advantage to the new Asus tablet.
There is currently no word on availability or pricing for the device yet, but Asus will more than likely make more announcements on that at CES. Asus was a little bit late to the tablet game, but they were one of the first computer companies rumored to be working on a Windows slate, and it seems like they may be a little bit ahead of the curve, despite their lateness.