The Asus announcements at IFA 2016 continue with the debut of the company's latest flagship tablet, the ZenPad 3S 10. With a simple, clean design, the latest ZenPad features a 9.7-inch touchscreen display (2048 x 1536) and its chassis comes from a single piece of aluminum. It's easy to see a resemblance with the iPad Air 2, but the ZenPad 3S 10 beats Apple's tablet in thickness, measuring just 5.8mm.
Just as they had previously teased, Asus has unveiled its new ZenWatch 3 smartwatch at the IFA 2016 show in Berlin this week. Like last year's model, the ZenWatch 3 remains powered by Android Wear, but the obvious difference is that it sports a round casing, offering a more handsome, traditional look to the watch than the squarish, utilitarian face of the ZenWatch 2.
ASUS indeed has a round, hopefully still Android Wear, ZenWatch 3 coming next month and the company has all but confirmed it. That is, if we're reading the signs right from its teaser for an announcement scheduled at the end of the month. While it reuses its favorite "incredible" word yet again, its wording and even the imagery does seem to hint at a round smartwatch coming really soon. What other features the smartphone will have, however, remains mostly a matter of guesswork and wishes.
Earlier this summer, some posts on Reddit surfaced pointing toward a new ASUS Chromebook C301SA model with decent specs and a very nice price tag. ASUS pulled the product page shortly after it drew attention, though, and there’s been no update on it since…until today. Someone has spotted that model Chromebook up for preorder through an online retailer, though it still hasn't reappeared on ASUS' own website.
Smartwatches aren't dead yet. At least that seems to be the case if the recent train of news and leaks are any indicator, from speculation about two Apple Watches to the upcoming availability of two Fossil Q Android Wear timepieces. Here's one more: ASUS has a new smartwatch coming. And while that might not exactly be out of the ordinary, a sighting at the FCC hints that, for the first time, an ASUS ZenWatch, to be called the ZenWatch 3, of course, will be round.
Asus has launched a new “premium” tablet called the ZenPad 3 8.0, a high-end offering that mixes together a sleek design and high-quality display to trump many competing products in the 7.9-inch category. ASUS took the wraps off of it this weekend, doing so quietly to the surprise of many; the model appears to be an alternative to the Verizon-centric ZenPad Z8 from June.
In late June a rumor was making the rounds that a new tablet would debut this month from Asus, that rumor has now come true. Reports of a new tablet launching have surfaced and the tablet is called the ZenPad 3S 10. The screen isn't quite 10-inches wide at 9.7-inches and it has LED backlighting and a resolution of 1536 x 2048.
Qualcomm just announced the slightly upgraded Snapdragon 821 processor that will power premium mobile devices for the second half of the year. Of course, there has been conjecture that the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 will sport the chip when it comes out next month. ASUS, however, beats it to the punch. It revealed, just today, that its ZenFone 3 Deluxe will actually be powered by the latest chip instead of the Snapdragon 820. Other than that, however, it's exactly the same as the ZenFone 3 Deluxe it unveiled at Computex in May.
Chromebooks are about to become en vogue again. That is, when Google gets around to rolling out Android app support for all models. Perhaps preparing for that day, ASUS is bringing out a new Chromebook that almost seems designed with that exact scenario in mind. The C301SA Chromebook is a 13.3-inch portable that boasts of 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage, some of the highest you'll see in this device class and price tier, ready to support a good many Android apps installed from Google Play Store on Chrome OS.
Asus has taken to making some interesting notebooks that it is aiming directly at Apple and other high-end devices. The latest Asus notebook to launch in the US is the Zenbook Flip convertible notebook computer that can be used as a tablet. Asus has launched the machine in the US with two configurations, though the higher end UX360CA-DBM2T version is the only one in stock directly from Asus right now.
If you've been waiting for a worthy successor to Samsung's once premium Galaxy Tab S tablet, you might want to turn your gaze to a manufacturer that isn't Samsung. Although not exactly known for it, ASUS has had some rather formidable Android tablets as well. Come July 12th, ASUS will be putting out another one, the 9.7-inch ZenPad 3s. And based on the leaked specs and rendered images, it might very well be the most high-end Android tablet this year, barring the Pixel C of late 2015.
The ASUS ZenPad Z8 has gone up for preorder at Verizon, and it’ll start shipping out to buyers on June 23. The slate features a 7.9-inch 2048 x 1536 IPS display and a bunch of notable features, particularly its 13-hour run time and 23-day standby time. The tablet is priced at $249.99, but Verizon is offering it with both a monthly payment plan and at $149.99 USD with a traditional two-year contract.
