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With Windows 8.1 and proper honest-to-goodness Office for just £300, Asus’ new VivoTab Note 8 is worth a heads-up if you’re looking for a tablet to do more than just surf the Web.
Announced today at the seething morass of tennis racquet sensors and Bluetooth toothbrushes that is CES, the VivoTab Note 8 comes with Wacom’s well-regarded Digitizer stylus software to faithfully transcribe your doodles and scribbles.
It’s running on the latest version of Windows, the touch-friendly 8.1. Microsoft’s Office Home and Student is bundled in, so you can get down and Word-y, or Excel at some spreadsheets. Quite how well that will work on an 8-inch touchscreen I don’t know, but we’ll bash it about in a full review very soon.
£300 isn’t much cash once you’ve factored in that software, so its specs are pretty modest. It runs on a cheapo quad-core Intel Atom processor, with a mediocre 2GB of RAM — fine for an Android tablet, but I’d worry that it would struggle to keep up with big-boy Windows.
There’s plenty of storage — 32GB on board, which is expandable by a further 64GB with a microSD slot. Asus also gives you unlimited online storage for a year.
Its 8-inch screen has a respectable 1,280×800-pixel resolution — better than normal HD, but a fairly blocky 189 pixels per inch. It’s a far cry from the Nexus 7‘s Full HD display.
Round the back there’s a 5-megapixel camera, while its front-facer is only specced as being HD, so it’s probably about 2 megapixels. There’s no 3G or 4G options, so you’ll be relying on Wi-Fi.
In terms of design, it looks a lot like the old 2012 Nexus 7, which Asus built, and it weighs in at a reasonable 380g — a smidge more than the iPad mini, although it’s rather thicker at 11mm.
Android alternatives
If Windows isn’t your top priority, you can pick up a 32GB Nexus 7 for £239 direct from Google. If you’re tempted by the stylus, Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8 may fit the bill at around £270.
I reckon full Windows and Office make the VivoTab Note 8 a good deal at this price — as long as they aren’t hamstrung by those middling specs. We’ll be testing that out in full soon, with it due in shops next month.
Is Office on a tablet what you’ve been looking for? Is this a better bet than an Android device for serious business? Note your thoughts in the comments, or over on our handwritten Facebook page.
