If you’ve been dying to get your hands on some quad-core tablet action but can’t stomach the $499 entry price for the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime, you’re in luck. The slightly lower-end Transformer Pad 300, the replacement model for ASUS’ original Transformer, will hit the United States on Sunday, April 22nd. PC World reports the news from an ASUS spokesperson, who says that pricing won’t be revealed until that date – but international pre-orders indicate that a $399 price to match the original Transformer is likely.

The Transformer Pad 300 keeps most of the specs from the Transformer Prime, but clocks the quad-core Tegra processor down to 1.0Ghz from 1.5. The build is also a little different, going for a completely plastic body instead of the Prime’s metal chassis. You still get a full gigabyte of RAM, a capacity starting at 16GB, a 10-inch 1280×800 screen and a 10-hour battery, which can be extended by slotting in a color-matching keyboard dock (sold separately). ASUS is all in for Ice Cream Sandwich: the Transformer Pad 300 will ship with Android 4.0.

The WiFi-only model will use NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 system on a chip platform, but the LTE model (which probably isn’t coming to the US any time soon) defaults to a Qualcomm Snapdragon S4. Different benchmarks give different results. In any case, we should see the Transformer Pad 300 on store shelves in just a couple of weeks. Who’s getting one now, and who’s waiting for the higher-res 700 model?

[device id=2348]

13 COMMENTS

  1.  I like the colors. Seems like a good entry way into the Transformer line, I suppose. It’s too bad none of these seem to get much attention.

    Did they drop Prime because of the lawsuit by Hasbro back in December?

  2.  I like the colors. Seems like a good entry way into the Transformer line, I suppose. It’s too bad none of these seem to get much attention.

    Did they drop Prime because of the lawsuit by Hasbro back in December?

  3. I would never consider this tablet to be low spec & I would consider the plastic a nice lightweight design also allowing for good wifi & GPS signals. If I didn’t already own the Prime, this pad would’ve been more than enough for my heavy web browsing & video streaming. I think Asus has a good hold on the Android tablet market w/ price points below other high end manufacturers but exceeding all in quality. Great looking pad this is & I will consider buying this model to keep my kids off of mine.

  4. I would never consider this tablet to be low spec & I would consider the plastic a nice lightweight design also allowing for good wifi & GPS signals. If I didn’t already own the Prime, this pad would’ve been more than enough for my heavy web browsing & video streaming. I think Asus has a good hold on the Android tablet market w/ price points below other high end manufacturers but exceeding all in quality. Great looking pad this is & I will consider buying this model to keep my kids off of mine.

  6. I’m waiting for the Infinity.
    I’m also presuming that the Prime dock won’t work with either this 300 or the Infinity. Anyone know if that is true? I’m also presuming that the 300 dock won’t work with the Infinity either because of the exteriors. True?

  7. The 300 is bad strategy….why a new tablet with worst spec and quality….just to save 100$ ?

    ASUS should reduce the price of the Transformer Prime by 50$ and release the Infinity ASAP…the market is waiting….taker it !

    I also wait for the Infinity….but ASUS should start talking more about it…and start giving more information to distributor for the pre-order !!!

    Pre-order works very well in the camera industry 🙂

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