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ASUS is going to be waving their Taiwanese flag proudly at Computex next week, and the company is expected to introduce a new good-looking tablet to add to their ZenPad line. It’ll simply be called “ASUS ZenPad,” and the one thing you’ll notice from this newly-leaked render of it is that it’s sporting a screen ratio of 4:3.
Such a ratio was seen as odd at one point, but the prominence of Apple’s iPad seems to have gotten us used to it. In fact, perhaps we even prefer it.
ASUS is said to be going with Intel processors again as part of their new partnership. We still don’t know how we feel about that just yet as we have yet to put an Intel devices through its proper paces, but we’ll keep an open mind for sure.
One other detail suggests the company will introduce a 7-inch affordable model with 1024 x 600 resolution, while an 8-inch model will take things up a few notches with a resolution of 2048 x 1536. If ASUS can get these bad boys at or near that sweet spot of $200 we’d say there’s reason to take notice. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out more.
[via AUSDroid]
I still prefer 16:10 over both 16:9 and 4:3 personally
Ratio doesn’t matter that much. But they should choose a ratio and stick to it, instead of changing all the time for no reason.
ever watch a movie on an iPad? there’s more black bar than movie.
Yeah 16:9/10 is just better for movies/ebooks for me I prefer mobi/epuds over scanned PDFs any day. I use my tablet mainly for media consumption and my laptop for creation since I can do more on the laptop then I could ever do on a tablet. Writing using a touchscreen is just painful beyond measure compared to a great keyboard like my Thinkpad T420.
completely agree. :-)
16:9 screens may be great for movies, but they’re awful for almost everything else. I use my tablet to surf the web and read magazines which is MUCH better on a 4:3 screen. I’ll live with black bars on videos to gain a better experience for everything else I do on my tablet.
while I agree that the examples of uses you provided are better with 4:3, I disagree that 16:9 is awful for everything other than movies. I have an iPad (older gen, but same concept) and a galaxy tab s. I live to browse on the galaxy tab; it’s quite nice in landscape, however, portray surfing sucks ass. but I didn’t get that large a tablet to surf in portrait mode. I read ebooks without issue or complaint. to each his own, I suppose, but inferiority doesn’t equate awful. my $0.02
I’m not saying it’s inferior. I’m saying it’s awful. I had a 16:9 tablet, and I stopped using it for anything but videos because the screen ratio frustrated me. It was too short in landscape, and it was too narrow in portrait. I got rid of it and now have a 4:3 tablet (Teclast X98 Air 3G), and I use it for everything. The difference for me is night and day, but this all just my opinion.
Thats why I love my 16:10 Kindle Fire HDX 8.9″ (2013) for basic web browsing and Ebooks along with watching videos. I had to get a laptop to offset the lousy brwosing experince I was getting on the tablet. I normally have more then 1 tab open and trying to do that on a tablet is just painful.
Guess I’ll be using my Nexus 10 forever :-( Really can’t stand 4:3 aspect ratio.
the back of that tablet is hideous
i hope by taiwanese flag you mean republic of china flag
They’re the same thing, aren’t they?
Taiwan doesn’t have a flag
the Republic of China does
Taiwan has its own flag. R.O.C. = Taiwan.
remember the Asus-made Nexus 7s? I guess those were the glory days.. ???
I like the 4:3 aspect ratios (feels more like a magazine) and would welcome more of that across other devices.
4:3 is terrible for anything multimedia. Thanks a lot apple for revolutionizing the 1980’s in mobile devices.