Asus Eee Pad claims Honeycomb first with Transformer Android tablet shipping on 6 April

Entry-level Android 3.0 tablet starts at £429

Asus has announced that its Eee Pad Transformer hybrid tablet will be available for pre-order from midnight on Wednesday, and will go on sale in stores from 6 April starting at £379 for the entry level model.

The 10.1in device, which Asus claims is the first Honeycomb 3.0 tablet to market in the UK, features an LED backlit screen and has a resolution of 1,280 x 800. It will come pre-loaded with Adobe Flash 10.2.

One of the key features of the Transformer is the detachable Qwerty keyboard, which makes it similar to the Acer Iconia W500 tablet.

The keyboard is the same size as those found on 10in netbooks, and the Transformer features a trackpad, additional battery, two USB 2.0 ports, mini-HDMI output and an SD card reader.

An Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor will power the device together with 1GB of DDR2 RAM. Users will be able to choose 16GB or 32GB of SSD storage. The display will also incorporate a micro-SD card slot into its chassis.

A rear-facing 5-megapixel camera and front-facing 3-megapixel camera have also been incorporated into the device. This will make for a better video calling experience than the one available on the iPad 2.

Business users will benefit from the Polaris Office 3 productivity suite that supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. A PDF reader will also be included.

Additionally, Asus has built-in its own Waveface interface into the Honeycomb platform. This will include applications such as MyNet, which allows users to wirelessly stream media between devices.

The MyDesktop feature is likely to be useful to business users as they will be able to remotely connect the Transformer with other Android, Mac and Windows devices to transfer files on the move.

Users will also be offered one year's worth of unlimited cloud storage through the MyCloud app.

Asus is touting a total of 16 hours of battery life. The tablet will offer users 9.5 hours of continued use, with another six and a half hours when the device is plugged into the dock.

The Eee Pad Transformer will initially be offered in three configurations. A 16GB Wi-Fi device will start at £379 for the tablet only. This will rise to £429 for the 16GB and keyboard bundle.

A 32GB Wi-Fi version of the Transformer will start at £429 and, together with the 3G editions, will ship in June.

Users can pre-order the device from Amazon.co.uk and Ebuyer.com from midnight on 30 March. However, the device will be available in store first from 6 April.

Asus has also confirmed that its Windows 7 Eee Slate EP 121 tablet will be available from 10 April, priced at £999.

V3.co.uk has a video demonstration of the Asus Eee Slate EP 121 Windows 7 tablet. A video demonstration of the Eee Pad Transformer will be posted soon.