If a laptop and an iPad had a baby, it would look something like the Taichi by Asus.
The Taiwanese company's latest hybrid gadget, which was on show at last week's Gitex Shopper event in Dubai, looks like an upmarket laptop, or a so-called ultrabook. But the Taichi also has a screen on the lid, which means it can be used as a tablet when closed.
Eric Chen, the corporate vice president at Asus, said the dual screens can be used simultaneously. "You can show demonstrations to people in front of you. Or you can have the two screens displaying the same [content]," he said. "This is a hero product for the brand."
The computer runs the Windows 8 operating system, has a premium sound system and is to be available in 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch sizes.
It is compact and looks sleek, but is understandably thicker than most tablets. The dual screens and top of the range processor come at a price: the Taichi will reportedly retail at US$1,299 (Dh4,772) after its launch in New York on October 23.
It is to cost even more here in the UAE. Leon Yu, the regional director for Asus, said the product would launch regionally at the beginning of next month, and will cost "more than Dh6,000" in the Middle East.
The Taichi is not the first Asus product to straddle the line between laptop and tablet.
Asus has a track history of blurring the lines between traditional product categories. Its other products include Transformer Pad, a laptop with a detachable screen that works independently as a tablet. Another product, the PadFone, is a tablet with a detachable mobile phone.
The Taichi's dual screens make it particularly suitable for business presentations, sidestepping the perennial problem of hooking a laptop up to a projector.
Yet the additional screen, which can be set to display whatever you are working on, could also give you away in the office: time-wasters should remember to switch it off when idling away hours surfing the internet.
