Gigabyte has been making mini-laptops with 10 to 12 inch displays for a few years, including some of the first convertible tablet-style netbooks with touchscreen displays. But Gigabyte’s mini-laptops tend to be pricier than the competition, partly because they’re so jam-packed with high performance features. So it doesn’t come as a huge surprise that the company plans to introduce new models with Intel Sandy Bridge processors this summer.
Chippy from UMPC Portal reports that Gigabyte will introduce new convertible tablet-style notebooks with 10 inch and 11.6 inch displays at the Computex trade show in June. They’ll feature Intel Core i3 or core i5 processors based on Intel’s new Sandy Bridge platform.
Sandy Bridge chips feature high performance processors with integrated graphics, so these machines should be significantly more powerful than the Gigabyte current line of convertible tablets. Most of those models feature Intel Atom processors. I suspect the new machines may not get the same kind of battery life we’ve come to expect from Atom-based mini-laptops, but I suspect there are some users that would prefer performance over power-savings.
There’s no word on pricing or any other specs at the moment.
If they release them with only touchscreen and price them at 1k or more then they aren’t going to get one red cent from me.