I’ve stated before and I’ll reiterate- I think, hardware-wise, ASUS is Apple’s real competitor. The first Transformer (a tablet with a docking station that combined to form a nice netbook/laptop) was a big success. They’ve got the PadPhone coming, and now they’ve released an updated Transformer, called Prime, with a quad-core processor and it’s getting rave reviews, (the one blemish seems to be hinky WiFi performance on the eval units, ASUS says it’s a non issue.)
All told, the cost is $650 ($499 for the tablet, $150 for the docking station), so it’s still well out of my own league in terms of cost. But it’s right there when compared to an iPad2 and the Prime will also likely get an update to the latest Android software, making it even better.
Interestingly, the iPad2 still gets the nod from reviewers because of it’s App Store advantage. That’s a bit disappointing to me, as I’d really like to see a worthy competitor come up for the iPad2. But it’s also legitimate: if a customer is going to fork over $500+ for a tablet device, it ought to be easily capable of more than browsing and email. Obviously, the iPad2 is there. Not so much for Android based tablets.