Asus outs the VivoTab Note 8, an 8-inch, $300 Windows tablet with a Wacom stylus
LAS VEGAS—Asus will join the likes of Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba when it ships its new 8-inch Windows tablet powered by an Intel Bay Trail-class CPU. But the Asus VivoTab Note 8 has one key differentiator: A Wacom digitizer stylus.
Context & Ripple Effects
Asus's first run at Windows 8 tablets ended badly: the Vivo Tab line it showed off in August 2012 shipped at prices a ZDNet assessment called too high for likely demand. The company has now reset that playbook — after an Accidental user-manual leak on January 3 confirmed the device, Asus formally unveiled the VivoTab Note 8 at CES 2014 as one of a wave of 8-inch Bay Trail-class Windows tablets from Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba.
The difference is the pen: where those rivals ship plain slates, Asus is bundling a Wacom digitizer stylus into a $300 device — pricing that finally lands in the range its 2012 hardware never did.
First-order effects
- Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba each gain a same-price competitor whose Wacom digitizer targets the note-taking and markup use their capacitive-touch slates don't serve.
- Wacom picks up a marquee consumer design win in an 8-inch Windows slate, extending its reach beyond the professional creative niche.
Second-order effects
- The other 8-inch Windows tablet makers face pressure to add active-pen options or lean harder on price, since Asus has claimed both the $300 point and the stylus differentiator at once.
- Intel's Bay Trail platform gains another volume SKU, reinforcing the chip's role as the default engine for the sub-$350 Windows tablet category.
Third-order effects
- If stylus-equipped small Windows tablets sell, pen input becomes table stakes for the category rather than a premium feature, pushing vendors toward productivity positioning against consumption-first iOS and Android slates.
- A $300 entry point suggests PC makers have absorbed the lesson of 2012's overpriced Windows RT-era launches and are converging on aggressive pricing as the default for Windows 8.1 portables.
The trend: Small Windows tablets are shifting from price-led commodity slates to differentiated productivity devices, with active styluses becoming the key battleground among Bay Trail-class hardware.