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Part-tablet, part-laptop, this 11.6in device teams an Atom-powered Android tablet with the body of a Haswell-equipped laptop, and allows you to switch between the Microsoft and Google operating systems at the press of a button.It’s impossible to clock the Asus’ unusual talents at a glance. It would be easy to mistake it for just another Windows hybrid. It must be said, however, that the Trio TX201LA feels nicely put together: brushed metal curls around the lid and base, interrupted only by the pin-prick speaker grilles, the lens for the 5-megapixel rear camera, and the power and volume buttons on the lid.Asus Transformer Book Trio TX201LA
It works well as a convertible. The tablet feels stout and rigid, and there’s barely any trace of give in the keyboard dock. Slot the tablet home and it wobbles a couple of millimetres back and forth, but two latches hold it securely in place. The weight is spread evenly, too, so it’s possible to tilt the display all the way back without it toppling backwards. It’s fantastically well built.The downside is that the whole package weighs a hefty 1.7kg. The tablet makes up 710g of this, and the keyboard dock adds 990g to the figure – almost as much as many 11.6in Ultrabooks weigh on their own. It isn’t a particularly slender pairing, either – together, the tablet and keyboard measure 23mm thick.

There’s good reason for the Asus’ portly dimensions: the Trio TX201LA doubles up on more than only operating systems. Unlike the forthcoming Asus Book Transformer Duet TD300, which ingeniously powers both Android and Windows with the same Intel Core processor, the Trio TX201LA squeezes all the Windows hardware into the keyboard base – CPU, RAM, hard disk, wireless chipset and so forth – and has a different set of components in the tablet section, running Android on a discrete Intel Atom CPU. The two parts are entirely independent. There’s a power button on the tablet for the Android hardware, and a separate button for the Windows system in the base. Indeed, if you want to walk off with the Android tablet portion and leave the Windows keyboard base attached to an external monitor, you can.

This two-headed approach has its benefits. For one, switching between Windows 8 and Android 4.2 is impressively slick. With the Trio docked and powered up, a dab of a key on the top right of the keyboard swaps between the two almost instantaneously. If either half is powered down, then a dialog box pops up asking if you’d like to power up the other system.Inevitably, this arrangement imposes some limitations. First, it’s only possible to swap between Windows and Android with the tablet docked into the keyboard base; disconnect it and you’re left with only the Android tablet.Chromebooks have added more desktop software to their arsenal, with a streaming version of Adobe Photoshop designed for the cheap cloud-based laptops.Google and Adobe have been working to get Creative Cloud, the latter’s cloud-based subscription for its software, onto devices running the Chrome OS – as well as for Windows devices running the Chrome browser.

So far, only Photoshop will be offered via a new version dubbed Project Photoshop Streaming, but Adobe said other products are coming soon.Photoshop will be made available as a “streaming” version: it runs in a virtualised environment, so there’s no download or installation. All files can be saved to Google Drive.If you lose connectivity while editing, files will be automatically saved in a “recovery” file, so you don’t lose your work.The streaming system means that any features requiring GPU – the full list is here – aren’t included, but Adobe promised they were coming soon. Photoshop Streaming also doesn’t yet support printing, input devices such as scanners, or audio, but other than those exceptions, it’s “identical to the Photoshop you’d install locally”, Adobe said.There is still software to install, however. “Project Photoshop Streaming installs a web app that runs in the Chrome app sandbox to enable access to the Chrome Web store as well as other Chrome app services,” Adobe noted.

Adobe said the streaming project was a way to offer “additional” access to its products, and doesn’t mean the company is looking to offer its software only via virtualisation. “Creative Cloud products will continue to be available as local download and install,” it said.The streaming system works on Chrome OS devices or Windows devices via the Chrome browser, but Adobe noted it doesn’t work with mobile devices or in virtual environments.Adobe also warned that you’ll need a Chromebook no more than two years old, and a broadband connection of at least 5Mbits/sec. And, of course, you’ll need a Creative Cloud subscription.Photoshop Streaming is still a beta, but is being made available as a six-month trial to selected Creative Cloud education customers – students or schools – in North America. if that describes you, the application form is here.Adobe didn’t say when Photoshop would land on Chromebooks and in the Chrome browser for the rest of us.

Portable, powerful and affordable are three words that rarely go together when one thinks of gaming laptops, but that’s exactly what Chillblast has served up with the Defiant 2 Mini. Like squeezing the engine of a supercar into a hatchback, the Defiant 2 Mini unites a quad-core Intel CPU with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 860M and shoehorns the pair into a compact 13.3in laptop that costs only £899 inc VAT.The Defiant 2 Mini isn’t technically one of Chillblast’s own creations. Instead, Chillblast has employed a barebones laptop chassis from Clevo – the 13.3in W230SS – and outfitted it with a gaming-capable specification and a two-year collect-and-return warranty.As is so often the case with generic laptop designs, the W230SS’s plastic shell doesn’t thrill like the best of the big brands. However, the chassis’ aggressively contoured figure is definitely more stealth bomber than supermarket special. Although the lid flexes rather too easily, the base feels sturdy and, best of all, the whole package is eminently portable by the standards of most gaming laptops – weighing 2.1kg and measuring 34mm thick, this isn’t a laptop that requires a suitcase-sized bag to be transported to and fro.

What really excites, though, is what’s on the inside. The CPU in question, an Intel Core i7-4710MQ, is one of Intel’s tweaked “Haswell Refresh” chips, which trumps its predecessor (the Core i7-4700MQ) by bumping the stock and Turbo Boost speeds up by 100MHz. Alongside it, Nvidia’s top-of-the-range GeForce GTX 860M makes a perfect ally for the Intel quad-core CPU, and to round off the specification Chillblast has employed 8GB of DDR3 RAM and a 1TB hybrid SSHD.The Chillblast’s specification is almost identical to other recent gaming laptops that have passed through the PC Pro labs, but that small clock-speed increase helps push it out in front of the rest. In our Real World Benchmarks, the Defiant 2 Mini scored an impressive 1.02; enough to put it just ahead of its closest rival, the Gigabyte P34G v2.

Chillblast Defiant 2 Mini
Gaming performance is startlingly quick for a 13.3in laptop. Even with our Crysis benchmark cranked right up to Full HD resolution and Very High detail settings, the Chillblast turned in a smooth average frame rate of 42fps. It was only once we started playing more demanding titles, such as Crysis 3, that we needed to nudge the detail settings down or drop below the laptop’s native Full HD resolution.Regardless of whether you’re working or gaming, though, that Full HD display provides sumptuous image quality. Brightness peaks at a gleaming 352cd/m[sup]2[/sup], contrast tops out at 895:1 and, since the IPS panel covers 86.2% of the sRGB gamut, images drip with rich, saturated colours. The satin anti-glare finish is great, too, giving images a similar punchiness to a gloss panel without the aggravating reflectivity. The only thing that isn’t exceptional is colour accuracy. The panel’s average Delta E of 3.7 is perfectly acceptable, but the maximum Delta E of 7.8 testifies to the panel’s tendency to darken colours and crush the very darkest tones into black.http://www.dearbattery.co.uk

As consumer laptops have become ever more exotic, business laptops have, by and large, remained defiantly monochrome, fashion-free zones. That’s no bad thing, but the trend for hybrid devices such as the Surface Pro 3 – half-tablet, half-laptop – is one that’s equally at home as it is in the office. Now, Dell has stepped into the fray with the Latitude 13 7000 Series. Combining a Core M-powered 13.3in tablet with a docking keyboard, this is a cutting-edge hybrid in sensible shoes.From the outside, the Latitude 13 7000 looks every inch the business portable. The body is cast in a dark charcoal grey, and there’s only the tiniest hint of glamour once you look closely: the grey exterior is shot through with a subtle silver sparkle, and a delicate chrome trim skirts around the tablet and the keyboard dock’s edges. It’s a rather handsome, understated hybrid, but it will struggle to win any awards for slenderness or light weight. Chunky strips of rubber stretching the width of the keyboard dock’s underside mean that it measures 23mm thick, and the combined weight of both parts of the device tips the scales at 1.7kg.

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