Is there any tablet that’s hotter than the Transformer Prime right now? (Please, don’t say the Kindle Fire.) For weeks we geeks, early adopters and people who love their tech toys have been awaiting this, and none too patiently. Make no mistake: this will be one of the slickest products we test this year and it isn’t just because the original Transformer had such an inventive design. The Prime is the first device packing NVIDIA’s hot-off-the-presses Tegra 3 SoC, making it the world’s first quad-core tablet. This comes with promises of longer-than-ever runtime and blazing performance (five times faster than Tegra 2, to be exact), all wrapped in a package measuring just 8.3mm (0.33 inches) thick — even skinnier than the iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab 10.1. Throw in specs like a Super IPS+ Gorilla Glass display, eight megapixel rear camera and a confirmed ICS update in the pipe and even we seen-it-all Engadget editors were drooling.

All of which means we dropped just everything when a 32GB Prime showed up on our doorstep earlier this week, and soon enough, you’ll have your chance to nab one too. ASUS announced today that the WiFi-only models will be available through online sellers the week of December 19th, and in retail the week after. (No word yet on 3G versions for the US just yet.) It’ll start at $499 for the 32GB model — not bad considering five hundred bucks is the going rate for a high-end tablet with 16GB of storage. From there you can get a 64GB number for $599, while that signature keyboard dock will set you back a further $149. Worth it? Read on to find out.

ASUS’ Eee Pad Slider is fast becoming just as mythical as the flying horse the company’s named after. We’ve had several encounters with potential release windows for the slate, only to see it continually creep back into fall. Well, judging by a recent report from Notebook Italia and the tab’s new product page, it looks like we may actually see a September launch for the 10.1-incher — in Italy. Contrary to prior rumors, the company will be offering the Slider in two storage configurations — 16GB and 32GB at potential €479 and €599 price points overseas, while $400 and $550 models should hit the US. We’ve also got a slew of official specs for the Honeycomb-based device, which should ship with Android 3.1 installed, with a promised 3.2 upgrade to follow. The QWERTYfied tablet packs a 1280 x 800 WXGA display, dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, 1GB of memory, 1.2 megapixel front-facing camera, 5 megapixel rear-facing camera, USB 2.0, mini-HDMI, microSD card reader, WiFi and Bluetooth. The company’s also thrown in one year of “unlimited ASUS Web Storage” for your cloud computing needs. Will the electronics maker finally commit to a concrete launch for the Slider? We’ll find out in a month’s time.

We just got to spend some quality time with ASUS’ newly unveiled Padfone and you can see the smartphone that doubles up as a tablet on video after the break. It’s still a mere mockup for now, but ASUS has big plans for it — plans that coalesce around the Christmas period and the very latest version of Android at that time. ASUS’ Benson Lin was careful not to openly admit the company intends to ship with Ice Cream Sandwich, but he did point out that you can’t launch a smartphone with Honeycomb as the OS. We were encouraged to draw our own conclusions.

The smartphone is actually the only smart aspect of this hardware pair — the slate part acts as a display, a set of speakers, an extended battery, and an I/O extender, but it doesn’t work by itself. ASUS also tells us there’ll be other functionality enabled by the tablet panel, but that’s being kept under wraps for now. Compatibility between the display dock and subsequent phone generations is being contemplated but couldn’t be confirmed, and as to the UI, ASUS says it’ll be almost the same as its second-gen Android tablets. You heard that right, second generation ASUS Android tablets — to succeed the Transformer and Slider — will be coming around the same time as the Padfone.

Been waiting on an Eee PC 1215N with an AMD Neo processor? Or how about an Eee PC 1015T with a 12.1-inch display? We know, you need a damn almanac to keep up with all of ASUS’ netbooks, but if you have in fact been waiting on the respective strengths of those two Eee PC variants, the company’s got you covered with its new 1215T. Forgoing the Intel Atom / NVIDIA Ion 2 combo for a single core 1.7GHz AMD Athlon K125 processor, the 12.1-inch notbook (our word for a machine that’s not really a netbook anymore) packs 2GB of RAM, an 320GB hard drive and Windows 7 Home Premium. The system looks to have the same chassis as the $485 Eee PC 1215N we reviewed not too long ago, but instead rings up at around $436 on Amazon right now. We obviously haven’t tested the AMD version nor have we seen any reviews, but we’d venture to guess that while you may save $50, you’ll give up the better battery life of the Intel / Ion-powered 1215N — the AMD Neo laptops we’ve tested haven’t lasted longer than four hours on a charge. That’s just our hunch, but hey, don’t let us stop you from hitting that source link and ordering one right now.

Can you keep track of all the different variants of ASUS’ Eee PC netbook? It’s not easy when the Taiwanese computer company pumps out new ones nearly every month, but we doubt we’ll easily forget the Eee PC 1015PW’s distinctive shade of purple. Otherwise, TechinStyle reports it’s much the same as the 1015PEM, which isn’t a terrible thing — it’s got a dual-core 1.5GHz Intel Atom N550 CPU, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0 and a 250GB or 320GB hard drive under that chiclet keyboard, plus the usual 10.1-inch, 1024 x 600 LED-backlit screen. No word on pricing or availability, but the way these things usually go, you’ll find it in Europe well before the States.

It was hinted at back in September, now the Chinese-language Economic Daily is reporting that the Garmin-ASUS joint venture will end in January after the two-year deal expires. We’ve heard this from our own sources as well. At that point, Asus will return to flooding the market with indistinguishable product iterations and Garmin will go back to watching GPS-enabled smartphones (and now tablets) eat away at the dedicated personal navigation device market. ASUS is expected to continue making GPS-enabled smartphones under the ASUS brand with Garmin providing navigation and mapping software.

It was rumored back in August for a September release and, though it did miss that by a full month, we’re definite believers of “Better late than never.” The ASUS 1015PN is officially the newest entry in the Eee PC family with its 10.1-inch, 1024 x 600 LCD, a dual-core Atom N550 processor, 1GB of RAM, 250GB of platter-based storage, and, perhaps most importantly, NVIDIA Ion 2 graphics that won’t put a hurting on your battery life thanks to Optimus switching tech. That means an estimated 9.5 hours of longevity on a charge so long as you don’t spend your time pumping out reams of legally acquired full HD test footage. If all that sounds good you can order yours right now for around $429.

Ready to splash the cash on NVIDIA’s fresh new mobile Fermi graphics cards? ASUS is the first company to take the veils off its GTX 460M offering, which it has seasoned with a most welcome addition: 1.5GB of dedicated GDDR5 graphics memory. The ROG G53JW and G73JW machines are the beneficiaries of this upgrade, with both capable of 3D work should you ask them nicely, and offering such tasty options as quad-core Core i7 CPUs, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 750GB of storage, 16:9 displays (1,366 x 768 on the 15.6-inch G53 and up to 1,920 x 1,080 on the 17.3-inch G73), Blu-ray-writing optical drives, and 8-cell 5,200mAh batteries. The lighter of the two laptops weighs in at 3.6kg, but if that doesn’t put you off, both are available right now at online retailers.