I have a gaming rig and a 1st gen nexus 7, but I want something for when I am not at home with my desktop. I never seem to see any windows tablets that are less than 500$ and have an atom that have a 1080p screen, I would mostly use it for indie games, homework, and internet browsing. All of the ultra books i've seen that have a 1080p screen are more than I need with an i5 usually. Then there is samsung's 1080p chromebook that came out for 400$, but it's a chrome book. Why are there 400$ android tablets that have 2560 by 1440, but no windows tablets for anywhere close to that price.
Am I just missing something, or does no one want what I want.
Windows has bad scaling, that's why. If you're comfortable, china's taobao sells some macbook air fakes with all replacable components, which sounds remarkably close to what you're looking for.
I doubt you'd take that option so maybe the Lenovo yoga 2/flex2?
Dell Venue 11 Pro has a 10.6" (I think) 1080p screen and the Lenovo Thinkpad 2 that came out recently has a 8" and change screen at 1080p, both with the Baytrail Atom SoCs. Ebay the Venue 11 pro and you should be able to get it for somewhere in the $300 range, and the new Thinkpad retails at $500 new. Personally I just picked up a used Venue 8 pro to screw around with for a bit until the next atom refresh or so. If you are looking for a device that will live with for a few years to meet those needs you mentioned I would wait for a refresh of the Atoms, as the GPU in Baytrail currently is a bit under-powered (miles ahead of everything they have previously done at the TDP, but a GPU part that is not representative of the total focus on GPU design Intel now has in their mobile lines). Also the above advice is to be headed, Windows is still in two worlds with how display scaling is handled. Microsoft applications and "Modern UI" programs are handled well, but overall desktop scaling is hit or miss with legacy applications, and you can get weird scaling issues like blurry text or mis-matched button sizes.
Thanks for the dell venue 11 pro, you have a point with the scaling issue, but what about linux, isn't the scaling a little better for the x86 versions of linux. I don't really need windows, just x86; and when do you think the next atom refresh will be?
The biggest problem with the current wave of atom based tablets for linux support is UEFI and secureboot. I have seen demos of unbuntu running on the venue 8 and 11 (unity has the best current touch screen support, and unbuntu has secureboot support in most cases), but touch screen and WLAN drivers are still a problem (read not currently usable or available). Cherry Trail (14nm shrink plus Broadwell GPU) is due out later this year (originally September, but probably later than that). As for potential problems with scaling I wouldn't worry very much, its just something to consider. Personally I would go with a Venue 11 pro for around $300 or so (just shop around for a few weeks on ebay or amazon) and figure you can flip it for something else later down the line if you want, but it depends on how well a Windows based tablet works for your use case and if you can put up with the little quirks with using desktop windows on a tablet coupled with the limited overall support through the Modern UI.
yeah I think I will wait for Cherry trail, I don't really need anything right now, I just want something other than my nexus 7 for mobile stuff, so just boredom mostly
Yeah I am kind of in the same boat, although I decided to pick up a venue 8 pro and try it out for a bit. I figure I can always sell it later and only lose a bit of money to try it out, but it seems that a lot of these current generation of bay trail windows tablets all have some sort of con to them, be it bad pricing, low screen resolution or bad storage loadouts ( 32 GB versions with emmc memory are pretty unacceptable and are just about cutting corners it seems). So if you plan on spending a bit of money for something you can live with for awhile its never a bad idea to wait (hell even surface pro 3s a few months down the line can probably be had in the price range used) for a bit and hope the manufacturers are properly motivated to provide some really solid devices.
I also just found the hp omni 10 for 350, and that has a 1080p display and the 3770, but there is no keyboard dock, but for 350, it's not too bad