Asus at CES 2014

The PadFone is no gimmick. It's been widely met with some combination of confusion and mockery, but Asus's transforming phone / tablet hybrid has spawned successors, and now even has a second model in the lineup. Asus just announced at its CES 2014 press conference the $249 PadFone mini, a 4-inch phone that docks into the back of a 7-inch tablet and becomes an entirely new device. It's very clearly the inferior model in the lineup – the phone's 800 x 480 display reeks of three years ago, as does the tablet's 1280 x 800 screen — but it's largely compelling otherwise, and makes a surprisingly good case next to some of the comically large phones on the market.

The 4.1-ounce mini comes with Android 4.3, and is powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z2560 processor. It's skinned with Asus' new ZenUI, which the company says simplifies the Android experience and makes things like reading a bright screen a little easier, and has a lot of performance tweaks to the camera experience. The PadFone mini comes with an 8-megapixel rear camera, a big 3270mAh battery (as long as both parts are attached), and the same spun-metal look of the larger PadFone Infinity. Really, though, the only thing that matters is that it's a hand-sized, 4-inch phone that slides into the back of a 7-inch tablet when you want it — it's either the best of both worlds, or simply a pointlessly convoluted phablet.

Back at Computex in June, Asus introduced its Transformer Book Trio — a computer that could function as both a laptop and tablet and dual-booted between Windows 8 and Android. Now, the company's announcing a new version with a similar mission: the Transformer Book Duet TD300 is a convertible laptop / tablet hybrid that can dual boot between Windows 8.1 and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Beyond Asus' earlier effort, Samsung tried this dual-boot trick last year with its Ativ Q, though the new Asus model looks more like a traditional ultrabook at first glance. It has the standard folding form factor rather than the sliding keyboard that Samsung used and looks quite a bit like Asus’ other laptops. Its 13.3-inch multitouch display features a solid 1,920 x 1,080 resolution; it doesn’t quite match the Ativ Q but should still be solid in most normal circumstances. That 13.3-inch form factor makes Asus' new model a good bit bigger than the older Transformer Book Trio.