Looks like at least one company got the MeMO (pun intended) on tablet pricing - ASUS just announced that the Eee Pad Transformer will start at a mere $399. Now, that'll buy you a 16GB model; if you want to step the gigabyte count up to 32, you'll have to shell out an additional $100, raising the price to $499. Still, even when you take into account the fact that the $149 keyboard dock isn't included, that's not a bad deal at all - in fact, both prices shave a benjamin off what Apple will charge for an equivalent iPad 2.

More good news: there's no waiting involved, as the Transformer hits stores on April 26th. 

So what did ASUS sacrifice to get the price this low? We're still puzzling over that question - the spec sheet certainly doesn't show any weaknesses:

  • 10.1-inch wide-view angle 178 degree 1280x800 IPS display
  • 16/32GB solid state drive
  • Dual-core NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor
  • 1GB of RAM
  • HDMI out
  • "Up to" 9.5 hours of battery life
  • Android 3.0 (Honeycomb)

There's no beating around the bush here; ASUS has a terribly tempting tablet on its hands. And even if you don't have the cash, you still have a chance at winning one via ASUS' Twitter/Facebook giveaway (see the source link). Good luck!

Source: ASUS via Android Community