A few days ago with got a few minutes with the recently announced Gigabyte S1080 tablet, although the Gigabyte representative at the event we attended was very protective of the device. It has some interesting features, but as with all Windows based tablets, it’s unlikely to be a huge seller in the consumer market.

Think of the S1080 as a netbook without a keyboard and you’ve got it pretty much in one. The hardware consists of an Atom N550 dual core processor at 1.5GHz, up to 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 2.5-inch hard drive (320GB is standard) or SSD and sadly Intel’s integrated 3150 graphics. The 10.1-inch screen has typical netbook resolution as well at 1024×600. What makes the S1080 differ from most Windows tablets we’ve seen so far is the inclusion of a USB 3.0 port which means that you’d at least have fast access to external storage devices etc.

Other features include a D-sub connector, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 and a 1.3 Megapixel webcam. It also has an optical track pad, much like those found on Blackberry Smartphones and a pair of buttons to go with it. The standard battery is rated at about 3h worth of battery life, but there’s meant to be an optional secondary battery pack available at some stage.

Price wise we were told to expect the S1080 to retail for about US$699/€520, but if it proved to be a tough sell it might drop to somewhere around the US$600/€450 mark. It seems a little bit on the expensive side to us, especially considering that Android tablets are selling for half as much and we’re not entirely sure that Windows 7 is a suitable OS for any tablet. Hopefully Gigabyte can find some niche markets to sell the S1080 in, since as we said initially, it doesn’t appear to be a consumer focused device.