BenQ To Join Tablet Hunt Starting In 2011?

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Early word out of the folks at BenQ suggests that the Chinese electronics firm will be making an appearance in the market starting in 2011. Dubbed the R100, it looks to be packing a lot of things that would make a tablet something to see. Will we be hungry for some BenQ next year? Let’s take a look.

Company reps at BenQ have confirmed that the R100 tablets will be hitting China and Taiwanese markets first, though there’s no eye to later expansion as yet, it’s not likely that they won’t move on from there. It’s got a 10.1 inch LCD touchscreen showing at 1024 x 600 resolution, an as yet unnamed version of Android, a Samsung ARM processor running at 833 MHz, eight gigs of onboard storage with an SD card slot that will add up to another 16 gigs, mini USB, mini HDMI, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity (no 3G was mentioned, interestingly), and a battery that will run for fully 12 hours on a single charge when used for reading.

There’s also word that they’re looking to pair this with some onboard content included; a bundle that might include  some ebooks or magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

The specs seem at least passable–whether or not this will compete effectively with the iPad is going to require some hands-on time, I figure–and the fact that they’re looking at content deals is a very interesting move. Sure, we’ve seen that before with ereaders, but not so much with tablet PCs. And if this kind of thing takes off, we might find the Kindle and Nook getting a little more robust in terms of features or otherwise getting shoved out of the marketplace. And I definitely like the sounds of that battery life!

No pricing has been announced yet, and even more sadly, actual pictures of the device will not be made available until the device is released (that’s straight out of BenQ proper, folks), but earlier devices will give us some word into how the whole thing will look, and it’s looking pretty good for BenQ all around.