Asus has announced the successor to its popular Eee Pad Transformer tablet. The Eee Pad Transformer Prime will be powered by a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset, which the company claims will boost performance and energy efficiency.

Like its predecessor, the Transformer Prime’s appeal is enhanced by its dock. which adds a ful QWERTY keyboard, a touchpad and an extra bettery, as well as an additional USB port and SD card slot. Initial models will run Android 3.2 Honeycomb, with and upgrade to Android Ice Cream Sandwich due soon.

The Tegra 3 chipset is based on quad-core ARM processor and a 12-core graphics proccessing unit(GPU). As well as four main cores, the tegra 3 contains a fifth Companion Cored designed to handle lower-power tasks such as music and video playback. The four main cores will take over only when needed, such as when the tablet is heavily multitasking or playing games.

The 10in tablet will have a 1280×800 resolution IPS panel with a Gorilla Glass finish. It will include an 8-megapixel camera and a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, plus 1GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, as well as a micro SDHC card slot on the tablet and an SD card slot on the dock. Asus wasn’t forthcoming on plans to offer a 64GB version in th UK.

The tablet and dock are finished in brushed metal, with a choice of amethyst grey or champagne gold. On its own, the Transformer Prime weights only 586g, making it one of the lightest 10in tablets; only the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, at 565g, weight less. The Prime’s keyboard adds another 537g and the tablet and keyboard combo rivals most ultra-portable laptops for weight.

The 32GB Transformer Prime and keyboard will be available in January for Pound499 inc VAT.