Is it a laptop, is it a tablet, or is it a desktop PC? Er, it's all three if it's the Asus Transformer Book Trio

It also has a split personality on operating systems - running Windows 8 and Android Jelly Bean

Is it a laptop, is it a tablet, or is it a desktop PC? Er, it's all three if it's the Asus Transformer Book Trio

Asus has unveiled the Transformer Book Trio, a device the company is describing as the “world’s first three-in-one notebook, tablet and desktop PC.” But that's not enough - the Trio is also multi-platform, running both Windows 8 and Android operating systems.

The Trio is an 11.6iinch, 1080p screen which attaches to a keyboard. When connected in this way it runs as a Windows 8 laptop, but the screen can be removed to become a tablet running the latest Android OS, Jelly Bean. The device can also be switched between the two when docked with a dedicated hot key.

The third element of the Trio is a little less distinctive. Asus claims it can be used as a “Windows 8 desktop PC” when attached to an external display, but what extra functionality this will offer apart from a larger screen is unclear.

Fitting the Trio’s different possible uses there are twinned technical specs, split between the tablet and laptop forms. There’s a fourth-generation Intel Core i7 processor to power Windows 8 and a separate 2 GHz Intel Atom processor to run the Android tablet; there’s twin batteries – one in the tablet and one in the keyboard; and two lots of memory – a 750GB HDD in the laptop and 64GB of flash storage in the tablet.

Asus also promises that there will be smooth syncing of data between the different operating systems, but how the cleanly the product will work in reality will have to wait until the official release later this year.