CES: Asus reveals £160 7in Tegra 3 tablet running Ice Cream Sandwich

Taiwanese hardware manufacturer Asus is set to launch a 7in tablet device powered by Nvidia's new quad core Tegra 3 processor, which will go on sale for just £160.

Asus chief executive Jerry Shen joined Nvidia boss Jen-Hsun Huan on stage during the chipmaker's keynote at CES on Monday and V3 was there to report the event live.

The ME370T tablet will run on the powerful new chip, which features four ARM Cortex A9 CPUs, with a fifth CPU 'companion' running at low frequency and very low power to offer improved performance and 61 per cent lower power consumption, according to Nvidia.

The tablet will run the latest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, but the biggest cheers were reserved for the price, which Shen said would start at $249 (£160) – remarkably low considering the device will pack the same processor as Asus' Transformer Prime tablet, which costs £500.

Huan confirmed during the keynote that the Transformer Prime would be the world's first Ice Cream Sandwich tablet.

The news confirms that Asus is gunning for similarly sized Android competitors such as the Galaxy Tab and HTC's Flyer, as well as the iPad.

Also at the keynote, Nvidia demonstrated on a development tablet Windows 8, the upcoming operating system from Microsoft and the first to be designed with tablets in mind.

The demo is part of Microsoft's efforts to publicise the product and win the hearts and minds of users and developers ahead of its likely release later this year.