Snapping the tablet and keyboard dock components is easy and reasonably secure

The charger of the ASUS VivoTab RT isn't much larger than a smartphone's and plugs into either the tablet or into the keyboard dock. The LED charging light on the keyboard dock is insanely bright. I can see it from the living room across the hall in my bedroom. Once  plugged into the keyboard dock, the twofer nature of the VivoTab RT quickly emerges. From a slick tablet you now have a sleek Ultrabook with a pretty decent QWERTY keyboard and additional 9 hours of battery life for a total of 16 (tested to be between 15-18 hours with varying settings).While the VivoTab RT as a standalone tablet feels a little delicate, it seems to be reinforced once locked into the keyboard dock. The keyboard dock doubles as a base a full (although undersized) island style QWERTY keyboard with a trackpad and adds USB port.
Snapping the tablet and keyboard dock components is easy and reasonably secure, unsnapping them can be done toggling a small lock. It isn't as cool as the use of magnets but there's a feeling of solid and mechanical reassurance when connecting both parts.Once connected and transformed, the ASUS VivoTab RT feels like a high-end netbook or a smallish Ultrabook. The beauty of this solution is that you can use it on your lap if needed or on various locations unlike the Surface that needs to have somewhere to support both the kickstand and the floppy Touch Cover.The keyboard dock is a solid and functional accessory. There's no learning curve to type on the chiclet-style keys, it adds rigidity to the tablet and it has a range of movement for tilting the screen.
These are all missing on the Microsoft Surface which expects users to learn how to type on the Touch Cover and is limited by the angle of the kickstand.The best thing about the ASUS VivoTab RT is that for the price of $599, you get both the tablet and the keyboard dock (a must-have if you are to be productive on this platform).For the same price, the Microsoft Surface gets you the tablet and the Touch Cover and not the Type Cover which is a less painful way to input text.The Microsoft Surface has its first true challenger in the ASUS VivoTab RT tablet.ASUS has produced a well-rounded, accomplished and smartly designed hybrid device that works suitably well for Windows RT. Its a great tablet and a stunning notebook solution.For the same price as a Microsoft Surface and a Touch Cover you're getting a real QWERTY keyboard, ports, 16 hours of battery life and virtually the same processor, memory and RAM as the Surface, it seems silly to even consider Microsoft's offering over the VivoTab RT.