It’s not often you hear a huge room full of journalist get wowed by a new product - unless it’s by Apple of course. But Asus Chairman Jonney Shih managed to pull this off at the company’s press conference in Taipei at Computex when he announced the Asus Taichi dual-screen notebook-tablet.

Having seen the Taichi up close in person and even had a chance to prod one ever so slightly, we’re intrigued by the concept, but left wondering if it’ll be worth the asking price.

Unlike Acer’s new Aspire S7 models, Asus decided not to go with Thunderbolt connectivity, but the Taichi still sports USB 3.0 and a mini DisplayPort - or possibly a custom VGA connector - as well as a micro HDMI port.

Asus has also implemented a simple lock switch, which prevents the screen from auto rotating when you’re moving the tablet part around, which is a pretty nifty feature.

What we’re not so sure about is how comfortable the Taichi will be to use in tablet mode thanks to its “wedge” shape, which doesn’t seem like the most comfortable shape to hold for extended periods of time and it reminds us ever so slightly of the Sony Tablet S design.

As for a price? We tried to ask around, but were told that this had been a top-secret product within Asus that only a handful of people had been involved with it.

The Taichi is still quite a way from hitting retail, as far as we understand, but judging by how impressed people at the event were, we expect Asus will make every effort to bring it to market as soon as possible.

Jonney Shih likes to come up with something out of the ordinary every year and the Taichi is, at least for the time being, a one of a kind product. Let’s just hope it will be as good as it has the potential to be.