Smartbooks at CES (photos)

The Freescale Smartbook Tablet tries to get the best of both worlds by offering a tablet that docks into its own keyboard base.

Many smartbooks seem to be thinner but similarly-screened versions of Netbooks. Shown off at the Nvidia booth, the Compal Ultimate has a look that's nearly indistinguishable at first glance, despite having a Tegra 2 processor.

The Mobinnova Beam has an 8.9-inch screen and HD output. For an OS it runs Windows CE currently, although the Beam will also come with a Google Android OS at a future date.

Looking similar to the Beam, the Pegatron Neo has a standard silvery chassis and dark keyboard, but is wafer-thin compared to Netbooks with a similar 10-inch screen.

With a full-size keyboard and a bright display, the Lenovo Skylight puts its focus on typing ease rather than cutting down on dimensions of width and length. In terms of thickness, however, the Skylight is barely thicker than a magazine.

Smartbooks do have identical-looking competition: manufacturers such as Viliv specialize in miniature devices running full Windows OS with Atom processors.

Will tablets overtake smartbooks? Nvidia shows off a number of tablet alternatives running Tegra processors. It could come down to whether or not you prefer portability over a keyboard.