HP re-entered the tablet market with its budget-friendly Slate 7, but a new SlateBook x2 aims to take things to the next level.

The company launched its new HP SlateBook x2 tablet with high-end specs and a price to match, aiming to take on the ASUS Transformer series. The tablet comes with a hefty $479 price tag and is bundled with a keyboard, with no tablet-only function.

The HP SlateBook x2 is currently available for purchase from the company's website, but it should soon go on sale in online and brick-and-mortar stores as well.

While it sports a steep price tag, the new HP SlateBook x2 does hold its own in terms of specs: the tablet sports a 10-inch screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels and runs Nvidia's new Tegra 4 SoC with a quad-core processor clocked at 1.8GHz, with 2GB of RAM.

In a similar manner to the ASUS Transformers, the HP SlateBook x2 can use the primary battery in the main housing and get extra juice when docked with the keyboard. According to HP, the tablet itself offers 10 hours of battery life and it gets another eight hours when docked. In terms of software, the slate runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and packs several HP apps, as well as Kingsoft Office. The tablet is only available in a gray color option for now.

The rest of the specs, meanwhile, are not all that impressive. The tablet has 16GB of internal stirage and a micro SD card slot for additional memory, with another standard SD slot in the keyboard dock. The slate also has a full-sized USB port and HDMI ports, as well as a rear camera (unspecified amount of pixels).

HP made its comeback to the tablet market with the Slate 7, but the tablet was not very well-received despite the fact that it launched with a very low price. The HP SlateBook x2, however, aims to compete at a higher level and take on full-fledget Windows laptops. It remains to be seen whether the company will manage to see some success on the tablet market with its new SlateBook x2.