Monster Technology

First of all, I would like to say that I just received this laptop yesterday – after a bit of a twist. I first ordered this laptop a few days prior partially because of the 150$ GC promotion, only to find out a day later that there is an additional free item that I can get with this laptop. The netgear Push2TV wireless adapter is free with the purchase of this asus model. However you would have to go to the netgear-adapter page to find this deal. It is annoying that amazon did not make a link on the asus page (a deliberate act on their part?). In any case, I had to order another asus since the first one was already shipped and they couldn’t just ship the free adapter to you (asus+GC+netgear have to be simultaneously added to checkout in order for the deal to count), and I returned the first one back to amazon (just asked UPS to take it back at the time of delivery). So finally the second one arrived yesterday with the free adapter too. Now I am happy.

Now, onto the laptop itself.

This laptop exudes classical beauty. The bamboo is gorgeous and comfortable to touch, and forms a really interesting combination with the aluminum brush-metal keyboard in a vintage yet futuristic way. The chrome rims add an additional level of sophistication, and I love the lighting of the on-button and the 4 lights located in the front of the laptop (for battery, hdd etc). The overall color scheme is maroon/brown, which is an unusual color palette in a market where black and silver predominates. However it works really well and sets this laptop apart from the rest. After using it around my house for almost 10 hours, there is some fingerprinting on the touchpad, which is easily cleaned. Overall I find that this laptop looks the best when situated on a glass desk surface, with the lights reflecting off it.

I was kind of expecting this laptop to be heavy since it has an optical drive, but in fact it is very easy to carry around. The 14″ screen is very generous and I love the widescreen HD display. I did a side-by-side comparison with the macbook 13, and the colors on the asus are more vivid, however the white can be too bright in my opinion (i.e. the white background on most webpages and documents can be a bit hard to read at first), so I played around for a while with the graphical adjustments of the asus in order to achieve a good balance. Most of the online videos play very well – I tested it with various apple trailers, youtube videos, shows on [$...] etc, and all of them came out with more vivid colors than the mb-13 counterpart, even though sometimes video on the asus can look more “saturated” (ex: people’s faces can look too rosy sometimes and dark can be too dark).

Windows 7 is really a step-up from VISTA, with more streamlined functionalities and less hassle. I selected the “Quiet Office” power profile and the machine runs very quietly for the most part. I am still testing other functionalities of this laptop (camera, burner, wireless tv connection etc) so I will update this review at a later time. But so far I am very happy with it.
Rating: 5 / 5

Pros:

Long battery life. I have never seen “10 hours” as Asus claims, but 5-6 hours of use on a battery-saving mode is quite realistic.

Performance. The i5 in this laptop is incredible for browsing and general tasks. Even on a power saving mode (mine throttles the CPU down to 40%) there is no discernible processing lag for everyday tasks. The Intel graphics are capable of running light, casual games like Audiosurf and Beat Hazard, allowing you to save the Geforce 310M for more heavy tasks. With the Geforce graphics, I was able to obtain a steady 30fps in Left 4 Dead on high settings with no AA and 16x AF.

Good Display. Granted, I have never seen one of the $1800 Thinkpads with S-IPS panels up close, but this is the best screen I’ve seen on a notebook in person. I’m sure there’s better on more expensive laptops, though.

Ergonomics. The laptop is light enough that it can easily be carried around with any accessories you might have. The keyboard is also very comfortable to type on.

Style. Aluminum-accented bamboo? Yes please. Nice and thin too. Also, the bamboo has a nice, dark finish to it and seems well-protected from scratches and scuffs.

Good Touchpad. Personally, I hate touchpads. I already tapped the giftcard to order a mouse, but this touchpad is quite sensitive, accurate, and has multi-touch. Asus also bundles the laptop with pre-installed multi-touch gesture software that works very well. I actually kept it installed as it is quite useful.

HDMI and USB 3.0.

Good wireless adapter. Supports B/G/N and works well even when set to “max power savings.”

Cons:

It has a VGA out where they could have put something more useful.
Rating: 5 / 5