ASUS dubs self SonicMaster, outs N61 an N71 laptops to prove it

If what's been missing from your life lately can be quantified as a large widescreen laptop with "unparalleled audio reproduction" and up to a GeForce GT240M graphics card, you'd better listen up, partner. ASUS has just introduced the 16-inch N61 and 17.3-inch N71, both of which will sport up to a Core 2 Quad Q9000 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a Blu-ray drive, and the aforementioned GPU with a gigabyte of dedicated memory. The primary differences are in resolution and storage, where the N61 makes do with 1366 x 768 and 500GB versus 1600 x 900 and up to 1TB spread over two HDDs on the N71. We suspect the SonicMaster "dedicated resonance space arrangement" might be as useful as those 'shopped speakers in the picture, so we'd still advise getting a solid pair of headphones.

[greatcaffeine Posted Sep 9th 2009 4:49AM]

Any pricing information?

[mrln Posted Sep 9th 2009 3:38PM]

Knowing ASUS, under $1500.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 9th 2009 4:51AM]

I JUST bought an N81VP-D1 last week too. Weird how technology does that.

[Frostblade10 Posted Sep 9th 2009 4:52AM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

[bdav Posted Sep 9th 2009 4:57AM]

If its only a week old surely you can take it back?

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 9th 2009 5:08AM]

I'm happy with everything about it, except the screen could be better. If I weren't going into my Freshman year of college in 3 days I would take it back, but sadly I cannot afford to wait :(

[Frostblade10 Posted Sep 9th 2009 5:23AM]

Wow. I was really hoping you would throw an Airplane reference in there somewhere.

[bdav Posted Sep 9th 2009 5:32AM]

I know - I was waiting for it...

[Dusty Posted Sep 9th 2009 8:14AM]

Same here, I still like my ASUS N81VP-D1. Its great!

[finnith Posted Sep 9th 2009 12:51PM]

Same laptop here, I would've been happy with it were it not for the UL series that just came out that also fills the 14-inch gap

[Frostblade10 Posted Sep 9th 2009 4:51AM]

"so we'd still advise getting a solid pair of headphones."

Totally agree 100% but dont get USB headphones. Get the ol' green n' orange plug ones so it goes through the sound system.

USB headphones almost always have their own sound card so the supposed "unparalleled audio reproduction" wouldn't even get used.

[CtrlBurn Posted Sep 9th 2009 8:59AM]

I've never heard of people using USB headphones. It sounds like a terrible idea.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 9th 2009 5:01AM]

No SSD! NO BLURAY RW!? That's not that great and the price would be probably incredible

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 9th 2009 5:19AM]

Why did you guys link the worse over-hyped pair of headphones that is signed and designed by of the two worst artists on this planet right now, as a solid pair? Get Sony's MDR7505 or something comparable.

On a more positive note, to the guy that said he wants a Blu-ray player and a SSD; The laptop only supports a resolution of 1600x900 at the highest so you would only be able to view 720P content and not 1080P. There is also 1TB of space there, you can easily torrent 720P content right now for free! and have it everywhere you go.

Adding in a SSD would bump the laptop's price out of the roof and what do you seriously expect to do on a laptop that will require you to have blazzing 200mb reads and 140mb writes; leave the heavy duty work for a desktop. You'll just have to suffer through waiting those extra 15 seconds when booting, sorry buddy.

The laptop is amazing and perfect as is. Strong graphics, apparently amazing sound reproduction, a very respectable resolution, lots of horse power, lots of storage, built by Asus so it's like as if Mercedes-Benz built it and it comes in the most Metal color ever; BLACK. Nuff said.

[PhoenixFox Posted Sep 9th 2009 5:20AM]

That has GOT to be the worst proof reading I have EVER seen

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 9th 2009 9:12AM]

"Unparalleled Audio Reproduction"... how? From what tech?

[Poop Chef Posted Sep 9th 2009 9:39AM]

I remember back in the day when ANUS was known for high end motherboards, now all this poop is coming from it.