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ASUS UL80 and N61Vg hands-on
Windows 7 has inspired an expected new model bonanza among PC manufacturers, and ASUS is no exception. Just for starters the new UL80 (pictured running Windows Vista) and N61Vg offer up some "mainstream" prices and performance up against that Win 7 hotness. The UL80 makes like a thin and light, with a new dual-core CULV SU7300 processor and a quoted 12 hours of battery life, but also works in switchable discreet graphics, Turbo33 tech for selective overclocking the processor, and a disc drive. It's still relatively thin and light, and to our eyes has a pretty snazzy display. The N61Vg has a bit of a new design language for ASUS, with a pleasant rubberized palm rest. It also has a multi-touch trackpad, strong multimedia features and a decent size / weight for a 16-inch Core 2 Quad machine. The existing UL80 configuration, without the overclocking, goes for about $849, so we expect the new UL80 to be in that ballpark, while the N61Vg is slated for around $1,049. %Gallery-73346%
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.
