Portable Laptop Review: Asus U6V-A1

April 2009
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Thursday, April 23rd, 2009 @ 4:20 pm | Laptop, Review

If you’re looking for an ultra portable laptop with both a balanced system and price point, I gotta recommend this one to you. Coming with a classy design (and some interesting extras like leather palm rests – I’ve never had leather on a computer before!) on the outside and a solid system on the inside (Windows Vista Business), I think that everyone who is reasonable using their laptop will be satisfied with this ultra portable laptop.

Coming in with a dual core processor, 4 gigs of RAM, and an nVidia integrated graphics chip, this computer isn’t incredibly powerful, but it definitely was able to handle everything I threw at it. It’s definitely able to handle gaming, but you will have to turn down the graphics settings a wee bit. This is of course standard – ultra portable laptops aren’t exactly designed for the gaming market. Of course the nVidia graphics chip makes it outperform lots of competitors. And with a 12″ screen (large for an ultraportable) you’ll likely be able to enjoy those graphics well!

One thing I also like is the roomy hard disc – 320 gigs is a lot of storage space. I bet you can fit most if not all of your media on this one machine – music, video, and games included. Unfortunately to enjoy all of this you’ll likely need some nice headphones (I hear Skullcandy is a good brand, or Bose), since as with most ultra portable laptops the sound system is one of the first areas to be cut. Thankfully though the keyboard is reasonably sized – although the buttons placed on the right side made it feel a little cramped for me. The setup for the palmrest was OK, but I don’t really like the fingerprint reader located between the buttons. Personally, I feel it makes the system feel very cramped. At least it comes with three USB ports and a built in webcam plus the usual selection (like Ethernet) – if you don’t like the keyboard you can always plug in a new one.

As for weight, At 3.5 lbs with the average, I consider it a little high for an ultra portable laptop. Unfortunately you’ll have to add to this the weight of the power adapter. The battery on this machine only lasts a little over three hours, which I consider abysmal as far as portability. One feature I found cool though was this portable laptop’s ability to open up several programs like browsers and Skype without ever having to load Windows – it can really speed things up for you.

So if you’re looking for a computer with very few bad points but also few great points, I’d recommend it to you. It’s a solid machine even if its battery life is quite short. At least they throw in an extra 3 cell battery free of charge. At around 1.6k it is definitely an option to consider.