Asus' U30s second generation Core i notebook gets reviewed early

Notebooks with Intels second generation Core i processors are slowly starting to trickle out into the market, but so far weve only seen 14 and 15.6-inch models from Asus. However, an early review of one of its upcoming 13.3-inch models the US30s which is an interesting mix of portability and features. This is likely to be Asus budget 13.3-inch model judging by the features, so we can expect a higher-end version to be announced at some stage as well.

The U30s should be a direct replacement of the current U30Jc model, but with several key feature changes beyond the CPU and chipset. The chassis actually appears to be mostly identical to the older U30Jc which means that the U30s still packs an optical drive, something that results in it being a rather chubby 13-incher. The model on review came with a Core i5-2410M processor; although wed expect it to be available will several CPU options.

The U30Jc featured Nvidias now almost antiquated GeForce 310M graphics and this is where the U30s really improves on things with a GeForce 520M. In as much as this is an entry level solution from Nvidia, it should still be a huge step up from the old 310M. Asus has also built in support for Nvidias Optimus graphics switching technology which switches over to the Intel HD graphics when the additional power of the GPU isnt needed.

What Asus missed to add was USB 3.0 support which is a real shame, as the U30s doesnt feature an eSATA port so the fastest interface for peripherals is USB 2.0. Bluetooth 3.0 has been thrown in for good measure though, although this is becoming an increasingly common feature on notebooks, but doesnt add much in terms of actually being useful as there are still very few devices that utilizes Bluetooth 3.0.

Battery life is said to be good for up to 6h of light usage and about 4.5h watching HD videos on it. Not amazing by todays standards, but still decent enough battery life for whats expected to be Asus most affordable 13.3-inch model, at least for now. Pricing is estimated to end up sub €1000 (S$1770) including tax fully kitted out with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. In will be interesting to see what else Asus has coming over the next few months as the U30s is really just an upgrade of an old model, but were hearing that we can expect some interesting announcements at Computex in May.

Source: Netbooklive