As nice as the NX is, I want an N43 more…
There’s a lot of fuss been made over the NX90 and its swanky chrome looks, its pimped out B&O speaker kit and those dual touch-pads, but what about those of us who can’t afford such nice things (yet want such nice things!)?
The N-series is pretty much 90% NX, missing mostly the shiny-shiny chrome, although it does make up for it with lashings of brushed aluminium instead. Personally I prefer the professional black-metal-silver style and I would use the mirrored surface of the NX90 to continually tend to my locks; that avatar up there on the right is only off in skin-colour (unless you’re meeting me the morning after the night before)!
My personal favourite is the N43Jf – a portable 14 incher that retains the curved downward end and flush fitting lid that slightly swings over the back. There’s still the awesome Bang & Olufsen speakers as well, but they’re no longer straddling the low power, LED backlit ASUS Splendid LCD, and instead sit just above the keyboard because of space constraints. With a Blu-ray/DVD Combo option squeezed in this means it’s not ‘ultra-thin’; it’s pretty thin though as 3.7cm isn’t much. It needs a bit of depth to fit the larger speaker too, and at 14 inches it’s just out of ‘ultra portable’ territory anyway.
The 14 inch chassis still gives enough palm rest space, and it comes kitted with the latest Intel Core i3 or i5 mobile CPUs. I’d opt for the 370M or 450M as they are both fast enough: the 450M has TurboBoost too, but ASUS’ own Super Hybrid Engine will take care of that for the 370M anyway. Next add Nvidia’s latest GeForce GT 425M that includes DirectX 11 support and HDMI 1.3a with all the latest fancy Blu-ray decoding assistance built in. The 425M has enough grunt to actually play proper gamer-games too, not just the casual stuff, and the hardware also includes its Optimus Technology, which means the graphics switches on the fly between the Intel and Nvidia GPU depending on the demands of each application, so it’ll save battery life as well.
Throw in USB 3, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth, Gigabit Ethernet, up to a massive 750GB hard drive (depending on model, of course) and Lojack security software, and really, what else do you need? OK, there’s no fancy pants touch-screen… yet, but maybe future models? ASUS?