ASUS U3S review

ASUS U3S is very well designed. When closed the notebook is whole black, Only on the back side is a silver line. Cover is made from metal and its surfaceis smooth and reflects like a mirror. It is nice, but you have to clean it often to keep the effect on:) The sides are hardened by metal so the construction is strong. Good thing is the leather surface arounf touchpad. The only thing i dislike about this mode are a bigger edges around display.

There are many ports and features inside. On the front side is no connector, on the left Audio, card reader (MMC, SD, MS/Pro), Wifi switcher FireWire, USB, cooling output and S-video.
The back side id filled mostly by battery, on the sides are VGA, modem and LAN. On the right side are the most interesting ports - Express Card, switcher of the graphics card, two USBs, port for external GPS antenna, HDMI output, eSATA connector to plig-in an external disc. So, as I wrote there are only 3 USB ports, but apart from that everything else is very good. HDMI is a step forward and eSATA is great option for extensive disk space with very fast speed.

U3S is small notebook 318x243x32 and weight only 1.82kg. Power adapter is bigger and has 488g.

Keyboard is silver with black lables. With Fn you can switch display mods, camera, VoIP, WWW browser, mail client, wsitch WiFi/BT, turn sleep mode on, adjust brightness, adjust volume and activate/deactivate touchpad. Touchpad is well built since it does nothing when writing on keyboard. The buttons a bit harder and between them is fingerprint reader.

Notebook has got Core2 Duo T7500 and therefore the tests are not bad at all:

Single-Thread mode
test of calculations with fixed point: 27 079
test of calculations with floating point: 16 628

Multi-Thread mode
test of calculations with fixed point: 54 252
test of calculations with floating point: 33 257

Windows Vista – CPU
index for operations per second: 5.1

Cinebench 9.5
Rendering (Single CPU): 368
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 683
Multiprocessor Speedup: 1,86

Memory is 1.5GB while 512MB is integrated onboard and test HWiNFO measured 2686 MB/s

Hard disc has got 160GB and 5400rpm, and is very fast, comparable nearly with 7200rpm disc

HWiNFO32: 108,03 MB/s
HD Tach: 36,2 MB/s
Average access time: 16,63 ms
Windows Vista – Index of speed: 4,9

Optic drive is not inside the notebook and you have to plug it to USB - therefore you have only 2 usb ports left! The drive
is good, but a bit loud.

U3S has got GPS! On the CD you can find software AsusMap and you will get extern antenna. As i tested in the most case is the internal antenna good enough to have a good signal.

Display 13.3" has got 1280x800 resolution that is an average, but there is no need for better resolution since it is a small sized display. Colors are good and display has got a wide range to adjust backlight and there is no problem to use it comfortably on daylight.

There are two graphic cards inside - Intel GMA X3100 and dedicated NVIDIA GeForce 8400M G with 128MB DDR2.

3D Mark (GeForce 8400M G 128MB)
3DMark 2001: 7645
3DMark 03: 2918
3DMark 05: 1717
3DMark 06: 1030

Windows Vista(GeForce 8400M G 128MB)
Index of graphics performance Aero: 3.2
Index of graphics performance for 3D games: 3.9

Cinebench 9.5 (GeForce 8400M G 128MB)
Shading (CINEMA 4D): 423
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting): 1266
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting): 1718
OpenGL Speedup: 4,06

3D Mark (GMA X3100)
3DMark 2001: 5350
3DMark 03: 1510
3DMark 05: 848
3DMark 06: 516

Windows Vista(GMA X3100)
Index of graphics performance Aero: 3.4
Index of graphics performance for 3D games: 3.3

Cinebench 9.5 (GMA X3100)
Shading (CINEMA 4D): 427
Shading (OpenGL Software Lighting): 794
Shading (OpenGL Hardware Lighting): 1118
OpenGL Speedup: 2,62

Performance is not great but it should be expected - GeForce 8400M is lowend. It would be better to have GeForce 8600M GS inside. Mode for integrated graphics card is power saving and when you want to switch the graphics cards you have to restart notebook.
HDMI is working only with dedicated card.

Audio serves HD chip Realtek ALC660 and the integrated reproductors are good and loud enough. Microphone works with no problems and camera is usable even when the notebook is closed.

Cooling system is nothing extra. The cooler runs all the time and when power-saving mode is switcher it is silent enough. When you switch on normal mode the cooler is loud enough to be heard in the whole room clearly even when you are not working on the laptop. When you try to run 3D mark and measure temperatures you can easily see over 80 degrees on the CPU and over 110! degrees on the graphics card.

You will get two batteries with this notebook. One smaller and one bigger.

Battery time with standard work:
Smaller battery, integrated graphic = 2 h 3 m
Bigger battery, integrated graphic = 4 h
Smaller battery, dedicated graphic = 48 m
Bigger battery, dedicated graphic = 1 h a 49 m

As a comclusion i must appreciate many usefull features on this device, but on the other hand small notebook should be more silent.