Asus intros the AsusPro Series BU400 business Ultrabook
Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer Asus has added a new business-class Ultrabook, called BU400, to its AsusPro Series of portable computers. According to a company press release, the thin, light and “elegant” laptop weighs 1.64kg (with the built-in battery) and comes with a speedy CPU, spill-resistant keyboard and a Windows 8 Pro operating system.
Featuring a durable carbon fiber construction (drops/pressure tested), this notebook is powered by up to a third generation, ultra-low voltage Intel Core i7-3517U vPro processor with two cores clocked at 1.9GHz – 3.0GHz. Moreover, the new AsusPro model sports a 14-inch LED-backlit anti-glare display of HD or HD+ 1600-by-900 pixels native resolution (a multi-touch version with an Intel Core i5-3427U is presumably coming in January 2013).
Under the hood, users may find up to 8GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM, a 500GB anti-shock hard drive and a 256GB Solid-State drive (self-encrypting storage). Built around an Intel Chief River HM77 Express Chipset, the BU400 is equipped with an optional NVIDIA NVS 5200M graphics processing unit (1GB of dedicated VRAM), an HD web camera for video conferencing and a 4-cell 3585mAh battery.
Measuring 20.48mm (about 0.8-inch) at its thickest point, the ultraportable laptop comes outfitted with three USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI interface, 2-in-1 memory card reader slot (SD/MMC), Wireless LAN 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0 modules.
Security features supposedly include Intel’s Anti-Theft technology, built-in Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a fingerprint sensor, pre-loaded Computrace LoJack software and BIOS password protection.
Unfortunately, there’s still no word on an official release date and pricing. We will keep you updated when we have more information.