Review Asus U6S sub notebook
It’s my one and only treat...
The central term of Asus U6S press release is luxury. This is offered by all kinds of aspects. Either the piano finished design and calf leather surface, or the equipment with LED display, Penryn CPU, and GeForce 9300M graphics offer luxury. When you are looking at the 12 inch Asus U6F, then you’ll recognize that magnificence is dominating. This is also reflected in the notebooks price, because it starts at 1.799,- Euro.
Case
Sweeping lines, attractive designed surface, matching colours – these features can be found at the notebook market, when the customer wants such design, and is up to spend money for it. Even the Asus U6S provides all these features, but it also sets itself apart other design laptops. The reason why it is better than others comes clear after unpacking the notebook. Leather - no, not the cheap textile copy. You can feel it; you can smell it – real calf leather.
Probably, many don’t need such a notebook surface, and they peg it as a fetish laptop, but this is wrong. The leather fits to the surface as well as to size and colour of the other high tech features of the U6S. It covers the area of the heel of hand, so the user gets not only an optical but also a haptic experience. The leather gets warmed by the integrated hardware, and snuggles at the users hands.
When working with the U6S for several minutes, then scepticism ends, and positive mood increases, even when someone had prejudices. Whatever gets offered at the notebook market, the haptic experience of a leather surface is better than every plastic or metal compenent. Even the surface of the smaller battery is covered with leather, but this has no functional reasons.
There are many other features of the U6S besides its leather design which are quite good. The overall design of the notebook consists of straight lines, and geometrical areas, which is typically for Asus laptops. This gets supported by a sensitive setting of colours. Different gray shades are dominating at the inside of the notebook, and they fit between the back reflecting lid and the black metal case.
The Asus U6S is not only a good looking laptop, and its overall weight of 1610 grams is acceptable. The base unit can not be deformed very much, even when performing punctual pressure load. Only, the area of the DVD drive shows design caused weakness. Basically, the LCD display’s flexural strength is good, but screen failures occur when performing pressure to the display.
The good looking frame joints steady the slim and thin LCD display, and prevent see-sawing of the lid. The Asus U6S renounces a display safety hook when it is closed, and this refers to the actual design of sub notebooks. The display can be opened easily, and the laptop should be inserted into a separate cover when caring (one is included). This prevents damages through foreign objects while transporting.
Ports
When talking about the U6S, then we are speaking about luxury. We expect extravagance from ports too. We start at the front of the notebook, and see the leather covered area where to put the heel of hands. The material fits perfectly and finishes with the metal base unit. There are no ports in this area, and this refers to the design.
The right side of the notebook provides a card reader, a DVD drive, audio ports, USB ports, and a Kensington lock. The audio ports are a headphone plug - S/PDIF combo connector and a microphone in.
The backside of the laptop offers the rechargeable battery, a modem port (RJ-11), a LAN port (RJ-45) and a VGA connector.
If a notebook would offer those listed ports, then they where enough for daily work, but the Asus U6S provides more or them. Many times 12.1 inch sub notebooks do not provide other ways of connecting devices, besides the power connector, which is arranged at the left side of the case. Furthermore, there are three USB ports at this side, and so the notebook offers a sum of four USB 2.0 connectors. The range of ports gets crowned by a HDMI port, which is arranged under the Express Card slot. This port enables connecting the laptop digitally to monitors and TVs. Those are all ports of the U6S, and even a multimedia laptop won’t offer more ways of connecting.
Only a Firewire port is missing. This port is used for transferring video data or connecting external hard drives. A docking port is absent too, and this port is built in such business laptops typically. The Asus U6S gets aloof to other business laptops which are solid and indestructible working machines, and gets placed besides them.
- Front side: no ports
- left side: power connector, fan, 3x USB, HDMI, ExpressCard
- backside: modem, LAN, battery, VGA port
- right side: DVD drive, card reader, audio ports (S/PDIF), USB, Kensington lock
The different ways of communication are important for a sub notebook. The Asus U6S provides a LAN port (Realtek RTL8168/8111 Gigabit PCI-E) and an endangered modem (Motorola 56k). In the meantime Wireless LAN is part of the base configuration, and the Asus U6S is equipped with an Intel Wireless WiFi 4965 AGN module. It also supports the upcoming wireless-n standard, which provides a maximum data transfer rate of up to 300 Mbps (megabit per second).
Moreover, the Asus U6S is equipped with a Bluetooth module (V2.0 + EDR), which enables connecting a cell phone, headset or PDA wirelessly.
Even data security is very important for business laptops. In this regard the U6S provides a finger print reader for user authentication. It can be used for logging in or replacing passwords by fingerprints. Even a TPM chip for data encryption is included.
The Asus U6S is also equipped with many accessories. Two different notebook bags are shipped with the U6S, and that’s luxury. One bag is a protection cover made of black leather, which carries the whole notebook (even with the bigger battery), and it secures the laptop against damages in transit. If you need a little more space, e.g. for the power pack, other laptop equipment and diverse documents, then you can use the other included bag. This is a classical laptop bag by Targus.
Furthermore, a shapely Bluetooth mouse by Logitech is included too, and its design fits to the U6S. Moreover some goodies are included as well. A microfiber rag for cleaning the display, a hook-and-loop fastener for cables and a batteries for the Bluetooth mouse are part of those goodies. Even an instruction manual and a recovery- and driver DVD's are included.
Input devices
The colour of the Asus U6S keyboard is silver-gray. The keyboard is arranged in a square area, and there is no room between each key. The compact U6S benefits of this design.
The size of the standard keys is 18 mm x 18 mm, and that’s a comfortable size. The right side of the keyboard does not provide many space in the area of the double spaced enter button. Some keys like mutated vowels and cursor keys are reduced to a width of 13 mm. The user has to get used to this size before he can work properly.
You should give yourself a little time to get used to the keyboard layout, because Asus made some changes compared to the standard keyboard layout. For example, they moved the [><] key from its standard position between the shift button, and the letter Y, down between the spacebar and the alt key. The left shift button profited by this movement, because it grew is size. Some function keys like picture up and down are placed at the right side after the return key.
Basically, the feeling while writing is good. All keys have an adequate stroke, and a clear and early pressure point. When performing much pressure, then the left side of the keyboard deforms a little bit, but there are no negative effects while typing. The noise of the keys while typing is not annoying. Normally, it is a silent and acceptable clicking sound.
Especially, we pay attention to the touchpad of this mobile subnotebook, although Asus included an external mouse. While testing, we came to grips with the touchpad. Its surface enables quick moving of the navigation finger, and it activates quickly. This function works so good, that we could resign the two touchpad keys. This two buttons are very small, because a finger print reader is arranged between them. Furthermore, they only work properly on their front part. When performing pressure, then frequently they do not work, because we pressed at the lower side of them. This should be improved.
There are not included many additional keys, and the minimal design of the U6S benefits from this fact. There is a key for starting the Asus Lifeframe Tool (webcam), and one for choosing the performance profile of the notebook. Both are designed like an on/off switch and they are placed above the keyboard. The Asus U6S is equipped with a hardware based WLAN on/off switch, and this is quite handy. It is positioned at the left side of the notebook, but it is tight to use.
- Keyboard
- Touchpad
Display
A luxury notebook also needs an equal display. Therefore, Asus installed a panel („Glare Type Color Shine“) with LED backlight. Advantages of this technology are: lower height, lower power consumption, higher brightness, and more evenly illumination compared to conventional displays. This is more expensive, but U6S customers do not care.
The display has a resolution of 1.280 x 800 pixels, and this is standard of widescreen panels. This is enough for one office window or an internet browser window. If there are more windows opened, and they are arranged side by side, then it is easy to lose clean view. Even when using graphic applications, then the work space gets reduced fast, because there are many toolbars on the screen.
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Informations
Maximum 331 cd/m² Average 288.9 cd/m² |
The display brightness was very good while testing. The maximum value was 331 cd/m², and this is respectable. The minimum value at the upper left corner of the display was 262 cd/m² and this is still an excellent value. The illumination was not as good as the brightness of the display, and was gauged with 79.2%. We did not recognize illumination differences with the naked eye.
The black level of the display is very high (minimal educable brightness), and was measured with 2.45 cd/m². This creates a maximum contrast of the display which has a ratio of 135:1, and this is only substandard.
- Outdoor use
The display works reasonably acceptable while outdoor testing. The maximum brightness is available when using the battery, but if there is much light around or the sun is shining, then there are many reflections and mirroring at the display. When the sun shines directly at the display, then we got good results, like with the Toshiba Portégé R500.
The angles of view of the display are not confident. There are changes of the screen by irradiation and darkening especially at the vertical area of the screen.
The angles of view of the horizontal area of the screen are a little bit better than the vertical ones, but reflections occur there easily. Especially, when flattening the viewing angle.
Video of the access area of the display
Performance
The Asus U6S provides powerful hardware. When equipping a sub notebook, then the possibilities of hardware configuration is limited, but there are interesting alternatives. The U6S is equipped with an Intel Penryn T8300 CPU with 2.4 GHz and 3 MB L2-cache. The Penryn CPU is the successor of the Merom processor generation, and provides more performance and needs less power.
Asus did not want to use integrated graphic hardware, like most sub notebooks do. Therefore they included an Nvidia GeForce graphics. The Geforce 9300M G with 256MB Video RAM is the successor of the GeForce 8400.
The performance of the 9300M G was satisfying when running 3D Mark. Comparable notebooks did more poorly when performing 3D Mark 2005 and 2006. One of the compared notebooks was the Dell XPS M1330 with Merom CPU and GeForce 8400M GS graphics.
- 3DMark benchmark
When running PC Mark 2005, then the situation was similar, because the Asus U6S reached 5037 points. Other notebooks were not as good as the U6S. The U6S profited by its Intel Penryn CPU, but the other hardware components worked well too. For example, the notebook is equipped with 3 GB RAM (1 GB + 2 GB) and
these speeds up Windows Vista Business.
Asus chose a powerful hard disk too, because they installed the Segate Momentus ST9250827AS. The mass storage device has a disk space of 250 GB, and reached good values while testing. It obtained good data transfer rates and low access time compared to other hard disks with 5400 RPM.
The Asus U6S provides a powerful hardware package which speeds up applications especially office applications. Furthermore, the installed graphics has enough performance for 3D animation. This 12 inch notebook prevails itself compared to other laptops of this type.
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| Cinebench R10 | |||
| Settings | Value | ||
| Shading | 2361 Points | ||
| Rendering Multiple CPUs | 4837 Points | ||
| Rendering Single | 2620 Points | ||
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HD Tune: 250 GB - 5400 rpm Benchmark Transfer Rate Minimum: 31.9 MB/sec |
Emissions
Loudness
The Asus U6S is equipped with powerful hardware, but the developer neglected one important thing: cooling. The system fan is constantly spinning, either in office mode or even when running idle mode. This produces lots of hot air, and it does not matter which performance profile was chosen. Even when energy saving mode is turned on, then the fan produces loudness of 37.6 dB(A). The fan sounds like a sweeping noise. If someone is not very touchy, then this noise can be absorbed.
When running full load, then the fan spins faster and loudness increases. The maximum noise level was 42.4 dB(A). When running office application, then the notebook is quieter, but computationally intensive applications like 3D rendering boost its noise level. The hard disk makes clicking noise, and so it is healable too.
Loudness
| Idle |
   37.6 / 37.6 / 37.6 dBHDD |
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37.9 dBDVD |
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41.2 / dBLoad |
| 39.8 / 42.4 dB |
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| 30 dB | silent 40 dB | audible 50 dB | loud Key: min: , med: , max: (15 cm distance) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Temperature
The temperature of the Asus U6S case was still okay. The maximum temperature at the upper side was measured with 33.2°C, and at the lower side we gauged 36.1°C. These values are good, and enable mobile usage of this notebook. Maybe the fan speeds could be reduced by installing a bios update. Probably this will happen.
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| Maximum: 33.2 °C Average: 28.8 °C | Maximum: 36.1 °C Average: 33.6 °C |
Speakers
The Asus U6S is equipped with a single speaker at the front side of the case. The maximum volume of the laptop is acceptable. The sound quality of the speaker is only average. The speaker does not reproduce lots of bass, but it sounds clean. The sound is suitable for low volume music playback only. If you have more requirements, then you have to use headphones. We did not recognize any noticeable problems when listening to music with headphones.
- Readers Test (2400 mAh)
- Classic Test (2400 mAh)
- Readers Test (4800 mAh)
- Classic Test (4800 mAh)
Battery life
The Asus U6S is equipped with two different batteries. One little one, which fits perfectly to the notebook and is covered in leather, and a bigger one, which juts out of the backside of the case, and weights 150 grams additionally.
The smaller battery provides a capacity of 2.400 mAh (26.6 Wh) and the two-lined lithium ion battery achieves 4.800 mAh(53.3 Wh) and weights 300 grams. The battery runtime of the 2.400 mAh battery was not very good. We performed a BatteryEater reader test, and it reached only 87 minutes. When running full load, then the runtime was 53 minutes (BatteryEater Classic). We performed some practical tests as well, and the runtime was 78 minutes when using WLAN (energy saving profile, medium brightness). The runtime was 62 minutes while watching a DVD (profile: entertainment, WLAN off, maximum brightness).
The bigger battery works much better. The maximum battery runtime is 192 minutes, and the minimum battery runtime is 80 minutes. When surfing through the internet with activated WLAN, we reached a battery runtime of 176 minutes. If you recharge both batteries and replace them while using, then the overall battery runtime increases. The user can decide between weight or battery runtime of the notebook.
- 2400 mAh battery
- 4800 mAh battery
The power consumption of the U6S is higher than of other sub notebooks, because it is equipped with high performance hardware. We measured a maximum power consumption of 36 watts in idle mode, even when all energy saving options are activated. The power consumption in standby mode was surprisingly low. We measured only 21 watts. Even when we switched the notebook off, its power consumption was still 21 watts. The power pack still needs energy, even when no power consumer is connected. This is bad, because the power consumption of those notebooks is low, and such a power pack worsens it.
Current consumption
| Idle | 36 / 39 / 43 Watt |
| Load |
55 / 60 Watt |
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Key: min: , med: , max: | |
Battery runtime
| Idle (without WLAN, min brightness) | 1h 27min |
| Surfing with WLAN | 1h 18min |
| DVD | 1h 2min |
| Load (maximum brightness) | 0h 53min |
Verdict
Many things of the Asus U6S are inspiring. Mainly the straightforward design and the high-grade materials like real leather. There are other reasons beside them, which make the U6S a good sub notebook. For example, it provides four USB 2.0 ports and a HDMI port, or the offered ways of communication like WLAN standard-n, gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth. It would be more luxurious when there would be a Firewire and docking port too.
The Asus U6S is equipped with a very bright LED display, besides comfortable input devices. The display surface is reflecting. This causes that the notebook is not suited well for outdoor usage, especially when it is very bright outside.
The performance of the notebook is very good, because it is equipped with a Core 2 Duo Penryn CPU, and Nvidia GeForce 9300M G graphics with 256 MB video RAM. Furthermore, it gets supported by 3 GB RAM and a fast and powerful 250 GB hard disk.
The noise emissions of the notebook are not as good as the rest. Especially, the system fan is running every time and is audible, even when using applications which do not need much performance. The temperatures of the case are good.
The battery runtime of the notebook was not very good. We could not use the notebook very long without plugging to power, either when using the 2.400 mAh battery or when using the bigger battery. Every user can decide which one he wants to use, and even replacing them is possible.
- Asus U6SG-2P010E
