Sandy Bridge Asus U30S spotted in Europe

While Asus hasn’t done much updating to their ultraportable line of notebooks for a while, the U30S could mean new laptops are on the way. A couple of review units have found their ways into the hands of certain European websites, and Asus appears to have upgraded their U30 line of notebooks with the latest Intel processors and a dedicated NVIDIA GPU.

While it does sport a different design, the U30S appears to be a successor to the U36J that has been available for a while from Asus. The new U30S should come with a 13.3” display with a 1366x768 pixel resolution, an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5-2410M (2.3 GHz) processor, an NVIDIA 520M GPU, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM and Altec Lansing speakers. Unfortunately, the laptops don’t appear to come equipped with a USB 3.0 port; however, that could change before final production.

According to a review by netbooklive.net, the laptop performed quite nicely in the regular benchmark tests and managed to crank out more than 5 hours of battery life thanks to the Optimus support and an 8 cell battery. Sadly, the laptop apparently suffers from poor viewing angles on its display and weighs a bit heavy for a 13 inch laptop.

Although we’re still waiting on official word from Asus, we’re hoping the U30S opens the doors for more ultraportable Sandy Bridge laptops from the Taiwanese manufacturer. Unfortunately, the reviewed model seems destined for European markets alone and there is no word if the new U line of Asus notebooks will hit the US. However, the sub-1000 Euro price tag targeted by Asus could make the U30S a bargain buy for interested parties.

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