ASUS has officially announced its first Ultrabooks. ASUS UX31 and UX21 are the names of the first two models in the Zenbook series. ASUS focus on ultrathin design, performance and nice functions like SSDs and Bluetooth 4.0.
ASUS UX21 is the entry model and like Apple’s MacBook Air family the minor has a 11.6″ display. With a profile of 3 to 17mm there is no doubt that UX21 qualifies as an ultrabook, and the 1.1 kg weight is also promising. The display has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels and with microHDMI and miniVGA outputs you can connect external monitors with ease.
Inside we find a Sandy Bridge processor in the form of Intel Core i5-2467M with a nominal clock frequency at 1.6 GHz and Turbo frequency at 2.1 GHz. Four GB RAM and 128GB SSD round off the package. The battery time is set to 5+ hours with 1 week standby.
ASUS UX31 has a 13.3″ panel and a surprisingly high resolution, 1600 x 900 pixels. As expected it weigh s bit more at 1.3 kg, but the profile is still thin and measures 3 to 18 millimeter.
ASUS has upgraded UX31 with a more powerful Core i7-2677M processor operating at 1.8 GHz, up to 2.9 GHz in Intel Turbo Boost. Also this one has 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD inside. Here, a larger battery will result in 7+ hours battery time and 2 week standby.
Other functionality shared by the two are 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, 0.3 megapixel web camera, USB 3.0 and stereo speakers from Bang & Olufsen.
ASUS is making a run for ultrabooks and the new Zenbook series. On paper things look very promising and we look forward to trying them out. Pre-orders start October 17th.
