Labs

The Asus U3S is an odd-looking laptop. It's clear that some effort has been made to make it stylish, but, with a leather wristrest, piano-black lid and magnesium-alloy housing, to our eyes it's trying too hard. This isn't helped by the bizarre arrangement of buttons below the screen: the power button is a silver indentation, which we initially mistook for part of the hinge, and to press it comfortably you need either a small finger or long nail.

We also found some usability problems with the Asus. The mouse buttons are joined to the touchpad via the top edge, so you have to bend them downwards much harder than most to click. Then there are the tinny speakers

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to contend with. But the worst problem of all is the fact that, despite being a solid 13.3in, 2.1kg notebook, the Asus has only an external USB optical drive.

It's a shame, since the base spec isn't bad at all: the 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500 is a powerful processor and, aided by 1.5GB of RAM, its benchmark score of 1.07 is decent. A 160GB hard disk means you'll not want for storage, and the 1,280 x 800 screen is one of the better ones of the group. You'll also find a WLAN module supporting draft-n, and the fingerprint reader goes well with the choice of Windows Vista Business.

There's a switch on the side to power down the GeForce 8400M G graphics (only enough for 8fps in our 3D tests), and the six-cell battery gave us a decent 3hrs 31mins under light use. There's also an HDMI port on the side in case you download any HD videos, although it's the only notebook of the group without gigabit Ethernet.

The U3S may not be the most expensive notebook here, but it's still disappointing when you consider that even the tiny Sony manages to cram an internal optical drive into its 1.2kg frame. Despite decent battery life and a few useful extra features such as built-in 3G - a superb inclusion - we simply can't recommend the Asus this month.