Super sonic
Things are no less impressive in the sound department, thanks to an 11W amplifier and two speakers enclosed in an 80 cubic centimetre chamber. Sound processing is handled by Asus’ SonicMaster system, cooked up in partnership with those wacky Danes at Bang & Olufsen.
The B&O speakers sit inside the long aluminium grille in front of the screen
Whatever the technology, the results are very impressive. Even at maximum volume – and it’s quite some maximum – the sound is well balanced and punchy with a surprising amount of bass and stereo separation. Whether I was watching a BD of Terminator Salvation, playing Crysis or listening to Wagner, the N73 is the finest sounding laptop I have even encountered. And to make playing your movies and music a little easier, Asus has set a selection of backlit media control micro-switches into the left-hand side of the deck.
Where the overall feeling of quality takes a hit is with the keyboard. There’s a massive amount of flex especially around the centre keys. When I first stabbed at the H-key I thought some part of the internal structure was missing or I’d broken it.
The flat-top keys themselves are not particularly easy on the fingers either, nor is the keyboard back-lit and for this sort of money I’d expect it to light up like a Christmas tree. In short, if you regularly type a lot on your laptop keyboard or work in low-light you may want to look elsewhere. The multi-touch trackpad works just fine though.
Key concern
Asus’ instant-on Express Gate OS can be launched from the left hand power button but the Firefox-based web browser is a horrid little affair and there’s no Skype or Pidgin, so I’m really not sure how much use this is to man or beast.
Next page: Performance charts
COMMENTS
vertical pixels in short supply
What is it about vertical pixels? A few years ago 1024 was the norm for vertical pixels, then people went all 900 high and now we are supposed to wet ourselves because this has 1080? Why are screens not 2048 high by now?
This shift to wide-screen TV proportions has made a lot of software with its men us, button bars, navigation bars, drawing bars, status lines all very crowded. Lets put the controls down the left hand side now that we have wide screens, and give us some workable space back on the document/maths/canvas/feature area.
Impressive
I was reading that, wondering how far over 1700 quid this would be.
Pleasnt surprise it's under a grand.
Shame I still can't afford it though :-(
buglisting this idea
I've raised https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36400 to suggest relocating controls in LibreOffice
The important info.. Missed..
For me, it's how much bloatware it comes preinstalled with. Is it easy to remove? is it easy to find drivers if I wished to do a clean install? Does the bloatware break anything or cause performance issues?
Not impressed
I wonder how much Bandits & Outlaws stung Asus for use of their name (makes a change from overcharging customers directly). Reasonable audio reproduction on small speakers is pretty old tech now - just that so far laptops really haven't bothered.
Battery life looks a long way from exceptional.
Screen vertical resolution is marginally better than dire.
No mention of a Linux version.
