Australian first review - ASUS U6 Bamboo (U6V-2P048G)

Pros: Stylish bamboo design, powerful components in a small package, HDMI and eSATA is a bonus, SHE/EPU technology, ExpressGate
Cons:  Poor viewing angles and average speaker quality
Contact: www.asus.com.au
Price: $3,499
Score: 4 out of 5

Covering the palm rest, the lid and even the touchpad and mouse buttons, the Moso bamboo layer looks chic. You can even feel the grain on the touchpad surface. It’s not the first notebook to try some funky new design theme, but it is unique and rather classy looking.

But enough about the bamboo! The Asus U6V is also a very powerful little nugget. A veritable mighty mouse, in fact. Despite its petite frame and 12.1in screen (1280x800) the U6V is the proud owner of an Intel Centrino 2, 45nm T9400 2.53GHz CPU with a 1066MHz FSB (front side bus) and a 6MB L2 cache, 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GS (256MB of dedicated video RAM), so it’s no push over.

Some other key selling points include what Asus has called its Super Hybrid Engine (SHE) and Energy Processing Unit (EPU), which are almost as gimmicky as they sound, but do actually serve a purpose. SHE is essentially just Asus’ age old Power4Gear software, which allows the user to adjust the system performance to their needs. The difference between the Performance mode and the Battery Saving mode isn’t just nominal changes to the screen brightness and max CPU level, but rather the software will also do things like switch to Windows Vista Basic mode, disengaging the GPU somewhat. It’s a simple move, but every bit counts.

The EPU on the other hand plays a more technical role, whereby it apparently detects the usage level and adjusts the performance output to meet those requirements. Where this comes in most handy is during idle periods, where system resources are no longer needed. Here the EPU can slow things down to save power and battery life.