Asus has been a bit slow to get on the CULV bandwagon, but its UX30
13-incher is a very impressive piece of kit, and we believe it's worth
the wait.
It's somewhere halfway between MSI's X340 and Acer's Timeline 3810T,
and it's a beauty. It's by no means cheap, and we were expecting it to
retail at about €800 in Europe. However, an eagle eyed reader has
spotted it listed with a Taiwanese retailer, and it's apparently
already available at €683. This is actually pretty good value for
money, as you get a SU3500 CPU, 3 gigs of memory and 500GB of storage.
Sadly, we're still expecting it to end up quite a bit pricier in Europe
and the States.
In case price is the issue, you can opt for the 12-inch U20, which is
also available in Taiwan, but at a more recession friendly €535. Sadly,
it ships with a Celeron 723 and weighs a rather uncomfortable 1.78kg.
It's main selling points are 8 hours of battery life, advertised
battery life that is, and an optical drive, which is quite an odd
feature in this product class.
We're not sure about EU and US availability dates or prices and we can only hope we'll see similar prices once they show up.
You can check out the listings
here and
here.