ASUS U33Jc 13.3-inch Bamboo Notebook Hands-on

ASUS just finished up with its press conference today in Taipei which launched a range of new notebooks from 13.3-inch all the way up to the monster 18.4-inch NX90JQ desktop replacement model that we will go hands-on with after this one.



The ASUS U33Jc was first shown during CES, but today we get to see the final shipping version that will go on sale in Taiwan and presumably around the world in the middle of next month. In Taiwan it has a street price that works out to be 1300 USD, it may end up being slightly cheaper in the US. Watch the video just above and then read on.

This 13.3-inch notebook weighs in at 1.8KG and comes with an impressive 8 cell battery that ASUS claims can provide up to 11 hours of on the go power, of course in the best case scenario. We checked Windows batter life and it was stating around 9 hours left with about 90% charge - not bad at all. What is interesting is that this model doesn't include any optical drive, so it looks like it will be suited for the folks out there who download movies rather than watch them on DVD or Blu-ray.

This is one of the first notebooks we have seen that includes USB 3.0 and that's another reason the asking price is pretty high. There is a single USB 3.0 for fast transfers between your devices and the rest are USB 2.0. It comes with 2GB f DDR3 memory, for the price we would have rather seen 4GB included for smoother operation. There is also a 500GB 7,200 RPM drive included and it's all powered by the new Intel Core i5-450M processor.

Oh, but wait, we missed out one of the major selling points. The front wrist rest area is made totally out of bamboo and the back area behind the LCD is also made out of bamboo. Along with its sexy chicklet keyboard, it's a pretty nice looking notebook with good build quality.