Asus S6F-3037P Review by LAPTOP Magazine

There are notebooks you buy to get work done, and there are notebooks you buy to make other people jealous. The 3.4-pound Asus S6F-3037P falls squarely into the latter category, boasting jeweled hinges and a polished keyboard. You can even order the S6F series with genuine leather panels for the ultimate in ultraportable one-upmanship, and it delivers excellent performance and battery life to boot. If you're willing to put up with a small screen and a cramped keyboard, the S6F-3037P is worth the $2,199 splurge.

Our system didn't come with the hand-embossed leather panels, which, for those willing to fork over an extra $400, adorn the lid and area below the keyboard. However, this more affordable version screams exquisite craftsmanship in other ways, starting with the lid's two shiny, circular hinges, engraved with "Asus S6." On our unit, the gray area beneath the keyboard has a brushed-metal look. Unfortunately, while it has two touchpad button functions, they're not separated into buttons; this gives the system a chic, minimalist look, but we found it frustrating to use.

The glossy 1366 x 768-pixel LCD is ideal for watching DVDs, using the slim 4X Super-Multi DVD-RW drive. Asus' Color Shine and Splendid Video Intelligent technologies combine to offer superb contrast and excellent viewing angles (even from above). When working in Word or surfing the Web, however, users will likely want to zoom in to read text. A slim speaker bar beneath the display delivers about as much volume as a cheap alarm clock, so be sure to bring your headphones.

It took us a couple days to get accustomed to the cramped keyboard. All of the keys are smaller than what you'd find on a typical notebook, but we were able to type with pretty good accuracy after a while. What annoyed us most was the location of the Ctrl key, which is to the right of the Fn key on the bottom left of the layout. Since these two keys are usually reversed, you'll have to retrain yourself, especially if you do a lot of copying and pasting.

Despite its small size, the S6F-3037P proved to be quite the speedster in our tests. The 1.6-GHz Core Duo processor helped this ultraportable notch a very good MobileMark 2005 score of 241. Even better, you can keep on computing for 4 hours and 13 minutes while away from an outlet. The S6F-3037P lasted even longer with Asus' Power4 Gear+ power management software enabled—accomplished by pressing the little button above the keyboard marked with a lightning icon. In this mode, the system lasted 4 hours and 48 minutes, although the MobileMark score dipped to 196.

As one might expect, the S6F-3037P doesn't have much 3D muscle. Intel's 945GB integrated graphics mustered a paltry 1,411 in 3DMark03. On the other hand, the 1GB of included RAM should be enough to run Windows Vista's Aero interface. Wi-Fi performance results were only slightly below average for this class of notebook. A wireless on/off switch on the left side of the S6F-3037P helps save power when you're not surfing.

The S6F-3037P sports three USB 2.0 ports (two under a flip-down door on the left side of the chassis), FireWire, and VGA, in addition to the usual modem and Ethernet. We're not fans of including an ExpressCard slot to the exclusion of a PC Card slot, but at least there's an option to add an EV-DO or HSDPA modem. A 5-in-1 memory card slot makes it easy to transfer files between the relatively large 100GB hard drive and your camera or cell phone. You can also use the built-in Bluetooth 2.0 radio.

Asus includes a handful of its own utilities, plus copies of Cyberlink's PowerDirector 3.0 (video editing) and Medi@Show 2.0 (photo slideshow), Symantec Norton Internet Security 2005, and Nero Express. Unfortunately, tech support hours are limited, with 19 hours offered on weekdays and 9.5 hours on weekends.

Overall, the Asus S6F-3037P has plenty of style and substance, especially if you fork over the extra cash for the leather-clad model. As long as you don't mind zooming in the display and typing on a smaller-than-average keyboard, this ultraportable will make you happy—and everyone else around you green with envy.

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Asus S6F-3037P

Tiny machine impresses with its looks and speed but not its ergonomics.

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