Asus W7J

The moderately priced Asus W7J offers a powerful dual-core engine, discrete Nvidia graphics, and dual-layer DVD burning in a stylish, portable package. Unfortunately, you'll need to spend $1634 if you plan to do spend much time away from an outlet.

 

The W7J is encased in a smooth, black body with subtle silver highlights that accentuate the 12.4 x 8.9 x 1.1-inch frame. Weighing in at a light 4.2 pounds, the W7J won't bog you down on the daily commute. The notebook features a good-looking 13.3-inch widescreen with 1280 x 800 resolution. Asus Color Shine technology minimizes screen glare, which makes watching movies from a variety of angles enjoyable. The screen displays rich colors and doesn't suffer from heavy reflections.

 

Three nicely spaced USB ports are housed on the right, left, and back sides of the machine. This spacing prevents overcrowding when you have multiple gadgets plugged in at once. The W7J also features a PC card and ExpressCard slot, as well as a 4-in-1 memory card reader.

 

A full-sized keyboard offers good tactile feedback. Below it resides a touchpad that works adequately, although it doesn't feature a scrolling area. To the upper left of the keyboard is a Wi-Fi On/Off switch.

 

Just above the screen is the Asus Video Security webcam. The 1.3-megapixel webcam doesn't have the swivel feature as found on the Asus W5F, or the image editing package, but it does contain motion sensing technology that can send e-mail alerts when it detects movement. The motion sensing was so effective that the camera snapped a picture when we merely rocked back and forth in a chair. The webcam combines with the built-in microphone to make the W7J a solid video conferencing machine. The video we sent and received was a bit choppy, but on par with other notebook webcams.

 

The W7J scored a strong 264 in out MobileMark 2005 test, which is well above the average of notebooks in this class. Despite this strong showing, the 1.83-GHz Intel Core Duo T2400 chipset didn't multitask like a champ. When we watched a DVD while running a virus scan, we noticed a few audio skips, something we haven't encountered with other dual-core notebooks.

 

Powered by the Nvidia GeForce Go 7400 graphics card, the W7J delivered a score of 4,039 in 3DMark03, which is acceptable for notebooks in this class. F.E.A.R averaged 48 fps on the very low resolution of 640 x 480, but it choked when we ran at the game at maximum resolution of 1024 x 768, averaging an unplayable 5 fps.

 

Wireless strength remained fairly consistent with throughput, at 12 Mbps from 15 feet and 11.3 Mbps from 50 feet. Bluetooth is also included for connecting wirelessly.

 

The biggest disappointment is the W7J's battery life. The included six-cell battery managed a paltry 2 hours and 15 minutes—barely enough for one movie. Road warriors will want to plunk down the extra $135 for the nine-cell battery, which should provide around two more hours of power.

 

Asus continues to offer limited tech support, with 19 hours offered during weekdays and only 9.5 hours on weekends. If you're willing to live with that compromise, and fork over the cash for the bigger battery, the Asus W7J will satisfy.