Adding to Asus’ comprehensive range of high-end laptops, the U53Jc (£899 inc. VAT) is a powerhouse portable with a twist.

Finished with a bamboo exterior, it is one of the most uniquely designed machines you can buy, but proves to be far more than just a pretty face.

Chosen for its environmental credentials, the use of bamboo on the lid and palm rest is notable for the strength and organic look that it lends this laptop. With a finish resembling mahogany, it creates a luxurious style of its own – albeit one that is likely to divide opinion.

The remainder of the chassis’ interior is finished in brushed aluminium, contrasting nicely with the bamboo veneer. As such, the black-plastic keyboard looks a little out of place, but it is a pleasure to type on, with its spacious design and firm keys responding well at all times.

Built around a 15.6-inch screen, this is one of the larger laptops in this group test and so is better suited to home use than travel. At 2.8kg, you can certainly carry it on shorter journeys, however, and the 271-minute battery life is a capable enough result for a laptop of this size.

Thanks to its larger dimensions, storage is comprehensive, with two hard drives paired up for a staggering 640GB of storage space. As with all the laptops here, cutting-edge wireless and fixed network connectivity is also in place, courtesy of 802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet.

Cutting-edge components

Powered by a processor from Intel’s Core i5 range, the Asus delivers fantastic performance. While slightly bettered by the Toshiba Satellite R630-141, software loads and runs impressively quickly. Graphics are slightly less capable, but there is still more than enough power for watching high-definition (HD) movies and editing your photos and videos.

The HP Envy 14 more than doubles the performance on offer here, however, so bear this in mind if you’re a serious gamer. That’s not to say the Asus is not a good choice for home entertainment, as the bright 15.6-inch screen proves sharp and vibrant. With its deep black levels providing a striking level of contrast, widescreen movies in particular look great.

One area that this laptop falls short of the others in this group is the software included as standard. There is no office or multimedia software and internet security is limited to a 60-day trial version; so factor the software you need into your budget. While you’ll either love or hate the bamboo finish of the U53Jc, the power and components it delivers ensures this laptop provides great value for money. Only the limited software package lets it down, but this is still a unique and highly capable home machine.

Related Links

• TechRadar’s Review Guarantee
• Read more laptop and netbook reviews
• Subscribe to What Laptop magazine

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds

The Boo Box is a $20 bamboo frame for photos you’ve shared with the popular Instagram social network.

View full post on Macworld

Asus released its first bamboo laptop featuring a tough wood-based chassis back in 2008, and now it has given us a peek at its latest plant-based portable, the Asus U53F Bamboo.

The chassis is immediately striking with the entire lid and palmrest coated in bamboo. Not only does it look great with a natural, grainy appearance, but it’s also pleasingly firm to protect the display. The chassis shows no flex at all under pressure and the wood covering reduces plastics usage by 20 per cent.

A weight approaching 3kg limits mobility, but the surprisingly thin chassis can be fitted into a briefcase if required.

The bamboo design even stretches to the touchpad, with the surface of the pad and the mouse buttons given the same textured finish. The pad is smooth, responsive and wide, and usability is further enhanced by an excellent isolation style keyboard with the keys pushed up through individual holes in the chassis.

The gaps between keys mean it’s difficult to hit the wrong key by mistake, and we managed some impressive speeds when touch-typing. The separate numeric keypad is a little small, however – we would have preferred a keyboard that stretched the entire length of the chassis to give these keys some extra width.

The bright and colourful 15.6-inch widescreen display is a pleasure to watch movies on. This pre-production model sadly doesn’t have a Full HD display to take full advantage of the built-in Blu-ray drive, but hopefully the final product will.

The screen is somewhat reflective thanks to the glossy Super-TFT coating, but it’s not as noticeable at top brightness levels.

Core power

Our pre-production model came fitted with an Intel Core i5 520M processor, which provides more than enough power to comfortably multi-task with a number of resource-intensive applications. The final product will apparently offer a choice of Core i3, Core i5 or Core i7 CPUs, so performance should be assured.

Unfortunately, there’s no dedicated graphics, just an integrated Intel GPU, but this may change in the final release.

Other features are standard for a machine like this, with VGA and HDMI connections for outputting to an external display, three USB ports for adding peripherals, and a memory card reader for backing up the 500GB hard drive.

Users can also boot up to a basic ExpressGate OS to browse the web or their photo library, which prolongs battery life.

We’re looking forward to seeing the full release of the Asus U53F Bamboo, as this pre-production model is a slickly designed and solidly built home laptop.

Related Links

• TechRadar Reviews Guarantee
• Read more laptop reviews

View full post on TechRadar: All PC & Mac feeds