Review: Combining decent processing power with good battery life, the Asus UL80Vt-A1 is a flexible midrange notebook that has both the capability of running performance applications and games when battery life isn't critical and switching to a power-sipping mode when battery life is important. Similar to the Macbook Pros, its main feature is that it has both a Nvidia G210M and Integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics adapter, allowing you to maximize performance or battery life when you need it. Unlike the Macbook Pro, where a reboot is required between switching graphics adapters, the UL80Vt-A1 is capable of switching within the operating system itself. The Asus UL80Vt-A1 is equipped with an Ultra Low Voltage Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor, which is not particularly known for performance, but an interesting feature is that the processor can be set to "Turbo Mode", where the motherboard overclocks the processor automatically when desired to make up for the processor deficiency. It actually raises the Intel SU7300's stock clock speed of 1.3GHz to 1.73GHz, a near 33% performance boost!
This notebook is also very sleek and well designed. It weighs in at 4.8 pounds, which is a tad bit heavier than a 14” thin-and-light notebook and heavier than the Dell Studio 14z. Nevertheless, because of this notebook’s great performance combined with its reasonable pricing, it remains an excellent choice. While the Macbook Pro may have a better processor, the UL80Vt is significantly less expensive, coming in well under the $1,000 price range. Therefore, the Asus UL80Vt-A1 is a hard laptop to beat in the midrange segment.
