Product Summary
9
out of 10View score
The bad: Relative lack of power; limited number of IO ports.
The bottom line: The S6F is an almost-perfect combination of style and substance. Its distinctive leather finish, small form factor and long battery life make it a joy to take on the road, and its powerful components allow it to keep up with the fastest of PCs. It's also tremendous value for money.
Read full review of the Asus S6F »
Average User Rating
from 6 users
7.2
out of 10CNET Asia Review
It's been a long time coming, but the world of
laptops is about to get a major shake-up thanks to arrival of the Asus
S6 series. Not only do these laptops feature the latest Centrino Duo
components, but also they're the first to feature permanent real
leather panels.
The Asus S6F isn't available yet at time of
publication, but Asus assures us you'll be able to buy it some time in
May. However, it's time to harden your wallet as the retail price of S$3,888 (US$2,807.63)
isn't cheap.
Design
The S6F is obviously the product of painstaking design. It would have
been easy for Asus to ruin the delicious prospect of a leather-clad
laptop by delivering a shoddy final product, but during our time with
it we found it to be as sturdy and as solidly built as the rest of the
Asus laptop range.
![]() Leather lovers have a new toy. | |
The gunmetal-grey keyboard and matching mouse touchpad are also attractive and make a pleasant change to the plethora of matte-black input devices that litter the laptop market. The buttons for the mouse are vaguely reminiscent of those found on the Apple Mighty Mouse in that there's no seam between the left and right buttons, which adds an air of style.
The only negative point we could find was that the high-yield battery on our review sample juts noticeably from the back of the unit. This can be replaced with a smaller battery that fits flush with the chassis. To the left side of the laptop there's a VGA port and a hardwired switch for enabling or disabling the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios. There are also modem, LAN, two well-spaced USB ports and a mic jack. These are hidden behind a magnetically sealed flap, which is a far better solution than untethered flaps that can get lost and leave ports exposed to dust and foreign objects.
There's an SP/DIF headphone socket just outside the port, and on the right of the laptop an additional USB port, a DVD-rewriter drive, an ExpressCard slot and a multiformat card reader. All things considered, you'll be hard pressed to find a better-looking, more thoughtfully designed laptop.
Features
In light of its ultra-modern exterior, we'd have probably forgiven Asus for shipping the S6F with older components. We'll give the company full credit, then, for cramming the laptop with the latest Centrino Duo technology. It uses the Intel 945GM chipset and an Intel Centrino Duo L2400 dual-core CPU running at 1.66GHz.
Our review sample shipped with 1.5GB of fast DDR2 memory, but final retail models will use 1GB. All laptops in the S6 range use the same 11.1-inch TFT SXGA screen, which runs at a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels, and has Asus' glossy Colour-Shine coating. This can be a little too reflective if used in direct sun or office light, and its small size means it can be difficult to read, but we found it fine provided you enable Large fonts mode in Windows XP's display settings.
Rate It Now
User Reviews
Piece of Garbage
Jul 26, 2007Rating: 2 out of 10 (Terrible)
Pros: Compact, Sleek, Looks Nice
Cons: Doesn't work, Service is Useless
Opinion:
Purchased on June 8, 2007. It's been in for service twice (in Canada) and it still doesn't work. I plan to trash it and purchase a new one
Clearly this machine has grown up from the spec in this review
Jul 22, 2007Rating: 10 out of 10 (Perfect)
Pros: Looks, Speed, Compact form factor, Spec
Cons: None that I can see so far
Opinion:
Well the good news is that even with 7% GST and a significantly higher spec than that stated in this review, the machine is cheaper than the price stated here also.
The new S6 is standard with 1.5MB ram, a L7200 1.33 Mhz Core Duo 2 processor, crystal clear 11 inch display, whopping 160GB HDD, DVD Super Multi Layer DVD, Vista Business and all this wrapped up in a fancy piece of cow hide.
Having looked at the Fujitsu P7230 and the Sony TX57, this machine kills them both in spec. Processor alone why would go go solo when you can go the latest core duo L7200.
If you had asked me 3 years ago would I contemplate having either (a) and Asus notebook or (b) a leather clad notebook, I would have laughed.
I have to say congratulations Asus, you have lifted the bar for ALL the others to follow. You have managed to minaturise ... Read more
Compact, Beautiful, Powerful
Dec 25, 2006Rating: 9 out of 10 (Spectacular)
Pros: Compact, nice screen, Core Duo, in-built DVD drive, powerful, beautiful
Cons: Startup could be a little faster, could do with a power management software
Opinion:
Got it for my wife a couple of weeks ago. Previously, she was using a Fujitsu P2010 (10-inch screen). Thought this has an 11-inch screen, it's about the same size as the Fujitsu. However, it's much faster. The build quality is top-notch. The matching mouse, handbag carrier and etc all show great attention to detail from the manufacturer. Did I mention that it's darn gorgeous! My wife is extremely happy with the purchase. The 2nd battery doesn't do much to her, but I feel that it does come in handy.
On the other hand, unlike the ACER Travelmate (12-inch) that I have, I couldn't find any handy power-management software out of the box. Such a software, which allows for easy tweaking for processor speed (even while running on battery), would have been wonderful. Though running of regular productivity programs seems speedy, booting up the machine seems a bit slow.
Overall, a compact, beautiful, yet powerful laptop. If your ... Read more
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