Stefan Mileschin

While the world waits for thinner, higher-resolution notebooks from Apple, ASUS delivered part of that with its new S-Series Ultrabooks revealed at Computex this year. Priced below $899 (basically covering the $699 - $849 range), the S-Series features an aluminum unibody construction, 21mm thickness, Ivy Bridge Core i3/5/7, and optional GeForce GT 630M. ASUS retains the integrated optical drive. The S-series will be available in both 14 and 15-inch versions, but limited to a display resolution of 1366 x 768. If you want a higher resolution, you'll have to look toward the more expensive Zenbook Prime.

At these price points solid state storage isn't exactly possible, but ASUS has outfitted these systems with a 24GB SSD cache in addition to the standard mechanical drive. Dimensions, additional specs and more shots can be found in the gallery below.

It is nice to see the Ultrabook trend having a positive impact on notebooks across many price points, although we do still need to see a serious revolution in PCs priced at or below $500.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5953/t...book-below-899