ASUS USA may have beaten them to it when it comes to getting a NVIDIA Optimus notebook on the market,with the U30jc, but ASUS‘ UK arm has a 16-inch machine of their own that takes advantage of the automatic graphics switching tech. The ASUS N61JV packs a 2.27GHz Core i5-430M CPU along with 4GB of DDR3 memory, but of course the interesting part is the dual-GPU thanks to both Intel GMA 4500MHD and NVIDIA GeForce GT 325M 1GB graphics.
There’s also a 500GB HDD, Blu-ray combo drive, WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Connectivity includes gigabit ethernet, a USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, eSATA, HDMI and VGA, along with audio in/out, ExpressCard and an 8-in-1 memory card reader. Since it’s not the smallest machine in the world, ASUS have found room to fit in a separate numeric keypad and Altec Lansing speakers along with the 1.3-megapixel webcam, though we’re a little disappointed that the screen resolution is a mere 1366 x 768.
Still, the most bizarre thing is that, while ASUS liberally talk throughout their press release about how much of a difference Optimus makes on battery life, they don’t actually say how long you can expect the 6-cell battery to last. The ASUS N61JV is on sale in the UK now, priced at £949 inc. VAT ($1,466).