Asus launches feature packed 11.6-inch U24E notebook in Japan by VR-Zone.com

When it comes to notebooks, Japan seems to be getting all the cool models and now Asus has gone and launched a new 11.6-inch notebook in Japan and no, it's not another Ultrabook, as the U24E features a full-fat CPU, yet still manages to weigh in at 1.5kg. This is the reason why Ultrabooks are pointless, as it's obviously possible to create notebooks with standard notebook CPUs without making big, heavy 15-inch or larger behemoths.

The U24E sports a Core i5-2430M processor which is clocked at 2.4GHz, but will turbo all the way up to 3GHz. It also comes with 4GB of RAM as standard which is upgradeable to 8GB. Storage is a regular old hard drive, but Asus will offer sizes up to 750GB. There's of course no optical drive, as this is a rather small machine at 291x207x28mm (WxDxH) and it's 11.6-inch screen has typical notebook resolution of 1366x768 pixels which is powered by Intel's integrated HD 3000 graphics.



Other features include two USB 3.0 ports, a single USB 2.0 port, an HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet, a D-sub connector, a memory card reader, audio jacks, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0 + HS and of course a webcam. The 6-cell battery is rated at 6.8h and although this is where things aren't as good as some of the Ultrabooks, it's not significantly less when you compare, in fact Asus' on Zenbook UX21 has a comparatively small battery that won't give you much more usable battery life. The U24E is on sale in Japan now for 59,800 Yen (S$968/US$766) which seems quite reasonable for what you get. As to when the U24E will be available outside of Japan, is anyone's guess.