ASUS UL Series: Switchable Graphics CULV Notebooks

Today ASUS announced a new line of thin and light CULV notebooks that aim to combine all-day battery life, killer graphics, and ultra portability. The emerging CULV category has already produced several thin, low-cost systems that attract consumers by promising good performance at netbookish prices. Though overall performance varies system to system, we have been impressed by the performance of CULV notebooks with discrete graphics. So the UL Series’ switchable GraphiX Boost technology has us very intrigued. UL Series notebooks will come with both an integrated Intel graphics card and a discrete Nvidia GeForce 210M card with 512MB dedicated memory. Users will be able to switch between them depending on their needs — long battery life or maximum performance — while the system is running. The 1.3GHz dual-core processor combined with the ASUS Power4Gear software is said to deliver up to 12 hours of battery life. Users will be able to switch between power profiles at the touch of a button, making managing your consumption easy and quick. All this in a beautiful brushed aluminum chassis that’s less than an inch thick and weighs only 3 pounds. ASUS says that the UL Series will come in three sizes, but hasn’t mentioned specifics. Pricing and release date are also not yet available, but are coming “soon”.