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Asus Lamborghini VX6 (Updated - Optimus)
Rohan Naravane, Sep 10, 2010 1008 hrs ISTThis sportscar-stickered device has more muscle than typical Netbooks and features like NVIDIA Optimus and USB 3.0
Eye-catching design, good 1080p HD video playback, comfortable keyboard, NVIDIA Optimus auto graphics switching, two USB 3.0 ports, good build quality
Sticky Touch-pad area, average video playback battery life, high price
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Real World Performance:
Although the retail unit will ship with 2GB RAM, our test VX6 came with only 1GB RAM pre-installed. As a result, despite having a dual-core 1.8 GHz Intel Atom processor, we felt that the unit was slacking in swiftness, especially while multi-tasking with a couple of applications. However, singular tasks were accomplished just fine. We can hope that the retail unit will not face the lag that we faced. For HD video playback, we installed the K-lite video codec pack before-hand, to ensure that the decoding work gets offloaded to the NVIDIA graphics chip. As expected, almost all the 1080p HD videos we threw at it were played back effortlessly.
Another thing; while our unit came with a 250GB hard drive, the retail unit is confirmed to have a 320GB one.
We'd tested Asus's first Optimus-enabled N61Jv laptop a while back and were excited when we saw two display adapters (Intel GMA 3150 and NVIDIA ION) in the device manager on the VX6. Our initial conclusion was incorrect when we stated that the VX6 does not have Optimus tech. We weren't able to conclude since we didn't have any resource which allowed us to confirm that the machine is actually switching graphics automatically. Neither was there any Optimus branding on the VX6 itself. On asking ASUS initially, we were told that this model didn't have it and we took their word for it. A few days later though, they got back to us and clarified that this model does indeed have NVIDIA's automatic graphics switching technology. They also sent us a monitoring tool which let us know which GPU was active at which instance.
So, now with this tool we tried using this machine in a variety of scenario where we switched from graphically non-intensive tasks to heavy ones like playing 1080p HD videos. The tool correctly depicted how the NVIDIA GPU kicked on and off according to the need. The impact of this technology will be seen in the battery performance, so read on below to see how it did.
With respect to gaming, the Street Fighter IV benchmark played back a little laggy 23 FPS with maxed out settings. So forget playing today's heavy-duty PC gaming on this thing. But it wouldn't be so bad to run a NFS Most Wanted or any other game from that era.
Battery Life:
The VX6 came with a 56 Whr (5200 mAh) battery pack. We let it run a 720p video in loop with full brightness and sound. Here, the NVIDIA ION graphics chip was doing the grunt work, so presumably it would drain more battery than its lower power-sipping Intel graphics counterpart. It drained from a hundred to zero in just an hour and a half. This kind of up-time is what we typically get from a 15-inch desktop replacement laptop.
But for a machine that boasts Netbook-like components, the performance is definitely not satisfying. It's 12-inch brother, the 1201NL, ran for a good three and a half hours on the same video drain test. We can presume the low scores are due to the dual-core Atom D525 processor on the VX6; which is actually meant to be used on Net-tops and thus wouldn't be as power-efficient as its single-core N-series siblings (like the single-core Atom N270 on the Eee PC 1201NL). Since we're drawing comparisons, it is also fair to point out that the 1201NL had a slightly higher-rating 63 Whr battery.
But in doing non graphics-intensive tasks, like typing a word document in an online office suite and general surfing over Wi-fi, it delivered better figures. Here, the VX6 roughly lasted for a little over the four hour mark. Here, the up-time is similar to the Eee PC 1201NL when we ran it through the same test. Note: the brightness was kept at 90 percent (the screen ain't blindingly bright at that setting, so we had to) and the battery profile was kept at 'Auto' mode. So, you could get a higher life if you are not using Wi-fi, and put it on 'Power saver' mode.
Thus we can infer that the VX6 will gulp on battery power when intensive apps are running, but give a netbook-grade run-time when you're doing simple tasks. This is exactly what NVIDIA's Optimus technology was supposed to deliver; and it did!
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