Asus dropped off an engineering sample of its new U3 notebook and our appetite was instantly whetted. A final specification couldn’t be confirmed but most of the interesting gadgets are physically part of the chassis, and thus should make the final model.

But first off are the ergonomics. We’re big fans of the 13.3in width – a great blend of portability and performance first seen on Sony’s excellent VAIO SZ series. It’s available in white or black and both sport leather palm rests. The glossy 1280 x 800 screen is crisp and sharp and great for office work, and we were very impressed with its vibrant colours and lack of ghosting when watching movies. Even the speakers are good (for a notebook): getting quite loud and offering a good tonal range, albeit with little bass. The keyboard is very crisp and comfortable to use and the trackpad is fine.

Running our benchmarks gave a reasonable score of 0.84, but this will probably improve on the full retail sample. We expect it to be fairly powerful for a portable notebook, though.

In another move similar to Sony, Asus offers dual graphics: Intel’s GMA X3100 for battery life and Nvidia’s GO 8400M for 3D, selectable via a switch at the side. Our review unit refused to play games unfortunately, but we know the 8400M chipset is weak, with Dell’s similarly-specified 1420 (page 32) scoring just 15fps in our low-settings Call of Duty 2 test. The Intel graphics lasted a respectable 3hrs in our light-use test and 1hr 19mins under intensive use. The ‘battery-hogging’ Nvidia chipset saw 2hrs and 1hr respectively but, again, a final unit could differ considerably.

But why all the fuss? Well, we were impressed by the HDMI port joining the VGA port in the chassis. But it’s the first laptop we’ve seen with GPS antenna and eSATA port. The same goes for a DC power out port – possibly for external speakers. Asus assures us that the integrated 3G card will work from launch, though a network partner hasn’t been finalised yet. Other features include an ExpressCard/54 slot, SD/MMC/MS/xD card reader, fingerprint reader with TPM module, three USB ports, Mini FireWire and Gigabit Ethernet. Oh, and 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. Note, though, there’s no optical drive. Our office is split as to whether it needs one, but Sony and Toshiba’s ultraportables have them, so there’s little excuse to omit one.

We didn’t like the high-pitched fan noise which runs under minimal load: hopefully this won’t appear in the final unit. All in all, it’s potentially great. It might not sport the sophisticated looks and build of Sony’s SZ series, but it packs in some very attractive, cutting edge features and should cost appreciably less.