Asus U36JC-B1

Asus U36JC B1

The Asus U36JC ultraportable laptop ($1000) has lots of tangible benefits: good power from its second-generation Core i5 processor, lots of ports, and features like a quick start mode that lets you browse the Web before you boot into Windows. Where the U36JC falls down is in the intangibles: Utilities with cryptic explanations and a poorly designed touchpad. Ultraportable laptops are supposed to be thin and light and the U36JC certainly delivers on thin, at just .75 inches thick. It's a little more challenged on the light part: At 3.8 pounds, it's fairly heavy for an ultraportable. The U36JC is attractive, though, with a graphite black magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis. The 2.53 GHz Core i5 processor delivered a WorldBench score of 111 in our PCWorld Lab testing. That's a solid score for an ultraportable in this price range. And the laptop's switchable graphics with a NVIDIA GeForce 310M discrete graphics card produced impressive gaming scores for this category. The U36JC has lots of connection options, including one USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI connection and VGA port. Video looked great on the U36JC's 1366-by-768-pixel screen -- as long as I didn't have a bright light behind me.