Asus’ N61 range consists of multimedia machines featuring powerful components and the latest features, including Asus’ own SonicMaster technology standards.

This is also one of the first laptops we’ve seen to feature USB 3.0, the next generation of USB technology. The N61J is a powerful machine for the multimedia user, but there are a few issues here as well. One of the laptop’s key selling points is the aforementioned SonicMaster standards.

We found that while the stereo effect was impressive, sound wasn’t as good across the full audio spectrum, and tracks generally lacked bass and depth. Although better than most laptops, we still wouldn’t use this machine as a replacement for desktop speakers.

In our experience with the N61J, the technology worked as advertised. When running our gaming benchmarks, the discrete card kicked in without any effort on our part. Unfortunately, Optimus couldn’t elevate the N61J’s gaming performance beyond middling. The notebook’s GeForce GT 325M might be based on a new GPU architecture using a smaller 40nm process, but the mainstream card is still an amateur compared to the older GTX 260M in our zero-point notebook. Moderately demanding games like Far Cry 2 are playable, to be sure, but only when run at the notebook’s native 1366×768 resolution with quality set at medium, which yielded 36.75fps.

The N61J is more impressive at productivity chores. Its 2.26GHz Core i5-430M is part of Intel’s new Arrandale family of mobile processors. It’s built on the same 32nm process as Intel’s Clarkdale desktop procs, which include an integrated graphics chip in the CPU. There are numerous other improvements the Core i5 chips offer over the Core 2 Duo, with integrated memory controller, better power management, and HyperThreading among the most noteworthy. So, despite its 800MHz clock disadvantage, the Core i5-430M performed slightly better than our zero-point’s 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo Mobile T9900 CPU in all the content creation benchmarks that are multithread-friendly. Photoshop shows no such bias, leaving the older Core 2 Duo out front.