3. Asus F6V

The breathless press release that accompanied the launch of Asus' F6V 13'' promises that these computers will refresh the senses--and in particular, that your sense of smell will be charmed by the perfumed coating they have been sprayed with.  According to the manufacturer, you can "delight your senses with the elegantly designed and refreshing scent."  The least you can say is that it's an interesting sales pitch.

Handling & Connectivity
The F6V's case is a mixture of matte and glossy plastics, with the former comprising the keyboard and the frame around the screen, with the rest of the laptop behind the screen in the latter.

At first glance, the keyboard doesn't seem very solid: the keys are a dull grey and clearly made from a lightweight plastic.

When you get down to using them, however, they're a little better than might be expected from their appearance, although the whole keyboard does tend to sag a little in the middle if you press too hard.

A thin band of plastic with a metallic finish runs around the decently-sized trackpad, but the two buttons either side are a little hard to press in, perhaps because of the fingerprint reader that's squashed in between them.

On the model we tested, the smell wasn't particularly strong.  We only noticed a very light trace of scent when we brushed our nose right up against the keyboard.

Although it's possible that all of the perfume had worn off by the time the F6Ve reached our lab, we still can't really take this feature seriously as an argument in favor of this laptop over any other.

When it's idle, the F6Ve is very quiet indeed, but as soon as you try and put it to work--especially if you try and have it do something that demands a lot of resources, like a launching an application or installing some software from a DVD--noise levels climb very rapidly.  In fact, the DVD drive is noticeably noisy even at the best of times.

The webcam is sharp and responsive, but putting the microphone below the keyboard on the right hand side means that your sound recordings will be blighted by the sound of clicking keys.

Along the sides, there are three USB ports and one e-SATA, VGA and HDMI outputs, an Express Card 34 slot, a memory card reader, two mini-jack ports (one of which is optical) and an Ethernet port.  The only thing you could really say is missing is a FireWire port.

HDMI output and the first two USB ports	Fingerprint reader
Mini-jack in and out and the third USB	Memory card reader, Express Card 34 slot and e-SATA output

Processing Power
In general, the F6V is an average performer.  Compared to our reference model, the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Xi3650, this laptop was 22% slower when attempting our standard set of tests designed to replicate the average home user (photo retouching, watching a film and so on).

Without any graphics acceleration, the load on the CPU fluctuates between 50% and 75% when playing a Blu-ray video file, pulling 44 Watts of power and producing a lot of background noise. Turning on the hardware acceleration means the fan is no longer needed as the CPU loads falls right down to 5% and the laptop draws only 33 W--impressive!

Gaming
The advantage of a 13'' model is not just the size of the screen, but the improved resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, which is decent enough without presenting any problems for most graphics cards.

This is definitely a machine that you can use for gaming, and it's a much more enjoyable experience than on the Dell XPS 13.  The ATI graphics card allows you to play Crysis in its native resolution in either low or normal quality, and even to turn antialiasing up to 2x if you're prepared to accept a small loss of speed.  The same is true of Word in Conflict and Race Driver Grid.

The only problem is that performing such demanding tasks does lead the fan to turn very loudly, which can be distracting during gameplay.

Sound
The audio quality might have been acceptable if the outputs had been well configured.  Instead, though, the speakers are saturated even at a very low volume, and sound like they won't last the course.  It's a shame, as the audio out includes a good-qualty S/PDIF link.

Portability & Battery Life
Two hours of battery life for just under 4.4 pounds on the scales is what you get with the F6V, and we're happier with the latter statistic than we are with the former.  Two hours is very short for a 13'' laptop, especially when competitors like the Dell XPS 13 and the Samsung X360 reach three hours and four hours fifteen minutes respectively.

Forget about the 'scented computer'--it's marketing guff with no real value. Taking the rest of this laptop, it's pretty average, with good gaming performance compensating for the short two-hour battery life. The only real thing to look out for is the noise it makes, which is very high when the machine is working hard.