Hasta La Gadget!

Back in May, when we first got hands-on with ASUS’ UX21 and UX31 laptops, it was to be one of our first encounters with the kind of ultrathin PC that Intel’s now marketing as Ultrabooks. Since then, a lot’s happened — we’ve seen a handful of similarly skinny notebooks, with Acer’s Aspire S3 beating them all to market. Now, more or less on schedule, ASUS is ready to follow suit. The company just announced that its line of Ultrabooks — make that Zenbooks! — will go on sale in the US tomorrow, October 12, starting at $999 for the 11.6-inch UX21 and $1,099 for the 13.3-inch UX31. That’s a hundred bucks more than the S3, but then again, that guy has an HDD combined with a small amount of flash storage.

If you’ll recall, they weigh in at 2.4 pounds and 2.9 pounds, respectively, and thanks to those aluminum alloy bodies, glass trackpads and all-metal keyboards, they just happen to be two of the finest-looking Ultrabooks we’ve seen to date. Other specs include 4GB of RAM, USB 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0, a SATA III SSD (starting at 128GB), stereo speakers with Bang and Olufsen’s ICEpower technology, ultra low voltage Core i5 and i7 processors and a two-second resume time — the same claim Acer’s making with its Aspire S3. While the 11-incher has 1366 x 768 resolution, the 13-inch model steps up to 1600 x 900. And when it comes to battery life, the UX21’s rated for five hours of runtime (or seven days), while the UX31 lasts a longer seven hours (or ten days) on a charge. Oh, and they come with a free sleeve. Not too shabby.

All told, there will be two UX21 configurations and three UX31 models, with the highest-end UX31 fetching $1,449 and packing 256GB of solid-state storage. You heard the company — these are landing tomorrow — but until then feel free to revisit our hands-on for your requisite close-up shots and video.