The Asus N90SV-A2 desktop replacement laptop is roughly the size of two laptops 15 inches turned vertically and placed side by side. Movies and great games on the large (18.4 inch diagonal), bright, HD full resolution (1920 by 1080) screen. (Asus recently released a more game-focused laptop of similar size, the Asus W90VP.)
Some of the bulk results from dubious design choices. For example, the bezel on the sides of the screen is an inch thick, and a lot of unused space around the keyboard.
"touch buttons" left of the keyboard provide one-click control over such functions as the launch of ExpressGate software from the laptop, cycling between display profiles, locking the touchpad, and cycling between energy profiles. But the keys are rather small compared to the space they occupy, because of the large volume wheel located directly below them. The instant keys glow with a bright blue backlighting that seems impossible to extinguish and can be very distracting during movie viewing, unless you plan ahead and have a washcloth handy.
The N90SV-A2 is comfortable to work. The full-size keyboard has plenty of key travel and a nice clicky feel. Asus even includes a full-size number pad close, the more ExtraWide Backspace, Enter, Shift, Ctrl keys and everyone loves, and even dedicated arrow keys. The trackpad on the other hand, seemed to have trouble detecting movement sometimes even with his elbow sensitivity. The single chrome bar button offers no clear distinction between left and right mouse, leading to occasional misclicks.
Asus provides a multi-card slot on the left (near the Blu-ray Disc), and a right to express card slot, two headphone jacks, a microphone jack and two USB ports. On the back, you get two USB ports, HDMI, VGA, power, and gigabit ethernet; 802.11n Wi-Fi is integrated. The Altec Lansing speakers are located on the front edge upward slope of the laptop, so they point down at an angle to your table. Although they sound better than the speakers on most smaller notebooks, speakers on other large desktop replacement models (like the Sony VAIO VGN-AW230J / H) are even better.
In the configuration we tested at approximately $ 1800 price (as of July 15, 2009), the N90SV-A2 packs a 2.66GHz Intel T9550 Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB DDR2 -800 RAM, a Blu-ray drive, a graphics chip GeForce 130M GT set with 1GB of RAM (essentially the same as the GeForce 9600M GT), and 1TB of storage on two 500GB drives (which were curiously divided into four 250GB partitions). Although the specifications look pretty good for the price, graphics seemed a little power for a large, heavy entertainment notebook. At its native resolution of 1920 by 1080 I had to disable antialiasing to run Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare at a good pace, for example, and I had to turn some texture settings in Fallout 3.
Perhaps because of its slow SIS chipset and 800MHz (versus 1066) RAM, the N90SV-A2 scored a 86 in WorldBench, one of the lowest scores among recent laptops desktop replacement. The game performance was good at lower resolutions, but Enemy Territory: Quake Wars ran at only 37 frames per second at 1680 by 1050 resolution, and Unreal Tournament III at only 39 fps. The aforementioned Asus W90VP shot in the rate of 88 fps and 61 fps, frame respectively, on the same two games. The N90SV-A2 lasted just over 2 hours in our battery test, but that time shortens if you play demanding games or watch Blu-ray movies.
Speaking of Blu-ray discs, our test system played them wonderfully. Nevertheless, the quality of the laptop screen was average: Blacks are not as dark as we'd like, giving the poor contrast; and (as often happens on the laptop screens of this size) brightness was not uniform -. bottom of the screen always seemed more faded than the top
The N90SV-A2 has an attractive price, but I 'd rather play faster the chip, the faster RAM and a GPU more faster than a lot of hard drive space. The screen is large size, but not great in color or contrast. And the overall design of the notebook is uninspired, with a good amount of wasted space and an uncertain touchpad.
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