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Considering the quality and power of components beneath the hoo,d we expected the NX90JQ to be exceptionally powerful, but it didn't quite match our expectations.
Don't get us wrong. The quad-core Intel 1.73GHz Core i7-740QM, which overclocks itself automatically to 2.93GHz thanks to an Intel's Turbo Boost technology, is more than capable of running pretty much any commercially available program as smoothly as you'd like – thanks in part to the 6GB of memory on board. However, the laptop is outperformed by the Sony VAIO-VPCZ12V9E/X and also Asus' own G73JH.
We don't know about you, but we'd expect the best power on the market for this price, regardless of if we were ever going to need or even use it, and the Asus NX90JQ doesn't deliver.
The same can be said for graphical performance. The NX90JQ features a Nvidia GeForce GT 335M graphics card with 1GB of dedicated video memory, and again benchmark results were disappointing – and the MSI GX740 provides significantly more graphical performance at a fraction of the price.
If you want to casually edit high-definition film and play the latest games without too many issues, the power is fine, but for the money we still expect more.
The NX90JQ boasts two 640GB hard drives offering acres of storage for your multimedia files and folders, so those with hundreds of movies, songs and photos should be well catered for well into the future.
As mentioned above, a Blu-ray drive is included for watching the latest films, but while you can't write to Blu-ray disks (another shame considering the price of the NX90JQ) you can to CDs and DVDs. 802.11n Wi-Fi and Gigabit Ethernet are on board, and are the current fastest networking technologies around.
As you'd expect, portability isn't the NX90JQ's strong card. The 4.4kg the machine weighs is hernia-inducing, and the polished aluminium finish will quickly attract scratches and scuffs on the road. Contrastingly, however, the 210 minute battery life isn't bad at all considering the power of the components involved.
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