Asus Lamborghini VX7 – Review
The 15.6″ Asus Lamborghini VX7 targets anyone with a fondness for Lamborghinis, famed for their legendary acceleration and top speed. This test unit wielded a quad-core i7 processor, 8GB RAM and a dedicated 3GB graphics card, and can be yours for $2500. Lamborghinis are famously brash, and the shell is made from highly reflective black plastic with ridges running across its surfaces for grip and effect. The classical Lamborghini bull logo is emblazoned on the lid, while Asus’s logo is relegated to a footnote. On the rear, continuing the supercar theme, two enormous vents sit under red plastic tail lights. Despicably, the lights do not illuminate. Close scrutiny of the case shows the plastic to be a very flimsy plastic which bends and creaks under light pressure. It’s questionable whether this notebook could survive life on the road.
At 3.9kg, it weighs about average for its class, and the adaptor takes that to just under 5kg. The Asus Lamborghini VX7 measures 402 x 309 x 50mm. One bonus is that Asus provide a Lamborghini-branded bag with the VX7, though we doubt too many people will want to lug this monster around.
The hinges of the VX7 sets further forward than on most other notebooks and helps balance the heavy lid to give more stability when the notebook sits on a desk or in the lap. The wrist rest is made from real leather, following the supercar theme. The only other notebook we can think of with leather features is the Acer Aspire Ethos 5951G, though some engineering grade notebooks use leather for comfort.
The 15.6-inch screen with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution is optimized for the VX7 Blu-ray drive and although the screen is bright, the dark hues are not sufficiently dark to prevent a slightly bleached appearance. Viewing angles of VX7 are best suited to a single user, too.
The backlit island-style keyboard is comfortable to use with great spring, and the numeric keypad makes data entry a breeze. The spacious touchpad allows great finger-sliding gestures, explained in the helpful guidelines included with the bundled software. The trackpad is made from polished glass, good to the touch, and its buttons give a hearty click.
Port-wise there’s a solitary USB-3 port, with 4 USB-2s, VGA and HDMI interfaces, an SDcard reader, and headphone and mic jacks. The Lamborghini VX7 runs WIndows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, about right at this price point.
You probably won’t believe us when we say that the laptop revs when booting. It’s as good an argument as any using sleep mode as much as possible.
Under the hood (ha ha) purrs a 2.0GHz, quad-core Intel core i7-2630QM processor, paired with 8GB DDR3 RAM, expandable to 16GB. Its supercar credentials are backed by the dedicated 3GB NVidia GeForce GTX 460M graphics card. Ample storage space comes in the form of two 750GB 5400rpm hard drives.
In the PCMark05 test of general computing ability, the VX7 scored 9617, which is average for a middle-of-the-road notebook, but the MSI GT683 gaming laptop reached 14392, and costs a few hundred dollars less. 11328 in Geekbench is impressive, where the GT683 achieved only 8713. In Dirt3, the VX7 managed 40fps at native res.
Battery life was weak at 3 and a half hours of light usage.
All in all, weak build quality together and feeble battery life mean we hesitate to recommend the Asus Lamborghini VX7.
I can’t help mentioning that VX7 is a beautiful looking machine. Take a look at some of these VX7 pics:
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