Asus M70S Review

by Kevin O'Brien

Notebooks have always lagged behind desktops in speed, screen size, and until recently storage space. Asus released two new laptops, being the M70S and M50S, both of which hold the claim as being the world's first laptops with 1TB of storage space. To get this large capacity, the notebooks are equipped with two 500GB drives that can run in RAID 0 or 1, or as separate drives. Obviously this is a nice trend for notebooks, as people start storing more movies and games and want more scratch space for whatever comes their way.

For this review we are covering the M70Sa configuration notebook, which has the following specifications:

• Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)
• Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T9300 (2.5GHz, 6MB L2, 800MHz FSB)
• 17" diagonal widescreen TFT LCD display at 1920x1200 (WUXGA, Glossy)
• ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 with 1GB DDR2 video memory
• Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (802.11a/g/n)
• 4GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM (maximum capacity 4GB)
• 1TB Storage, 2 x 500GB Serial ATA hard disk drive (Hitachi 5400RPM)
• DVD-Burner with 2x Blu-Ray reading capabilities
• TV Tuner
• 1.3 megapixel webcam
• Fingerprint reader
• Dimensions (WxDxH Front/H Rear): 16.2" x 11.8" x 1.7"
• Weight: 8 lbs 13.1oz with nine-cell battery
• 90W (19V x 4.74A) 100-240V AC Adapter
• 9-cell (14.8V, 5200mAh) Lithium Ion battery
• 2-Year Limited Global Warranty
• MSRP: $2,399.99

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Build and Design

The design of the notebook is very basic, with a high gloss plastic surface, meshed with chrome and gloss black accents. This gives the notebook a very clean look without standing out too much. The notebook surface is similar to the Toshiba Fusion finish or the HP Imprint finish in that it holds up well to minor scratches to keep the glossy finish looking clean long past the first day out of the box.

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Build quality on the Asus M70S is average; with most of the plastic feeling very solid overall. One area that does stand as needing some improvement is the screen lift point, which is weakened by the webcam pivoting area.

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When you open the lid, this area tends to flex upward quite a bit working against the stiff screen hinges. Beyond that the notebook feels pretty sturdy, with little flex when you lift the notebook up by the corner and carrying it around. The extra LED lighting on the interior surface of the notebook is more subtle than what we see on most consumer notebooks. The power button and indicator lights are the only other light sources that might distract you when watching movies in a dark room.

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Display

The WUXGA display on the Asus M70s is very nice and would be considered above average. It is very bright and vibrant and great for movies or game play. Black levels are quite deep, and there is only minor backlight bleed along the bottom edge. Some of this can be seen as a brighter "bump" on the taskbar during normal use, but it is still very minor. One flaw that the screen had that you don't tend to see that often on glossy screens is a minor grainy look, but it was only visible on solid bright colors like white.

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Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard is above average, and very easy to type on for extended periods of time. Having the real estate of a 17" notebook allows for a full size keyboard and number pad, with almost all the keys being the same size as what you would find on a desktop keyboard. The texture of the individual keys is a mild matte finish, which given them a very soft feel during use.

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The touchpad on the Asus M70S is designed for multiple uses, one obviously being mouse movement, with the other being multimedia controls. As a touchpad the surface texture and sensitivity is great. The surface is very large and spacious. Adding the multimedia controls though did make things awkward at times, since they are activated when you tap a certain corner of the touchpad. Sometimes you accidentally graze that part and effectively disable the touchpad until you turn off those functions again. I would have liked to see an activation key separate from the touchpad to toggle the separate functions on and off.

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The multimedia keys when activated are backlit, for easy use at night if you are watching a movie in a dark room. The touchpad buttons are adequately sized, with shallow feedback when clicked.

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Performance

System performance not problem with the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 dedicated graphics with 1GB of video memory. While the system did have 4GB of RAM preconfigured, only 3GB was recognized in Windows Vista with the 32bit version of Home Premium. I was actually kind of surprised to see that amount of RAM and not find 64bit Vista installed.

The twin 500GB Hitachi 5400rpm drives performed quite well, and with options to configure them in a RAID 0 configuration would be even faster. Overall this system would work great with most modern games (not including Crysis) and play movies or music without skipping a beat. In fact with the vast amount of video output connectors you could use this computer as the hub of your entertainment system.

WPrime 32M comparison results

WPrime is a benchmark similar to Super Pi in that it forces the processor to do intense mathematical calculations, but the difference is this application is multi-threaded and represents dual core processors better. Lower numbers indicate better performance.

Notebook	Time
Asus M70S (2.50GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, Windows Vista)	31.132s
Toshiba Satellite L355D (2.0GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60, Windows Vista)	39.732s
Gateway P-171XL FX (2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo X7900, Windows Vista)	30.359s
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.50GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, Windows Vista)	31.108s
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Windows Vista)	42.085s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T7400@ 2.16GHz, Windows XP)	41.40s
HP dv6000z (AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 @ 2.00GHz, Windows Vista)	38.913s
Sager 9260 (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6700@ 2.66GHz, Windows XP )	33.718s
Dell Precision M70 (Intel Pentium-M 780 @ 2.26GHz, Windows XP)	78.992s

PCMark05 comparison results:

PCMark05 represents the overall system performance of a notebook. Higher numbers indicate better performance.

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Asus M70S (2.50GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650)	6,135 PCMarks
Toshiba Satellite L355D (2.0GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60, ATI Radeon X1250)	3,305 PCMarks
Gateway P-171XL FX (2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo X7900, NVIDIA Go 8800M GTS)	7,749 PCMarks
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.50GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, NVIDIA Go 8600M GT)	5,865 PCMarks
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA Go 8600M GT)	5,261 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1720 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT)	5,377 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,925 PCMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,377 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,591 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	3,487 PCMarks
Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX)	5,597 PCMarks

3DMark06 comparison results:

3DMark06 represents the overall graphics performance of a notebook. Higher numbers indicate better performance.

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Asus M70S (2.50GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650)	3,799 3DMarks
Toshiba Satellite L355D (2.0GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60, ATI Radeon X1250)	301 3DMarks
Gateway P-171XL FX (2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo X7900, NVIDIA Go 8800M GTS)	8,801 3DMarks
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.50GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, NVIDIA Go 8600M GT)	3,775 3DMarks
Toshiba Qosmio G45 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA Go 8600M GT)	2,934 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1720 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8600M GT)	2,930 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,329 3DMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	532 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,408 3DMarks
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	2,344 3DMarks
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB	2,183 3DMarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	2,144 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	827 3DMarks
Sony VAIO SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	794 3DMarks

There are no HDTune images since I forgot to get them before our review unit was sent back.

Heat and Noise

Heat from the M70S was minimal, even under stress. One nice aspect of large notebooks is there is a huge amount of space to dissipate heat, and they have few problems controlling hotspots. Noise was minimal, but did get apparent during benchmarks when the system had to cool itself down. With one fan controlling heat for both the GPU and CPU, it did have to move quite a bit of air to keep things pleasant.

Below are images showing the temperature readings in degrees Fahrenheit:

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Ports and Features

The Asus M70s included a wide array of ports around the notebook, including an external breakout box with Composite Video and S-Video connections. It has enough video outputs to handle all the needs for a portable home entertainment system, and even provide the TV tuner for watching HD digital channels. Another added plus with its built-in Blu-Ray play is the ability to watch HD movies directly on the notebook, or using the HDMI output to your nearest HDTV.

• Four USB Ports
• Expresscard/54
• Firewire
• Digital TV tuner
• External video breakout box
• HDMI
• e-SATA
• VGA
• LAN
• Modem
• 5-in-1 Card Reader
• Two Headphone jacks and one microphone
• Infrared Port

Front: IR Port

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Rear: AC Power, AV-Breakout connector, HDMI, e-SATA, VGA, Modem, LAN, Kensington Lock Slot

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Left: Digital tuner antenna connector, two USB, Firewire, 5-in-1 SD-Card Reader, Optical Drive

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Right: Expresscard/54, Wireless On/Off, two Headphone, Microphone, two USB

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A Digital TV tuner is also included with the M70s, which even comes with a magnetic antenna for use almost anywhere. In the office our quick test brought up most of the stronger digital channels in the area. A larger antenna would have probably bought in all of them.

Speakers and Audio

The Asus M70S is equipped with Altec Lansing speakers, and an onboard subwoofer for true home theatre in a box experience. Audio performance while watching TV was excellent, with clear and crisp sound from the speakers. Midrange and highs were very good, and the subwoofer was able to reproduce some of the low frequency range usually glossed over on most notebooks without a subwoofer. Peak volume levels were well above the "annoy coworkers" range, and well into the "somebody call the cops this guy is crazy" range.

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Battery Life

The battery like was actually better than I first expected, and improved drastically once I cleaned up the bloatware on the system. Out of the box the machine was giving an expected 45-50 minutes of battery life, and after uninstalling much of the bloatware got to 2 hours and 23 minutes on balanced with the backlight at 50 percent.

Conclusion

The Asus M70S is a great multimedia notebook to compliment any home theatre system or dorm room setting. Not only is this notebook capable of holding 1TB of movies, games, or music, but it can also tune digital HD channels and easily cope with most modern games. Pairing the beautiful screen with the Blu-Ray player and digital TV tuner will also make you the star attraction in any boring lecture room when you want to try and pass the time. While the price is fairly steep, users of this notebook will know that they are getting almost every feature for their money, and a solid notebook to boot.

Pros

• Every feature under the sun, except a builtin toaster
• Runs cool and quiet
• Onboard Blu-Ray player
• Great looking WUXGA screen

Cons

• 4GB of RAM and an operating system that can only see 3GB
• Lots of bloatware

 

Nice review; thanks! Unfortunately, you've just made my choice of my next notebook more difficult.

In terms of the keyboard, how was it to use - was there any flex in the keyboard itself, and were the keystrokes crisp, mushy, or something else entirely? Also, any chance of getting a more direct comparison between this system and the Sager NP9262 and/or the NP5793?

 

well I wouldn't consider additional 1GB of RAM as CONS (considering it does not affect overall price very much) - even if the OS handles only 3GB.

 

Thanks for the review.

However, missing the bit I was looking out for - the HD Tune result for the 500GB HDD!

No built in toaster! Where's the water boiler for the tea?

John

 

PFFFTTTT..... Those are pretty dismal bench Mark Scores! Why didn't they stick an NVIDIA 8800GTX card in there?

 

great review. hope they can put in a better video card

 

Uhm what do you mean by ' better ' video card? What is wrong with this card? And what about OS only handles 3 GB ??? I have same OS on my Gateway and Vista with SP1, have no problem what soever soo duhhh ?
I would have liked to read more about the webcam qualit and the WiFi, I took the Wifi card out mine, hate the Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (802.11a/g/n) as it only goes up to 150 Mbps,(have done my homework) have now a beautifull Gigabyte GN-WI06N and constant 300 Mbps with my Dir-655 Router. Uhm has no Blue Tooth, pitty... Like the rest of specs, might put it on my X-mass wish - list. BTW, what are the Windows Vista scores of this machine? uhm Windows Experience Index...and only a 9-cell battery hmmm oh well most of the tme it will be connectd to an wall-outllet but still...thanks for the review, I saw it before, passing by in a computer magazine, but it did not have price then...Maybe by that (X-mass) time they have a price drop. as CPU's should get pricedrop hehe tnx 4 the review

 

nothing,but we want faster one for the price!

32 bit OS can only recognize 3gb

and "Windows Experience Index" is useless!

 

32-bit OS can only address up to 4GB of RAM ... and that includes RAM for both system RAM and graphics/video RAM. If you're running 32-bit OS with 4GB of system RAM and a 1GB graphics card (such as this system) then the OS has to address 1GB for graphics and then only has 3GB left over for the system RAM.

If you had a system with 4GB of system RAM and a 512MB video card then Vista would report 3.5GB of system RAM.

In other words, even though this system has 4GB of system RAM it can only use 3GB of it.

We know Vista 32-bit SP1 "reports" whatever amount of system RAM you have ... but it still cannot address/use it. SP1 just identifies if you have 4GB and tells you that you have 4GB ... but you cannot use all 4GB of it because of the limitation of 32-bit Vista.

If you want to actually be able to USE all your system RAM then you need 64-bit Vista.

 

Well, this is geared towards multi meadia users, many of whom do not need the raw power of an 8800m

 

Thanks for the review, Kevin.

Yet another unimpressive Asus notebook; I can't say I was expecting much to begin with. Average build quality and mediocre specs for the money. The entire Asus lineup appears to be a bunch of mismatched machines sharing no common design theme. Asus is throwing new designs out there left and right. Won't be buying an Asus notebook anytime soon . . .

 

I wish the G70 was being reviewed and was out now... I don't care for the M70 all that much.

 

Ahha, tnx for the update, but here I have another one, the Motherboards usually ONLY support no more then 4 GB RAM. I might look into getting a 64-bit version and see how or what, is a shame to hear that MS still hasn't figured out to get it running the way it should. Wonder what Windows V 7 will be like. Anyways thanks very much!

 

Uhm, " AINT " (lol) that a little off Topic? I am bound to make plenty grammar mistakes and typoos but the people reading will understand or get a laugh. And G70 ?? can one eat it or lol

 

I believe that touchpad mouse/media control is probably the dumbest idea i have ever seen. I was not interested in this notebook in the first place, but I just had to call out how impractical that feature is.

 

It is very funny I hear of Asus and see the review all the time, yet I cannot find it at the store. I dont think it is a big seller here but I bet in Asia.

 

I appreciate the review, Kevin. Nice work.

 

Great review Kevin! Although any 17" notebook are not quite my taste, I think the M70S is quite a decent multimedia system (obviously not for hardcore gamers though).

 

Is that desktop harddrives in there?

 

Um, no they're 2.5" notebook drives. How exactly would one fit 3.5 drives x2 into a notebook shell ?

 

If anything could, that beast of a notebook could.

 

this never be advertised as a gaming laptop but a multimedia laptop.

so why do you judge it by its video card and its 3d score?

not every body wants a gaming rig.

I think its NV9650GT version'll be out soon.

 

ASUS + Decent battery life? (effeminate voice: OH...MY GOD!)

 

I'm looking at one right now.

At any rate, it seems like a rather good multimedia notebook. It probably won't be going to many hardcore lan parties, but it looks like it should make a great addition to a dorm room. No need for space on speakers and a great screen for movies and some games. Some students will surely appreciate the ""somebody call the cops this guy is crazy" volume.


I'm not sure if I would call it severely overpriced. Perhaps somewhat so.

 

I used to have an Acer Aspire 1705. Look it up. Desktop memory too. At the time, I was the only one with a 750G harddrive in a notebook.

 

But, I htink a GW FX is a better deal than this

 

i have that dell inspiron 9100.. the one with the picture and an xps m1530 and the difference in thickness between the two is insane.. lol this shld be able to fit a desktop hd but it just appears to be so thick for no knows what reason

 

To be polite, who ACTUALLY need’s 1TB for home use? I remember when my first Pc, a Tiny, had only 16GB of memory; with every file I possibly wanted being on the system and myself not longing for space. Then, I got a 80GB Pc, with every file I wanted being on the system ect... then 250GB...... so-on and so-forth. What I, in my humble opinion, have realized is that every increase in HDD capacity is just a excuse to put more [insert expletive] on your computer which I never actually use; like every word document I have ever written, some not being opened in the new-centaury and 20 odd films which I detest with a vengeance- which all should of been deleted a long-time ago. RANT OVER.

Anyway, nice review.

 

Some people have huge movie collections. huge song collections, huge photo collections, huge media collections and of course huge "material" collections.

1 TB wouldn't be enough for some of them I imagine.

 

Like Me ......

 

I was just passing comment on the 'casual user'.

 

"Casual Users" dont intend to pay 2400 on a laptop....

 

I have very rarely seen someone in the what should i buy section of nbr asking for this machine

I want a 17 inch large good screen middle gaming system for 2400$ With 1 tb hd.

Whenever he comes by though this one is in the running.

You will have to ignore everything else and get a review of the auo lcd vs the toshiba qosmio and the sony ar to decide if its for you.

If the screens not better then it really has nothing im sorry.

this is trying to overlap a consumer electronics purchase but its just not in the market.
Blue ray movie junkies have a 26 tv already that makes these screens look like crap.

 

thats a damn good computer if the only cons apparent in that review is simply bloatware and 3gb ram issue....

works well for me if i was looking at a 17" laptop because i would automatically do a full clean resinstallation of a 64bit windows vista ultimate....even before reading this review.

but sadly i like 10-13.3" laptops....if only they had a 10" full cpu power notebook

 

When is ASUS going to start making usable notebooks? Until it has an AMD processor, its just cannon fodder...

 

^wtf..............???

 

Uhm what is this mean??? AMD??

 

great review

but i am highly considering buying an Asus M50SV-A1 for the price of $1299.
do you guys think this is worth the buy?

 

Welcome to the forum,

What kinds of tasks will you be doing with the notebook and will you be traveling/carrying it around? I suggest that you make a new thread in "what notebook should I buy' forum(make sure to post a filled out FAQ form)

 

My father is looking to buy that exact model (or the $1,370 Blu-Ray equipped B1 model) in the next coming days.

Looks to be a lot better value than this M70, in my opinion. Plus you get a 9500M GS as well. Only downside to those M50's is the XGA+ screen, but to my father, that will actually be a perfect resolution as he doesn't need an SXGA or higher resolution.

I think, for 1300 dollars you can't go wrong with the M50SV A1
9500M GS
XGA+ (not just an XGA screen)
Altec Lansing speakers
Intel 4965 wireless card
Bluetooth
250GB of HD space
3GB of Ram
HDMI out
and a T9300 to boot.

http://1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=M50SV-A1

 

Looks nice, but $1,000+ more then the M50 when all it has is more hard drive space, higher res screen, and a sub woofer? :/ seems a bit over priced

 

Can you still plug in cable and watch TV with this laptop or are you stuck with over-the-air digital TV only?