Asus' Lamborghini VX5, as all car-branded laptops are, is one for the enthusiast — the sound of a Lamborghini revving when the laptop boots is testament to this. Regardless, Asus' VX5 is a luxury that more than just car enthusiasts will appreciate, and although not as fast as its Italian namesake (or perhaps, German considering the current owners), it does manage a decent amount of performance.
It's not, say, Alienware-ridiculous-fast, but it does have a moderately grunty GeForce GT 130M, 4GB RAM and a Core 2 Quad Q9000 @ 2GHz. Dual 500GB hard drives and a Blu-ray drive also make this one of the more endowed laptops out there, but what really tips the scales is the leather wrist rest, which makes typing on the VX5's backlit chiclet-style keyboard an enjoyable experience (as well as minimising sweat).
The ceramic touchpad is a nice touch as well — although the non-uniform shape means there are dead zones around the demarcated touch area — something you soon adapt to. We do find ourselves missing the multi-touch touchpad Asus has been using lately though — the VX5 features Synaptic's single touch pad instead. Nestled between the far-too-difficult-to-press mouse buttons is a fingerprint reader.
The 16-inch, 1366x768 screen is nice, and at the top is a 2.0-megapixel sapphire crystal webcam — in theory a notch above the usual PC fare. Sadly, it was quite slow above the 0.3 megapixel resolution of 640x480, and we didn't notice any solid image quality improvements.
The rest of the laptop is all silver accents, champagne and piano black (there's also a ceramic white version, should the fancy take you), as many car-inspired grilles as possible and a Lamborghini logo on the rear, lit up by the monitor's backlight. Even the power button is designed in a way to make you feel like you're looking at car decor, with a speed button underneath that enables "TwinTurbo Mode", illuminating the touchpad and insignia on the monitor blue, and overclocking the FSB by 100MHz and the GPU by 25MHz when the laptop is plugged into the wall.
For a reasonably hefty laptop with a subwoofer, the VX5's sound is disappointingly weedy and lacking punch, with Karnivool's Themata and Muse's Hysteria sounding like pale imitations of their former selves.
Under the monitor is a button for controlling the ambient sensor (which allows the monitor and keyboard backlight to adjust depending on the ambient light in the room), two buttons for turning on or off the touchpad or keyboard illumination, and finally a battery profile button, which cycles between Entertainment, Quiet Office, Battery Saving and High Performance settings, each adjusting power settings and screen brightness to suit particular situations. All these are overridden if you enter TwinTurbo mode.
The VX5 plays host to four USB ports, one eSATA, HDMI and VGA out, headphone, speaker and microphone jacks, MMC/SD/MS card reader, ExpressCard54 slot and gigabit Ethernet. Bluetooth and 802.11n radios are also included. Vexingly, a hot air vent has been placed on the left-hand side. Given the VX5's spec, this will likely result in left-handed external mouse users potentially getting an uncomfortably warm hand when the machine is working at its hardest.
The VX5 runs off Vista Home Premium 64-bit, and includes a Norton Internet Security 2009 trial, Cyberlink's Power2Go and Microsoft's Office 2007 trial. Accessories include a microfibre sleeve, a cleaning cloth, a story book covering the history of Lamborghini, a quality Logitech NX80 external mouse with pouch (re-branded with Lamborghini and Asus logos) and a Targus mouse pad. It also comes with one of the bigger power supplies we've seen, which reduces the portability.
Performance
With a fair bit of grunt behind it, the VX5 performed well in the 3DMark06 and PCMark05 tests, scoring 6512 and 5012 respectively. Engaging TwinTurbo mode, this took performance up a notch to 6719 and 5364, respectively. Whether in TwinTurbo mode or not, the VX5 has a decent amount of guts behind it and should be capable of both gaming on fairly recent titles and office work.
Setting all power-saving features off, screen brightness and volume to maximum and playing back an XviD file, the battery lasted one hour, 24 minutes and 38 seconds, decent considering the hardware involved. Take in mind this is a highly stressing test — casual use would see significantly longer battery life.
Asus' Lamborghini VX5 is a luxury laptop, with a luxury price to match — thankfully justified by the quality of the laptop and package. If you've got a wad of cash burning in your pocket, don't mind a little luxury or want to make a statement, the VX5 might be for you.
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