14 DAY TRIAL // Near Field Communication technology can carry out very fast, but also very short, burst data transmissions. It's so far been used to pair Bluetooth devices, and ASUS has extended the use from the mobile to the fixed PC sector. Which is to say, ASUS has formally launched the M70 desktop PC with integrated NFC support, allowing it to pair with smartphones instantly.
Sure, said smartphone will need to have its own NFC chip for this to work, meaning it has to be a recent release, not from a few years ago.
Fortunately, NFC is already a standard fixture of mobile devices, and that includes current-generation tablets, so that shouldn't be a problem.
After all, if anyone's going to buy an NFC desktop, it means they already own NFC mobile gadgets in need of love.
In addition to NFC, ASUS included wireless charging capabilities in the case of the M70, as part of a tray right at the top.
The tray works with any Qi wireless charging standard-compliant items, even when the M70 computer is shut down.
As for the technical specs of the thing, they revolve around a 4th generation Haswell Core i7-4770S CPU and the Nvidia GeForce GT 625 with 2 GB DDR3 memory. The discrete graphics card is optional though, and there are alternatives too.
That said, the computer also has a hard disk drive of 1 TB capacity and 8 GB of DDR3 1600 MHz random access memory (RAM).
Other specs include a mini PCI Express slot, a PCI Express x1 slot, a PCI Express x16 slot, one 5.25-inch drive bay, two 3.5-inch bays and a slot-in DVD-RW drive.
Finally, the connectivity options are thus: three video ports (HDMI-Out, DVI-D and VGA D-sub), Gigabit Ethernet, four SATA ports (two 6 Gbps, two 3 Gbps), six USB 2.0 ports, two USBN 3.0 ports and a 16-in-1 card reader. SinicMaster technology is added as a bonus (customize sound in movies, music, games and voice recording).
The ASUS M70 desktop PC has, or will have, a price of $1,040 / €756 - €1,040.