14 DAY TRIAL // For an international trade show, Computex 2013, which took place in Taipei, Taiwan between June 4 and 8, didn't really bring about the release of that many new computers. Slowly, however, the list of products grows.
Ultrabooks were a surprise all on their own, as few were actually released at the time. Most were either withheld, or just exhibited in anticipation of release at a later date.
June 20 seems to be a popular date, but ASUS released the VivoBook S551 a bit earlier than that.
This is a 15.6-inch ultrathin laptop that pairs an Intel 4th Generation Haswell Core series microprocessor with an NVIDIA GeForce GT 740 discrete graphics card.
The official press release doesn't say exactly what the memory and storage capabilities are, but they can probably be customized to an extent, like the CPU for that matter (up to Core i7).
We imagine that a Core i5 backed by 4 GB DDR3 and 500 GB HDD is one standard spec sheet, while Core i7 + 8 GB RAM + 750 GB / 1 TB HDD is another, with an SSD thrown in (for caching).
Regardless, the VivoBook S551 is 22.5 mm-thick (0.88 inches) and weighs 2.4 kilograms (5.29 pounds).
What's more, the battery can supposedly last for up to 6 hours on a single charge. This being for average use (Office, browsing, etc.), not video playback or gaming (and the Ultrabook can actually play the latest games thanks to the NVIDIA GPU, though perhaps not all at top settings).
Finally, despite ultrabooks usually being too thin to allow for one, the newcomer has a DVD combo drive too.
Sadly, we don't know the price, even though we can make an educated guess. We may even risk a hope that the tag will be of under $999 / €999, but we won't be holding our breath.