ASUS NX90JQ laptop has polished aluminium enclosure

ASUS showed off the NX90JQ, a massive 18.4" multimedia laptop with a set of Bang and Olufsen "ICEpower" speakers attached to the edges of the display. This looks like one of the biggest desktop replacement laptops we've ever seen, and according to ASUS it's also the first laptop with a polished aluminium surface. The system has a thickness of 45mm and weighs 4.4kg, inside is the Intel Core i7-720QM, up to 8GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, and the NVIDIA GeForce 334M 1GB with Optimus Technology. More details at Bit Tech.

The widescreen laptop is clearly a desktop replacement given its considerable size and cost: at nearly 85,000NTD, or £1,800-something to us Brits, it's certainly a considerable investment. The laptop has been designed specifically to be as much an elegant feature of your coffee table as a functioning notebook, and the 4.5cm profile is reasonably slim for its size. The gentle curve and mirror-finish surfaces certainly show more of a bespoke feel than your run-of-the-mill computing device.

Asus presented a demonstration of the B&O speakers featuring Asus SonicMaster Premium technology, and even at just 11W each the speakers were certainly loud enough to fill the Taipei Hyatt's Ballroom adequately and with impressive clarity. Given their limited size (and their shallow depth, especially), we wonder whether the female vocalist of the demonstration was chosen specifically to avoid bass.