Asus F3Jm review: Asus F3Jm
It commands something of a premium price, but Asus' F3Jm doesn't disappoint when it comes to performance.
Design
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The F3Jm's design accentuates slim lines, with the keyboard offset by top and bottom silver stripes that hide the power and function buttons at the top and power and wireless network indicators at the bottom. The display screen is a 15.4" LCD with a glossy finish; like most of Asus' notebooks it's a good looking panel and we had no visual problems with it during our testing. The keyboard had good response, and the trackpad worked well for basic mousing tasks.
On a very minor design scale, the Asus chime that sounds when you first boot up the notebook is rather annoying, as it's not a simple matter to switch it off, as the F3Jm uses a function key setup to control notebook volume. It can be disabled in the BIOS, thankfully.
Features
Performance
Battery life at 140 minutes in productivity mode was good, given the drain of MobileMark's suite of applications. The less intensive reader test delivered only seven minutes more battery life, while the DVD spinning playback test dropped that to just over two hours at 127 minutes. Given its size and carrying weight, this isn't a truly portable machine, so those figures are acceptable albeit not that exciting. The F3Jm's PCMark score was a little more complimentary to the system with a very solid score of 4615 PC Marks. Likewise, the inclusion of the 512MB nVIDIA GeForceGo 7600 helped the F3Jm to a 3DMark06 score of 2015.
Asus backs the F3Jm with a two year pickup warranty, which is extremely generous; most notebook manufacturers offer a single year with paid options for multi-year coverage; getting two years without paying a penny more is excellent value.