Asus Lamborghini VX6 review

The VX6’s jet-black finish and sharp angular design mimic the Lamborghini Reventón on which it’s based, but under the distinctive styling there are plenty of premium features.

A desktop version of Intel’s Atom processor gives a welcome power boost over other netbooks. The dual-core Atom D525 runs at 1.8GHz and is sensibly matched with 2GB of memory. Asus has installed Windows 7 Home Premium to avoid the 1GB memory limit imposed by the Starter edition of Microsoft’s operating system. The extra memory makes everyday programs run far smoother than we’re used to on most netbooks, but it still can’t compete with full-size laptops. In our multimedia benchmarks, the VX6 managed an overall score of 29, which is roughly twice as fast as a single-core netbook.

An Nvidia Ion chipset is a step above Intel’s integrated HD graphics, as it can comfortably play 720p video on the VX6 itself, or Full HD content on an external display via HDMI. Unfortunately playing modern games is asking too much, as Call of Duty 4 crawled along at 5fps. You should be able to play older titles by lowering detail levels. To extend battery life, Optimus power-saving disables the graphics chip when it isn’t needed, but the VX6 still only managed just over five hours in our light-use test – below average for a netbook.