Asus does Apple

Advertising has taught us a few things. Firstly, why have cotton when you can have silk? (Only a fool would argue with that.) And, secondly, accept no imitations. And yet here we are not only accepting an imitation but praising it.

The rapier-thin, all-aluminium Asus UX21 laptop has just been unveiled, and while it may look like another ‘artful’ tribute to the work of Jonathan Ive, it can match the MacBook Air punch-for-punch.

Working closely with Intel, Asus has crammed in a Core i7 processor and plenty of other bleeding-edge tech. Imitations? Gladly accepted.

• The battery is so powerful, the Asus can hibernate for up to a week without requiring a charge. In terms of size, it is the same thickness as a MacBook Air (17mm) and weighs 1.1kg.
• The trackpad is constructed from glass, resulting in smoother operation (it feels like a touchscreen phone), while the keypad’s keys are made from surprisingly tactile aluminium.
• The Instant On feature is rather impressive: when the device is shut or hibernating, it saves the desktop. So when fired-up again, the laptop resumes where you left off in under two seconds.
• The secret behind the UX’s marathon battery life is its flash storage drive. The next-gen SanDisk U100 can read at up to 450MBs per second.