Conclusion
Asus' Lamborghini VX3 notebook is unabashedly expensive, and that seems to be the point. An item can't be exclusive if it can be bought at a mainstream price point. Lamborghini car owners want to own something uncommon, and they're probably not too concerned that the Nissan GT-R can lap the famous Nürburgring Nordschleife course quicker for a quarter of the price. Likewise, it seems, Asus doesn't think VX3 owners will be fazed by the fact that you can get a similarly equipped (at least in terms of core hardware components) systems that offers equivalent performance for much less.

That's fine, but put on your 'consumer of fine goods' hat for a moment and ask yourself whether a Lamborghini-branded Targus bag would be appealing. While the VX3 chassis is all class, the accessories are not quite in the same league. The illusion disintegrates as soon as you spy the Targus label on the messenger-style notebook bag included with the VX3. There are plenty of little leather goods factories in Italy that could have produced something suitable while retaining a made-in-Italy tag for the label-conscious consumer.

Getting past the VX3's premium nature, the system's battery life is another issue. The 3-cell battery may mount flush, but with less than an hour of DVD playback time, the VX3 really isn't all that portable without its portly 9-cell unit. And the 9-cell battery sticks out the back quite a bit, ruining the VX3's lovely lines and making it impossible for the system to sit in its fancy box. With seemingly so much invested in the VX3's design, its battery seems like an afterthought.

Gaming apparently wasn't an afterthought for the VX3, whose discrete GeForce 9300M graphics processor delivers passable (at least when compared with the Intel integrated graphics processors that dominate the 12" notebook market) frame rates with recent games, provided you turn down in-game detail levels. More importantly, the GeForce should be free of the compatibility and image quality issues that we've seen plague Intel's IGPs. The 9300M can accelerate Blu-ray playback, too, although Asus fails to exploit this capability by equipping the VX3 with a high-def DVD drive.

The lack of a Blu-ray drive highlights what may be the biggest problem with the VX3: the system isn't nearly as decked out as one might expect given its $3,000 street price. With only a 5,400-RPM hard drive, a 2.5GHz processor that's a few speed grades below the top of the line, and no integrated WWAN connectivity options, the VX3 doesn't deliver as luxurious a punch as it could. It seems Asus has elected to spend more on the VX3's cosmetic accents and bundled accessories than beefing up the underlying hardware.

So the VX3 isn't perfect, and it's not cheap. Obviously, value-conscious buyers should steer clear. However, the system does offer a solid and compact chassis, a great screen, full-sized keys, GeForce graphics, and a couple of battery options. It also looks pretty hot, and more importantly (to those concerned with Lamborghini branding, at least), retains the exclusivity if its namesake.