Like the ASUS G2P, the ASUS G2S is a portable dream for gamers, offering plenty of power and great sound in an easily transportable package. Not only is it a good performer, but the carry bag and included Logitech MX518 gaming mouse are great bonuses.

As well as some decent benchmark results the ASUS G2S offers some nice perks, including an e-SATA port, which allows external e-SATA drives to transfer data at speeds of up to a theoretical maximum of 300MBps. This can also be found on the HP Pavilion HDX9003TX.

There is also an HDMI port allowing you to output a digital audio/visual signal to a television or home theatre, meaning you can play movies or live television on the G2S, and watch it through your home entertainment system. In fact, the ASUS G2S is a very nice all-round entertainment unit, with a hybrid digital/analogue TV-tuner and the means to output via S-Video and composite, as well as the HDMI digital output. On top of that you get Windows Vista Ultimate for boasting rights.

If you're limited to the internal stereo speakers you won't be disappointed. Although they could use a little bass, they produce a very nice sound and have a good volume range. A subwoofer would have been a nice addition. Also included in the package is a 1.3-megapixel camera built into the screen.

There's plenty of power inside the solid black and silver chassis. An Intel Core 2 Duo T7500 2.2GHz CPU with an 800MHz front side bus and a 4MB L2 cache sits at the helm with 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 RAM to back it up and a GeForce 8600M GT with 256MB of GDDR3 memory for gamers to play with.

When run through WorldBench 6 it scored 77, a very nice result. There should be no issues when browsing the Web, word processing or even playing with Adobe Photoshop and other more taxing applications. The CPU showed its merit by performing well in the MP3 encoding tests, too. Encoding 53 minutes worth of WAV files to 192Kbps MP3 files took just 80 seconds in iTunes, then 122 seconds in Cdex.

Games also performed reasonably well; in 3DMark 2006 the G2P scored 3824, while in 3DMark 2001 SE it scored 24,882. However, battery tests weren't as impressive. Using a DVD movie to rundown the battery took just 78 minutes, a below-average score for notebooks built on the latest Centrino platform.

Above the keyboard are a few handy shortcuts to ASUS's power settings, Power for Phone (an Internet phone application), a screen preset button, a touchpad mute button and the power button. On the far left of these shortcuts is a small display, which defaults to say ASUS, but can be programmed with your own custom messages and smiley faces.