Asus says it spent a good deal of time working out the right way to bond the bamboo to the system in order to avoid splitting, buckling, or warping, and the final product really is flawless. The back of the lid and the interior wrist rest, along with the touch pad itself, are all covered with a thin layer of wood. The most notable physical feature on the U33J is its bamboo-accented chassis. In fact, the largely comparable Toshiba Portege R705 manages to be both slimmer and lighter, while still working in an optical drive. Though reasonably svelte for a mainstream 13-inch laptop, the Asus U33J is neither exceptionally thin nor light. If you'd rather swap in an optical drive for the discrete graphics, check out the Toshiba Portege R705 (also with Wireless Display), which happens to be $100-$200 less expensive. But, if you think you can survive without one, this is one of the sharpest-looking laptops we've seen this year. On the less positive side, though the U33J is thin, it's not nearly thin enough to justify the omission of an optical drive, which is still a rare move for a 13-inch laptop. Optimus disengages the Nvidia GPU when it's not needed (which is most of the time) and that tricks the laptop into only seeing its integrated Intel graphics chips - which in turn allows the Wireless Display software to launch (you'll still need a sold-separately $99 Netgear adaptor to connect to your external display).
The clever workaround Asus uses requires Nvidia's Optimus technology, which can automatically switch between integrated and discrete graphics on the fly. This is the first time we've seen Wireless Display and an Nvidia GPU in the same laptop they're normally incompatible. Beyond the look and feel, this Intel Core i3 system also works in some useful features, including Intel's Wireless Display technology (for beaming the video output to an external display), and a discrete Nvidia 310M GPU.
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