Engadget China have the first pics of the new, Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks from Asus. As tipped by us in Feb, the two models include full-HD displays. There’s a backlit keyboard too. Asus are calling the new Zenbook the Zenbook Prime and it’s tipped for June availability.

The report doesn’t specifically mention the UX31A and UX21A but given previous reports and matching specifications, I’ll go out on a limb and say they’re one and the same.  The article doesn’t mention Ivy Bridge either but do we really need to consider Sandy Bridge as a possibility here? No.

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Following our report that ASUS will be updating the UX Zenbook series and are tentatively planning a launch in May we now have an official statement that new ASUS Ultrabooks will indeed come in May. Prices will be attractive too.

At an investor conference Executive Officer Jerry Shen said there would be ‘a number’ of new models to cover each price segment with price possible starting at US$699

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Reported on ITC.ua and tipped to us by a reader today is information that ASUS maybe getting ready to update the UX21 and UX31 with some exciting new specs that include full HD displays; never before seen on an 11.6” laptop.

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It’s not going to be possible to get a full review of the ASUS UX31 together as unfortunately I’ll be returning it tomorrow to exchange it for a Toshiba Z830 and settling on that for my work at CES, Mobile World Congress and probably CeBIT in March. It has been a tough decision but it’s time to bite the bullet and get to work. Before I do thought, let me tell you what I have learnt about the UX31 in the last 4 days.

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I read two European reviews of the ASUS UX31 yesterday and both of them said that the keyboard was fine. It confused me because I’ve read some bad feedback about the keyboard and my own testing of the UX21 resulted in disappointment in the keyboard department so I decided to venture out today to find a UX31 and test it myself. I found one at Saturn, a large electronics store here in Germany, who are offering the Core i7 / 128GB version for €1099.  Sure enough, the keyboard wasn’t bad at all. The keys still have that slightly wobbly feeling that the UX21 had but here I am typing away now on the UX31 with far fewer problems than I did on the UX21. It’s not perfect (the space bar is catching me out at the moment) but I’m giving it a chance. In fact, I’ve bought it and have a few days in which to test it out. If I’m not happy, I can return it.

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Our first ‘retail’ Ultrabook review video is now live. It’s the Asus UX21. Thanks, ASUS Germany, for sending it over.

You can read a few very early first impressions on the previous article. Specifications, as always, in our database.

Our LIVE REVIEW is planned for Thursday 17th November at 2100 GMT+1 (9pm Berlin time- meet everyone here. Your local time here.) so if you have queries and want to see the results live, add it to your calendar. We’ll have a live chat and video going for a few hours. The ASUS UX21 will get a good thrashing with benchmarks, videos, productivity, gaming and much more.

A more detailed first impressions article will go out within the next 48hrs. Check back here or subscribe on Twitter or Facebook.

And now to the video. Don’t forget to support Ultrabooknews by ‘liking’ the YouTube video and please, if you have a positive or negative thought, add it to the comments. It helps us all.

Video below….

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