Asus has officially introduced the P30A, it's first CULV-based thin and light notebook. The P30A will have to slug it out with Acer's Timeline and MSI's X-Slim series CULVs, and it's got a few features to distinguish it from the competition.

Unlike Acer's and MSI's designs, the P30A features an optical drive, and it looks like a proper notebook. It still stays on the thin side of things, measuring just 32.3x23.2x 2.61cm, and it weighs just 1.49kg. It looks nice too, and it got the Red Dot design award in Germany.

The first SKU to be announced is powered by the Core 2 Duo SU9400 at 1.4GHz. It ships with up to 4GB of DDR2 memory, but most SKUs will probably stick to 2GB. In terms of storage, you can get a 320GB or 250GB 2.5-inch hard drive. No SSD option yet. We're hoping single-core models will appear soon, i.e. SU3500 or Celeron 723 based, making the P30A a bit more affordable to the great unwashed.

The 13.3-inch 1366x768 LED baclikt panel is of the non-glare flavor, and this is a good think, as we think a non-glare screen is much better suited to ultraportables than one of those glossy things which usually acts like a mirror for smug people.

Connectivity shouldn't be an issue, as the P30A fetures Intel's WiMAX/Wi-Fi Link 5100 10/100/1000 bps, Bluetooth, LAN, and some markets will also get 3G/3.5G support.

It looks like a pretty nice piece of kit, and we hope the price stays on the sensible side. Unfortunately we still don't have any pricing or availability info. For comparison, MSI's X340Pro, based on the same CPU, should cost €899.

You can find the official release and specs here.