Last week we got some hands on time with the Asus G51J3D which is the first notebook to feature Nvidia's 3D Vision technology. It's pretty clear that Asus is targeting gamers with this model and even more so as it's part of Asus' Republic of Gamer series of notebooks. Read on for a quick first impression of this feature packed gaming notebook.

Apart from its headline 3D Vision feature, the G51J3D does pack some impressive hardware, as Asus has fitted it with an Intel Core i7 720QM processor, 4GB of DDR3 1,066MHz memory and an Nvidia Geforce GTX 260M with 1GB of DDR3 memory. It also has an LED backlit 15.6-inch display, although it only sports a resolution of 1,366x768, but there's a good reason for this.

The display resolution limitation comes down to two things. For starters it's a 120Hz panel and these have only just started to be produced by notebook display manufacturers and as such only limited resolution displays are available. The 120Hz panel is required for 3D Vision to work. The second reason has to do with being able to play games at a decent frame rate in native resolution and the lower resolution display is preferable in this case as you'll get decent gaming performance without having to revert to a none native screen resolution.

The implementation of 3D Vision works well, although we're not sure why Asus decided against integrating the IR transmitter for the glasses into the notebook chassis. Instead you're stuck with the external USB connected transmitter which looks a bit out of place. On a positive note, Asus didn't make any changes to the design of the 3D Vision glasses which is at least something, as the Nvidia design is pretty decent, at least compared to similar things we've tried over the years.

Although the concept of 3D Vision isn't new, it's the first time we've seen this implemented in such a way that it doesn't make you feel nauseous or give you head aches after a few minutes of usage. However, we're not convinced a notebook is the right platform, but at least it's easy to connect up the G51J3D to your TV and use 3D vision on it, as long as you have a 120 or 240Hz LCD TV.

The G51J3D is a solid notebook and it offers a wide range of connectivity options such as HDMI and eSATA, but we're not going to go into too much detail here, as we should hopefully have a review sample coming our way soon. The chicklet type keyboard is also rather quite nice and you even get a bundled Razer mouse with it. Overall build quality felt very solid, although this isn't a light machine at 3.3kg with a 6-cell battery and it'll weigh even more if you go for the 9-cell option.

Our first impression of the G51J3D is overall positive and we can see a certain group of gamers going for this, although it's not going to be cheap once it hits retail. It will be interesting to see where Asus takes this next and hopefully we'll see models with the IR transmitter built into the notebook itself in the future, as it'll make this a much more portable solution.