Asus boasts terabyte laptops

Asus has been showing off what it claims are the world's first laptops with hard-drive capacities of 1TB (terabyte).

The new Asus M50 and M70, both on show at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, each contain two of Hitachi's 5K500 hard drives. The 2.5-inch SATA drives each boast a capacity of 500GB, marking a new record for single-drive units that are usable in laptops, Hitachi has claimed.

Asus is promoting the M50 and M70 as entertainment laptops, saying their large hard drives mean the laptops can hold sizeable amounts of high-definition video content. There were no specific availability details at the time of writing, although an Asus spokesperson said the M50 and M70 would be released towards the end of March.

Hitachi's 5K500 drives will be made available worldwide in February.