Whenever we think of Asus, the first thing that comes to mind is either the image of a motherboard or that of an Eee PC (because, after all, these are the products the Taiwan-based company is best known for). The truth of the matter is that Asus makes a much wider range of products, moving slowly, but surely, to the title of consumer electronics manufacturer.

For the time being, most of its products are still closely related either to hardware or to portable computing, and that's exactly the case with our latest review subject, the uBoom 2.1 Notebook Soundbar, a speaker designed specifically to enhance the audio produced by portable computing systems.

Although it targets notebook and netbook users in particular, the uBoom, released back in 2009, is hardly what we'd call portable. In fact, the soundbar is pretty large and heavy (despite featuring an aluminum case), and it's very likely that it will serve mostly desktop replacement users (14.5-inch notebooks and upwards) rather than those people who are constantly on the go and don't have enough room in their luggage to pack such a “monster.”

However, when used with a large notebook, the uBoom really starts showing its worth, being able to seriously improve the overall music-listening, movie watching and/or gaming experiences enjoyed by the user.

Last, but certainly not least, we'll have to explain a bit why we've decided to call this thing the “sound bazooka.” The first reason is related to its audio output capabilities, the uBoom being able to output powerful sound from a fairly small form factor.

The second reason is related to the design. So, while testing this thing, many of our colleagues simply lifted it on their shoulder and mimicked a bazooka firing. When asked why, they replied, “well, it looks like a shoulder-mounted firing weapon...”