ASUS UL80Vt First Look: Mobility Redefined
by Jarred Walton on October 24, 2009 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
ASUS UL80Vt Benchmarked - Battery and LCD
Finally, we have perhaps the most interesting aspect of the UL80Vt. Decent performance and a reasonable size are nice, but there are plenty of laptops to offer those amenities. What truly sets the UL80Vt apart from most other Windows-based laptops is the battery life. ASUS claims "up to 12 hours", and we decided to check their claim.
Idle battery life reached nearly 13 hours… and that's what Turbo mode (overclocking) enabled. Granted, the system was sitting idle -- hardly a realistic usage scenario for most users. However, light office use isn't going to be much more taxing than our idle battery life test, and if you decide to disable Turbo mode battery life can only improve. In the far more pertinent Internet battery life, ASUS still achieves record-setting performance. Our initial test (we haven't had time for multiple test runs) came just shy of nine hours of continuous Web surfing. That's with several flash ads on be active website page, which again should be a bit more taxing than what many users view.
Looking at battery capacity and relative battery life, we finally have a true laptop that can actually trade blows with Apple's MacBook line. We never have been able to determine exactly what Apple does in order to achieve their high battery life, but clearly part of it has to be using lower voltage CPUs. ASUS follow suit by using the Core 2 Duo SU7300, which actually surpasses Apple by going with a 10W TDP CPU. Apple currently uses the 25W TDP SP9300, while some previous models used the 17W Core 2 Duo SL9000 series.
Even overclocked the SU7300 practically sips power in comparison to many other CPUs. We measured average power use of 9.5W for the UL80Vt in our internet test compared to 21.1W for the Gateway NV52 and 15.6W for the Gateway NV58. 10.1" and 11.6" netbooks only get down to 8.0-8.5W in the same test, and performance is obviously substantially higher with Core 2 Duo. What's truly impressive is that laptops like the UL80Vt previously sold for nearly $2000 -- sometimes more. With the boom in netbooks sales, manufacturers have apparently realized there's a real market for smaller laptops that get extremely good battery life.
About the only fly in the ointment with the UL80Vt is the LCD panel. Here you can see our contrast ratio test results, and the results are down in the dumps with many other laptops. Sometimes I feel like a lone voice crying in the wilderness telling manufacturers that laptop LCD quality is a serious concern. I know from responses to previous articles that many of you agree, but unfortunately it's something that's difficult to quantify because many reviews don't ever look at LCD quality with quantitative results. ASUS has used very nice LCD panels on lesser offerings (i.e. the Eee 1005HA has an excellent LCD), and we have seen decent displays on other laptops and notebooks as well. If the system cost $25-$50 more but it had a 1000:1 contrast ratio (with an LCD that could still run at 250 nits), I wouldn't hesitate to give the UL80Vt an unequivocal recommendation. As it stands, it's a great laptop but it isn't quite perfect.
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JimmyJimmington - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
If you're just going to browse the internet and do "low cpu load jobs," why not just buy a $150 netbook refurb? Why spend 1k+ on a computer?Pirks - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Why the most cheap and the most crappy low quality computer if you can get much higher quality one for some extra $$$?JarredWalton - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I'm confused... exactly what makes ASUS a "most crappy low quality" option? I'd say this is actually a very well made laptop. ASUS isn't always the best, but they are far from being a low quality option in my book. Or are you talking about netbooks? Again, netbooks can be well made (albeit slow). I think his point is valid: if you just want a laptop for surfing and such, a netbook would suffice.If you don't want to use OS X, there is (in my mind) zero reason to buy Apple products. You'd be paying for the Apple premium (which includes OS costs) just to ditch it. Lenovo, Sony, and others make nice looking laptops that cost a premium as well, and at least they fully support Windows. I'd guess if you took a MacBook into an Apple store to get help, and you had a Windows (or Linux or whatever) issue, they wouldn't provide any help at all beyond, "You should run OS X."
Pirks - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"Lenovo, Sony, and others make nice looking laptops that cost a premium as well, and at least they fully support Windows" - that's why I said buy a MacBook OR a similar quality Win notebook, something like this Asus you reviewed but without cheap glossy crap all over it. Older Dell Vostro's used to have quality all-matte finish, but they turned into half glossy crap too recently... although they still offer matte screens, unlike 99% of modern PC notebook OEMs. Dunno about Sonys and Lenovos, they either offer cheapo glossy crap instead of screen or they don't specify glossy or matte on their sites, so who knows... I hope you're right here.KikassAssassin - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - link
As far as I'm aware, none of those others provide the same balance of battery life and performance that this Asus does, which is the entire reason people are excited about it.The fact that it's cheaper than a Macbook is what makes it a good competitor. You *could* spend more money on the Macbook to get that shiny unibody enclosure and OS X. Or if you don't care about OS X, you could save some money and get an equally capable machine that doesn't have quite as high a polish.
There's no wrong choice. They're both perfectly viable options, it's just a matter of what your priorities are.
Pirks - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
JimmyJimmington above mentioned some crappy refurb netbook for $150, I wonder why would one spend hard earned cash to get this kind of crap instead of some used MacBook or at the very least this Asus you reviewed. Pay some extra cash, but you get so much more in return...JimmyJimmington - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
You just said yourself you can't keep the damn chassis from overheating and burning you while doing anything beyond browsing the web and "low cpu load jobs." If that's all your doing, then your wasting your hard earned cash on a $1k+ laptop. A $150 netbook refurb will perform the same task. You might think it's cheap, but it takes you to the same internet. It types the same word documents. It makes the same excel spreadsheets. And you don't waste your hard earned cash.Pirks - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"You just said yourself" - no I didn't :P"A $150 netbook refurb will perform the same task" - a $1000 rusty Chevy from 1980 will also take you from point A to point B (with some amount of luck), why spend $20K for some nice Toyota or Lexus?
JarredWalton - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Sorry... edited my post after rethinking. LOLZoomer - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
A rough/matt lid/lcd bevel and an aluminum palmrest, please. I'd ask for the VAIO inscription as well but I think that's going too far.