ASUS U35Jc: Jogging in Place
by Dustin Sklavos on September 30, 2010 3:00 AM ESTThe More Things Change...
...the more they stay the same. The ASUS U35Jc seems to be in many ways a series of trade-offs with the U30Jc, and that's disappointing because it really should have just been an improvement. The U35Jc sports a slightly faster processor, sheds a pound of weight thanks to ditching the optical drive, has a slimmer body, and marginally improved backlighting on the screen. Unfortunately, it also boasts a lower battery life and a mobile GPU with a lower memory speed on an already overworked 64-bit bus. If you opt to enable the ASUS "Super Hybrid Engine" which locks the processor speed at a pretty low setting, you can probably mitigate the battery issue somewhat, but we didn't need that on the U30Jc to post better numbers.
Taken on its own, the U35Jc can be pretty tempting. The keyboard is comfortable and sensible, and the brushed aluminum cover is both attractive and functional. Build quality is solid, and frankly the machine is damn light. You get excellent battery life—nearly six hours surfing the internet—and the performance is there to do just about anything you want with it. ASUS achieves what they set out to: build an ultraportable with good performance and good battery life without tipping the scales.
The problem is that the U35Jc can't be taken on its own. Notebooks aren't designed in a vacuum, and seeing gripes we had with the U30Jc go largely unanswered in the U35Jc results in the same kinds of issues Jarred brought up recently in his review of the ASUS N82Jv: it's hard to recommend something when it seems like the company is just standing still. ASUS took the optical drive out of the U30Jc, moved a couple things around, and called it a new model. Alternately, they took the slimmer U35Jc, and then stripped off the bamboo, USB3, and WiDi. Either way, that's not what progress looks like.
As a result, the only copelling reason to choose the U35Jc over the U30Jc is if the extra pound and slightly larger size of the U30Jc are a huge deal to you. For about the same money, you lose a negligible 133 MHz on the processor and gain an optical drive (an optical drive that ASUS turns off while running on the battery anyhow). The U35Jc is more of the same at a time when we were already fairly happy with what they produced. It's a product that retains the nagging issues of its predecessor and in many ways offers less. Is it a bad laptop? Certainly not; it's a decent laptop but next time we want to see some real improvement.
What we'd like to see is the U30Jc and/or U35Jc, with an improved LCD, USB 3.0, and a GeForce GT 415M. $900 to $1000 for such a system would be more than acceptable, because LCD quality really does matter. The U35Jc is fairly priced at $800, with good build quality and reasonable performance. It's just that it should have launched simultaneously with the U30Jc and left the decision of size/weight and the optical drive up to the user six months ago. Today, it's 95% the same as its predecessor, only six months late (five months since the laptop first started shipping).
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justaviking - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
You stole my thunder....no excuse for NOT going with the faster hardware...
Even though I'm not in the market for a laptop, I still enjoy the articles. As with all AnandTech articles, I enjoy the blend of factual/analytical reporting blended with opinions any "why" commentary.
It's so easy to claim that you do or do not like something. But WHY? When that is included, we can decide if we agree or not, or if the comment even applies to us.
ONE EXTRA NOTE TO DUSTIN: Beware of too much light sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek commentary. Some people may get confused, especially if it is overdone. I like the style, just be careful to not get carried away.
Thanks again, and keep up the good work.
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
I do try to keep it in check. I'm actually still pleasantly surprised how much they let me get away with here. ;)If you want to see how bad it can actually get, you should look up the stuff I do/have done for NotebookReview. I've been getting away with murder there for years.
Kegetys - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
> The battery on our review unit is operating at a reduced capacity, substantial enough to account for a small portion of the differenceHow many full discharge-recharge cycles did you put the battery through? I think all li-ion batteries require at least a few such cycles to reach the max capacity, as the battery of my UL30VT did. But as the capacity starts to drop off after some use maybe it is better to not test with the max capacity as it won't retain that for a very long time...
synaesthetic - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
Dear nvidia,Please kill the GT218 core dead.
No love for you,
Cori
I would be perfectly okay with this being 50% thicker if I could get a GT 335M or Mobility Radeon 5650 inside it.
...
Dear Asus,
Stop using crappy 1366x768 screens.
No love for you,
Cori
MrSpadge - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
"no reason not to go with 7.2k rpm HDDs"I disagree: there's noise. I went from a Toshiba 160 GB to a Scorpio Black 320 GB, both 7.2k rpm and both considered very silent in reviews. However, mounted in a Thinkpad (some rubber around the drive) both drives are clearly louder than my desktop with ~7 fans and 24/7 load of ~300W. In silent environments the noise can disturb my concentration.
- Screens: hurray for kicking them for the crappy TN panel again. At least give us an IPS option, Asus!
- GPU: personally I don't want to pay for a fast GPU in a laptop as I woudn't really use it anyway. So I'm definitely not with you here if you continously ask for better models. The G310M at least gives one a solid driver, if the Intel fails.
- GPU-Memory: 1 GB at 64 Bit is ridiculous! I wouldn't want to pay for that either. Mine's got 16 shaders as well combined with 128 MB and frankly it's always been enough for me.
- Keyboard: and while we're at it.. give us a Thinkpad keyboard ;)
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
My experience with 7200rpm notebook drives has been a bit better. The Momentus 7200.4 in my Studio 17 is dead silent, but I'm one of the freaks that misses hearing the drive anyhow.As for the GPU, if you're not interested in the 310M, that's fine. The way I see it, there are either users like you that don't really care about the laptop's GPU, so just sticking with Intel's HD IGP would be fine...or there are users that do care about the laptop having a decent GPU, in which case the 310M is dismal. I just don't see anywhere on this spectrum where the 310M justifies its existence, and mercifully with the upgraded IGPs in Sandy Bridge, Ontario, and Llano, this isn't going to be a problem anymore.
Alex Smith - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
I'm a newbie here, is there a place to request reviews of other laptops?For example, my boss is looking at getting a Sony VAIO Z Series Laptop and it would be nice to know how it compared to the others you have reviewed here.
Cheers.
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link
The comments are the best place to go, but the problem is that we can only review what the companies send us. Some companies, like ASUS, MSI, Dell, or Acer, are very forthcoming. ASUS in particular is downright hungry for a piece of the pie and they've really been working at it.Sony, though...the only places you're going to find reviews of their kit are the MAJOR consumer-grade publications. My "alma mater" (so to speak) NotebookReview.com doesn't even get Sony hardware.
You can always request reviews in the comments and we do our best to see if we can't secure review hardware. From there, the best thing you can do is just read the reviews and recommend them to friends. The more read we get, the more pull we'll have to get the review hardware you guys want to see.
Evil_Sheep - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link
I feel like the review was a bit overly critical. I know there are a lot of things that could be improved on the U35Jc but, let's put it in perspective, if you want a "Windows MBP" this is as close as you're going to get, and the U30/33/35 family is actually better in some respects (primarily: value for money.)The fact is, there is no other notebook right now in the Windows solar system that is touching the U30-series trinity of Value, Performance, and Battery Life. Personally I think those are the three most important specs to hit on a computer, particularly in the 13" category. No one else is even close, and I feel like Asus is the only OEM who "gets it" right now (and a part of the reason why so many are defecting to Apple.)
Here's another reason why the glass is half-full, not half-empty: two years ago, before the advent of the budget-ULV CPU, you were looking at $2000 for a computer with half the performance (and no GPU) and worse battery life than what we are getting now (just think if your best option in the 13" category was the Dell Adamo...)
Finally, I don't think it's fair to look at the U30Jc and say, oh look, it's been six months and they haven't improved anything. The U35Jc is not intended as the successor to the U30, it is a *variant.* It's like we are already expecting a brand new model but, come on, it's been just six (actually, five from shipping) months! Asus doesn't have infinity engineering resources and it's a bit much to expect brand new iterations every six months...the U35 is just supposed to be a minor tweak.
The U35 (/U30-series) is not perfect but it's by far the best 13" we (windows folk) got right now; I think for that it deserved at least a bronze award...
All that said I think Anandtech has among the most honest laptop reviews on the net right now, but sometimes they can go overboard with the negativity. I know that the intention is for the manufacturers to make better products, but sometimes you just need to sit back for a moment and realize, whoa, everything's amazing and nobody's happy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link
We need to be critical when we think companies can do better. It's true an ultraportable in this price range was unheard of just a couple of years ago, but that doesn't mean we should just accept what we have either. I like the U35Jc, but I like the U30Jc better because it performs better and for some inexplicable reason produces superior battery life.We even tried giving ASUS' "Super Hybrid Engine" a shot but it didn't add more than maybe forty minutes of useful running time. That's not bad, but it's small beans when you're dealing with portables that are already hitting over six hours, and it still wasn't enough to make up the difference between it and the U30Jc.
We actually gave the U30Jc a Bronze Award, and I would still recommend that notebook over this one.