ASUS Zenbook Prime (UX21A) Review: The First of the 2nd Gen Ultrabooks
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 22, 2012 2:46 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- CPUs
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Zenbook
- Zenbook Prime
- Ultrabook
- Notebooks
The Display in Numbers
The new 1080p panel looks good, but does it make any sacrifices in its performance? Thankfully, no. Max brightness is down a bit compared to the previous generation, but it's still higher than any of the portable Macs and much higher than your typical PC displays. Black levels are much improved over the original Zenbook as well:
The resulting contrast ratio is almost tablet-like:
It's not just the basics that ASUS delivers well on, color accuracy is top notch:
Color gamut is shy of the MacBook Pro but much better than the previous Zenbook and the MacBook Air:
Size is definitely an issue here. While I think the 1920 x 1080 panel will be a very good fit for the 13.3-inch UX31, there's a smaller subset of folks who are going to appreciate it in the 11.6-inch UX21. Personally I think it's fine but at 189 PPI the 11-inch Zenbook Prime is going to be a tough sell for those who have a tough time looking at small text.
Text on the 11-inch 1080p panel
ASUS' solution is to ship the UX21 with Windows set to 125% DPI scaling by default, unfortunately most applications (including many of Microsoft's own) don't deal with non-integer DPI scaling very well.
Here's what the default desktop looks like at 125%:
And here are examples of applications that don't behave well with Windows 7's DPI scaling:
In Skype, some text elements are tiny while others are huge. PCMark Vantage is an example of where you see this as well:
Here the scaled text actually can't fit in the area allocated for it, while the rest of the text is entirely too small.
There's not much you can do to work around this today with Windows 7. You're either going to have really small text or have to deal with funny scaling. This is unfortunately a major downside to not controlling the OS layer, ASUS is at the mercy of Microsoft to get scaling for displays with high pixel densities right. Windows 8 should be better in this regard but I ran out of time to try it out on the Zenbook Prime before the embargo lift.
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joe898 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
I guess you don't care about the annoyingly large bezel.Sunburn74 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
You're looking at the 11inch model and so the bezel seems amplified. A larger screen size makes that bezel seem more appropiate.That withstanding, the machine still looks phenomenal bezel and all.
joe898 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
Yes, I'm specifically looking for an 11.6" ultrabook. I'd actually sacrifice thinness to get the bezel and hence, the foot print smaller. The bezel on the 11.6" Asus makes the notebook look very cheap too.Bolas - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
So when and where can I buy one of these?Sunburn74 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
Agreed. If I could pre-order, I would.cwcwfpfp - Friday, May 25, 2012 - link
No official release date yet. A reasonable guess is that it will be available shortly after Computex though, which takes place June 5-9.DaveStall - Thursday, May 24, 2012 - link
I am a little bit curious about this comment in the review in resepect to noise:" I suspect much of this boils down to how aggressive Apple is about keeping fan speed/noise down". My wife has a current model 13" MBA and that thing sounds like a cross between a hair dryer and a leaf blower if she is doing anything remotely intense (which for her tends be be playing Flash based Facebook games). We are honestly ready to sell the MBA because of noise issues. If the Zenbook is louder than the MBA then the noise must be almost unbearable. That's too bad beuase I was hoping this would be something I could replace her MBA with.Malih - Saturday, May 26, 2012 - link
wondering how does Apple go from high-priced laptop to providing better value,but with good display, SSD, and Thunderbolt they have a competitive advantage compared to UX32A-DB51,
or is there a catch with Apple?
Enigmat - Saturday, May 26, 2012 - link
Is the HDD changeable? like changeable to a 7mm ssd ??Mhefnawy - Sunday, May 27, 2012 - link
can we Connect External Monitor to Asus Ultrabook and turn it's own off to check battery life with external screen while the internal is almost off to remove internal display backlight power from battery to identify how longer it will stay with its internal screen compare to external display then we do the same with the previouse model to check the value added by ivy bridge in battery life terms???