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 Test
To keep the charts clean and simple I omitted a lot of the config details of each of the notebooks. For your reference, here's the configuration of each of the notebooks in our tests:
Dell Inspiron 11z (SU4100 + GMA4500 + HDD + 56Wh)
Performance
As I mentioned earlier in this review/preview, the deal ASUS worked out with Intel prevents us for discussing clock speeds or specifications of the ULV Ivy Bridge silicon in the Zenbook Prime. Obviously the silicon is going to fit within the same 17W TDP as its predecessor so don't expect huge differences in clock speeds.
If you take into account Quick Sync and its SSD, the Zenbook Prime is an extremely quick solution. Looking at the breakdown of PCMark scores you get a much more realistic look at where the ULV IVB fits into things.
In some areas the Sandisk U100 holds the Zenbook prime back, here it's actually slower than its predecessor. Despite all of its issues throughout most of last year, SandForce was always fast.
I threw in a PCMark Vantage graph as we have a lot of older data in that benchmark that can help put things in perspective:
It's amazing the sort of performance gains we're able to show over the older Core 2 based ultra portables like the Dell Inspiron 11z and Adamo 13. Again we see a slight performance deficit versus the SandForce based UX21E.
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netmann - Saturday, June 9, 2012 - link
Anand did not open the bottom panel of UX21A this time around! But, I am curious to see if the SanDisk U100 is still the Gum Stick or the mSATA form factor. The SanDisk website does not show the Gum Stick type, only the mSATA and mini mSATA!If the SSD in UX21A is mSATA it can easily be upgraded with faster one such as Mushkin Atlas mSATA SSD. If U100 is Gum Stick perhaps it can be swapped with A-Data XM11 from previous Zenbook laptops or perhaps Runcore Rocket Air SSD. Your thoughts?
amosbatto - Sunday, June 10, 2012 - link
In GNU/Linux, you don't have the DPI scaling problem in menus, since its desktop environments let you set any font type and font size you want. Windows doesn't let you configure hardly anything.Anyone have any idea how well GNU/Linux supports this hardware? Since it is mostly stock Intel parts, I suspect that processor and graphics support is pretty good, but it would be nice to know if things like switchable TDP are possible. More importantly, does suspend and hibernate work correctly? How is the battery life in GNU/Linux.
And then there is the problem of touchpads, webcams, special buttons, etc. It would be really nice if review sites would list all the internal parts so we can google them and figure out what is supported in GNU/Linux, BSD, Haiku, etc. Not everybody likes to live in proprietary prisons.
amrs - Tuesday, July 31, 2012 - link
There are some issues with Linux but seem to be fixes too. Seems usable to me.See http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2005756 for discussion and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbookPrime for a wiki about the issues and fixes.
memin1857 - Friday, June 15, 2012 - link
I got the UX31A today and it has the 256GB ADATA XM11 Sandforce SSD! the package has the Sandforce Driven by LSI sticker. Also on the aliminium case. The model is UX31A-R4003V Turkish model with i7 cpu, FHD IPS Panel and 256GB SSD. I do not know if sandisk versiona exist. It was a nice surprise, I was worries about Sandisk U100 but it turns out to be Adata Sandforce :)netmann - Sunday, June 17, 2012 - link
Congratulation memin1857!I am also thinking of getting the UX31A or UX21A, however these are not available in US just yet! I currently own the UX31E. Did you get a chance to open the back panel to check the SSD in your UX31A? I am interested to know if your 256 GB ADATA XM11 is still a gum-stick format or a standard mSATA format. I am thinking of swapping the XM11 in my UX31E with the possible U100 in the A series laptops.
ilkhan - Saturday, June 23, 2012 - link
Swap the mini-VGA for a thunderbolt connector, remove the micro-HDMI and power LED for a full sized HDMI port.Fit a Gbit port on there somewhere or at least a bottom connected docking station with power/video/GBit/Sound.
Add a haswell quad CPU and a time appropriate midrange nVid GPU.
I'll get one next year.
Zodryn - Wednesday, July 4, 2012 - link
I recently received my ux31a from Amazon, and noticed a few interesting things:1) There are only two options in the configurable tdp section. 1.7GHz and 1.0GHz at 13W. There is no 16 or 17W option. This bothers me, as I was hoping for better gaming performance than my old ux21e, but at 13W, it was virtually the same. I could really use that extra bump. Anyone know why this is the case?
2) Adata SSD! This laptop is lightning fast. I attribute a good chunk of its speed to Sandforce.
3) When I have the brightness set to max, it is sometimes quite dim. It randomly and gradually brightens at times until it is very bright and pleasant to look at even in direct sunlight. It seems to have issues staying at a consistent brightness.
As a final note, my old ux21e (sandforce) boots in 16 seconds consistently. The ux31a (also sandforce), boots in 26 seconds consistently. This confuses me greatly.
yatahaze - Friday, August 3, 2012 - link
I've had a UX31A for a little over a month now, and my drive has gone horribly corrupt simply after waking it from sleep. Many many many errors reported by disk utilities.veteran_n00b - Thursday, August 23, 2012 - link
This just happened to me this morning. Tried to wake from sleep but the system was unresponsive. Forced shutdown and then it would not boot. I was able to get it going again with boot repair. Then I ran chkdsk the system file checker and found that there were a lot of corrupted files!Oh yeah, this is my 2nd laptop which I am in the process of returning because the webcam stopped working. My first one stopped charging one day so I had to return that.
I really want to like this laptop but wow, such quality issues!
ijozic - Tuesday, August 21, 2012 - link
I guess the review needs some update regarding the Ivy Bridge CPUs and the battery life in the low power mode, etc.