ASUS UX31A: Putting the Ultra in Ultrabooks
by Jarred Walton on August 28, 2012 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Intel
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Zenbook Prime
- Ultrabook
Benchmark Setup
We’ve covered our current selection of benchmarks previously, but in order to keep the graphs a bit more manageable so we can just say “ASUS UX31A” in the charts instead of “ASUS UX31A-DB71 (i7-3517U, HD 4000, 4GB DDR3-1600, 256GB SSD, 50Wh, 13.3-inch 1080p IPS LCD”, we’ve put together this handy reference table of the laptops we’ll be using in this review in the following table. Since this is an Ultrabook review, we’re focusing on Ultrabooks along with a couple of smaller laptops. If you’d like to make your own comparisons, our full selection of laptops is available in Mobile Bench. Note also that all of the laptop names in the following table link to the appropriate review.
| Laptop Configuration Overview | ||||
| Laptop | CPU | Graphics | Storage | Battery |
| Acer TimelineU M3 | Intel i7-2637M | GT640M/HD3000 | 256GB SSD | 55Wh |
| AMD Trinity Prototype | AMD A10-4600M | HD7660G | 128GB SSD | 56Wh |
| ASUS Zenbook Prime UX21A | Intel i7-3517U | HD4000 | 256GB SSD | 35Wh |
| ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A | Intel i7-3517U | HD4000 | 256GB SSD | 50Wh |
| ASUS Zenbook UX31E | Intel i7-2677M | HD3000 | 256GB SSD | 48Wh |
| Clevo W110ER | Intel i7-3720QM | GT650M/HD4000 | 750GB Hybrid | 62Wh |
| Dell XPS 13 | Intel i7-2637M | HD3000 | 256GB SSD | 47Wh |
| HP Envy 14 Spectre | Intel i7-3667U | HD4000 | 2x128GB SSDs | 56Wh |
| HP Folio 13 | Intel i5-2467M | HD3000 | 128GB SSD | 60Wh |
| Ivy Bridge Ultrabook Prototype | Intel i5-3427U | HD4000 | 240GB SSD | 47Wh |
First, you’ll notice that every system tested in the above charts uses an SSD for storage, with the exception of the Clevo W110ER. That particular laptop used a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB hybrid drive, mostly because we wanted to get a feel for how it compared to pure SSD storage. The short answer: it doesn’t. While best-case workloads might not look bad, in practice there’s a big difference between SSDs and hybrid solutions. 64GB of SSD caching might be enough to eliminate most of the difference, but at that point you could just run with a 64GB OS+Apps drive.
In the other areas, we have eight Ultrabooks—four Sandy Bridge models and four Ivy Bridge models—plus our reference AMD Trinity laptop and the aforementioned W110ER. While Trinity is a 35W TDP processor, the improved gaming potential is certainly worth a look, and in practice battery life isn’t all that different from ULV Ultrabooks—though the size is generally quite a bit thicker unless you opt for a low voltage A10-4655M (which we still haven’t been able to test). Looking at the sizes of the laptops, the UX21A and W110ER both sport 11.6” LCDs, although the W110ER chassis is substantially larger than the 13.3” Ultrabooks. The AMD Trinity and HP Envy 14 Spectre are 14”-screen laptops, the Acer M3 is our sole 15.6” representative, and the remaining five Ultrabooks sport 13.3” LCDs.
We’ll draw two major comparisons throughout this review by highlighting the numbers in the graphs. Besides the UX31A, we’ll look at how much ASUS has improved since the UX31E, and we’ll also see how the UX31A stacks up to the prototype IVB Ultrabook from Intel. We’ll also highlight the Trinity results in AMD red, just so they’re easy to spot, but it’s not a major focus of the review. And with that out of the way, let’s get to the benchmarks.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
I didn't see any stickers, so you should be able to remove the HSF with a bit of effort. I didn't try to do this but the screws are easily accessible. I should note that I tried to disconnect the battery plug and gave up for fear of breaking something, though, so maybe it won't be so easy. LOLj_c - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
"and stay away from the SanDisk U100 if you want decent SSD performance"More details on that particular issue would be nice.
Do you know a way to distinguish between these two models?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
AFAIK, ASUS is not shipping the U100 any longer because of the performance issues. You can see where the UX31E and UX21A (with U100) rate in the PCMark 7 Storage suite -- basically the slowest SSD solution we've tested recently. What I don't know is whether ASUS figured out something with the ADATA SF-2281 firmware; I never experienced errors, but the BSOD issue still remains on some laptops/desktops.j_c - Thursday, August 30, 2012 - link
Very interesting, because over here in Germany, it seems the Sandisk model is the only one available. One commenter on amazon.de cites a call by Asus Customer Support, that no ADATA models will be available for now.JarredWalton - Saturday, September 8, 2012 - link
Apparently there are plenty of U100 equipped units shipping; I've updated the conclusion.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
Can anyone make an educated guesstimate on how much a typical ultrabook would cost if it included this specific display, only a 128GB SSD, 4GB of RAM and the cheapest trinity A8?JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
How much to make or how much it would sell for? In terms of BoM costs, it would probably be around $100 less than the Core i5 version ASUS is selling right now. Retail pricing is the real question. Right now, HP's Sleekbook 6z-1000 sells for $225 less than the Intel i5-3317U variant, but that's also with the A6-4455M which would be substantially slower than full voltage A8. The A10-4655M ought to be reasonably fast in graphics vs. Intel ULV, but we haven't been able to test it and it's $100 more than the A6 version ($125 less than Intel).The big problem is that no one is making 13.3" AMD-based "sleekbooks" that I know of -- links if you have them, please. And in fact, their AMD Sleekbooks are the worst thing I can think of: a 15.6" 1366x768 display with an ultra-thin form factor. Do people want 15.6" thin laptops that much? I feel most people going for ultra-thin are going to want 14" or smaller.
Actually, the biggest problem is getting someone to make a 13.3" AMD laptop with a premium quality LCD. It's possible in theory, but getting the bean counters to agree to spend $100 more or whatever for a "premium" IPS 1080p display while going with a "budget" AMD APU is a very long shot. Heck, getting premium displays in consumer laptops in general is hard enough -- the 1080p UX21A/UX31A/UX32VD are the exception. Others might follow ASUS' lead in the future, but I expect all the quality LCDs to reside in $1000+ laptops for a while yet.
ReverendDC - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
I understand that SSD is faster, but I would like more mention of the dependability or lack therein of SSD. I am not sure of the warranty on this device, but if it is a year, you may have issues, especially if you move large chunks on and off the drive regularly (as you probably would for movies and music when taking the laptop on travels). Most SSDs have a warranty of three years, and even AnandTech has stated that you should expect about 5 years of storage, but anything more is gravy.I have 15 year old spinning platters that still give data, although there are some bad sectors starting to crop up. Obviously, I am not willing to go backwards, but SSD is not the best use case in every scenario, especially if data fidelity is a top requirement, even if it is much speedier. What we really need is a price cut in SLC modules, which are far more reliable, with better capacity.
That being said....thanks for the great review. Informative as always.
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
SSD durability is still far greater than five years for all but the most strenuous use cases, so I'm not too concerned about that. If you're constantly writing data to SSDs, you can burn through it faster, but Anand did some testing where he calculated even extreme use cases would still last five years. Five years from now, I suspect other areas of the laptop are likely to be failing (fans, hinges, whatever), and when an SSD runs out of cycles you can still read data off of it.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
As we have stated in numerous SSD reviews, the endurance of current MLC NAND is not a problem for consumer use.