The Slightly Improved Screen

We gripe constantly about modern notebook screens and with good reason: they're generally terrible. Poor screen quality is something we've often picked on ASUS for in particular, and with each new iteration of their notebooks they proceed to not change the panel. Once again we find ourselves with a similar dilemma.

In Jarred's review of the U30Jc, he cited the screen as being pretty middling, yet with the U35Jc we have the exact same panel type and model on hand. It's neither terrible nor exciting: the glossy 1366x768 panel gets the job done, but it could do the job better.

 

 

Whatever ASUS changed behind the scenes, at least it improved the quality of this otherwise stunningly mediocre panel somewhat. (The same applies to the U33Jc LCD, incidentally, though delta E wasn't quite so low.) The backlighting of the U35Jc appears to be a bit stronger, allowing the panel to boast a substantially higher—but still not that great—contrast ratio. What's more impressive to us is that several of the spikes we routinely see on all TN laptop panels are noticeably lower. Perhaps it's just the normal variance in inexpensive panels from the LCD manufacturers, but our test U35Jc panel is clearly better than the U30Jc we looked at.

What do we do with this information, though? We've been asking ASUS to use better quality screens for a while now, and in the U35Jc they use the same old screen but at least improve the backlighting and colors a bit. Should we be happy with baby steps? On a 13.3" screen, the 1366x768 resolution is reasonable at least, so we can't cite that as an issue. But the vertical viewing angles shown above are still poor, and color gamut (but not accuracy) appears to be way behind the panels that Dell is using. The U35Jc's screen winds up being a wash (so to speak.)

Battery, Noise, and Heat The More Things Change...
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  • Evleos - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    I believe the 84wh battery belong to the black model, which also got a 640gb harddrive. The model you got (cheaper, different product number) got an 8-cell 64wh battery.
  • Evleos - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    U35JC-RX040V = the one you got.
    U35JC-RX070V = the one with 84wh battery.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    http://images.anandtech.com/galleries/795/asus-u35...
  • jonup - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    The battery on the picture says 15V*5600mAh => 84Wh
    When I first looked at the spec table it says 11.1V => 11.1*5600mAh=62Wh<84Wh
    Either way something does not make sence. I see other people caught up to that too.
    ... continuing reading...
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    I see. Fixed the table now.
  • XiZeL - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    here in portugal all u30jc models come with a i5 450m CPU , wouldnt that reduce battery life (8 cels: 5600 mAh)
  • neoflux - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    I think you mean Intel Wireless DISPLAY (http://www.intel.com/consumer/products/technology/...

    :D
  • SteelCity1981 - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    1gb of Ram on that GeForce 310m card that only supports 64bit bus is nothing more then a marketing gimmick towards novice gamers that don't know alot about gaming hardware.
  • JarredWalton - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    Sorry... blame the editor on that one. I usually say "WiDi" and somehow got the wrong words when I typed it out. :)
  • Tros - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link

    I disagree:

    Right-arrow key smack-dab next to "End".
    Enter, a slip-away from Pg-Dn.

    That entire "scroll-control" section needs to go back to IBM-style, in the upper-right corner, where it's guaranteed the same feel-based-clarity as the lower-left side of the keyboard.
    Or they could borrow the idea of using fn and the arrow-keys as scroll controls.

    I really don't see mimicking the right side of the keyboard as the right-side of your trackpad as intelligent.

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