ASUS U30Jc: Refining Thin and Light Performance
by Jarred Walton on May 18, 2010 11:23 PM ESTASUS U30Jc Battery Life
ASUS has lately put a larger focus on battery life, and in the case of the U30Jc they easily eclipse the competition by including an 8-cell, 84Wh battery instead of the typical 6-cell units we see. ASUS also has their Power4Gear utility that lets you tune battery powered features, including the ability to shut off power to the optical drive, webcam, and WiFi adapter. We disabled all of those devices as appropriate for our battery life testing (i.e. we left WiFi enabled on the Internet test and disabled on the other two), and it looks like it helps the U30Jc provide a bit more mobility relative to other i3/i5 laptops. We set the LCD at ~100nits brightness, which is 47% on the U30Jc (seven steps down from maximum brightness if you're using the Fn+F5 keyboard shortcut).
Like the HP 5310m review, we have also included idle and Internet battery life results with the standard laptop build in place—i.e. without uninstalling all of the bloatware. ASUS pre-installed Trend Micro Internet Security (a 60-day trial), so you'll see these results in the charts below. Idle battery life doesn't take much of a hit, which is what we expect since the system shouldn't be doing anything (though we didn't see this when testing the HP with McAfee). Internet battery life on the other hand drops quite a bit, again in line with what we'd expect: the Trend Micro firewall needs to do some extra work if you're surfing the Internet. Naturally, if you choose to run without any sort of protection, you assume a risk. Casual users that don't know how to "surf safe" may need to bite the bullet and take a battery life hit.
Considering the amount of performance packed into the U30Jc, the battery life is very respectable. In the "clean" state (which is how we tested all of the other laptops), maximum battery life is just over nine hours and Internet battery life is eight hours. Compared with the other i3/i5 laptops we've tested, the U30Jc is far ahead and even manages to beat out quite a few of the CULV laptops. Granted, that's largely due to the 8-cell battery, but in our relative battery life metric we still see a large lead over the other i3/i5 systems. Battery life during x264 playback (using Media Player Classic: Home Cinema and running on the Intel HD Graphics) we still get over four hours of battery life. It's interesting to note that the x264 test is the one result where the Lenovo T410 with a 9-cell battery is able to match the U30Jc.
With Trend Micro Internet Security enabled, battery life at idle drops about 3%—nothing too serious. Internet battery life in contrast drops 21%. Again, this is pretty much what we expected to see. Anyone who has used a system that's protected with anti-virus and internet security software can attest to the difference it makes in performance. That said, Trend Micro does appear to beat McAfee in light usage situations (McAfee caused a 35% drop in idle battery life on the HP 5310m), though we're not testing on the same hardware so we can't say for certain how the two compare. Stay tuned for more investigations in this area….
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jconan - Tuesday, May 25, 2010 - link
hopefully in the comparison it's compared using apples to apples os with proper driversLunyone - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
I would like to have a laptop with better resolution than the 13x768 for a 15"+ laptop. Even my 1280x800 current resolution is fine for the most part. I just don't like the limitation of 1366 x 768. It's wide enough, but the vertical real estate isn't as web page friendly as I would like.I also would like better GPU's in this category. Even the 3670 listed on the charts does quite well against the 310m on this laptop. Your right that the 5650 is about as minimum that I might consider for a budget friendly "gaming" laptop. Much less than that an you start to compromise your gaming options.
So here is what I'd buy right now from Asus if they had it:
* Dual core CPU (~2.2-2.6 gHz)
* Dedicated GPU (~5650 or equivalent)
* 4 gb's of RAM
* 7200 rpm HD (~250 gb's would be good, I'd even take 160 gb's to keep costs down if needed)
* 15" or larger LCD w/at least 1400 x 900 or better resolution.
Bundle that all into a laptop for ~$800-900 and I'm there. I know that this is asking for a bit, but that is the price range that I'll be shopping for.
acsa - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Manufacturers are still having a marketing department with sound fundaments of microeconomics and game theory ;) If your desire is strong, they find a way to milk you. So,you can either pay for that desire; or loose 132 pixel rows and buy a cheap timelineX 5820T with ATI 5650 with an introductionary guarantee of 3 years and spend the saved bucks on your family or on whatever is _really_ improving your life. Anyway, did these timelinex series arrive in the US?Lunyone - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
They aren't going to milk me. I just do research and buy what I need/want within my budget. I bought a Dell e1505 over 4 years ago with the best GPU that they had (ATI x1400). It has done very well for the 4 years that I've had it. It was about $900 and I've only had to replace the battery. I upgraded the RAM to 2 gb's (max supported) and also the HD to a 7200 rpm one. These were only in the last year, so I'd say I've been lucky and have had a very good experience in the $900 price range, for a budget gaming laptop :)acsa - Thursday, May 20, 2010 - link
Was a smart buy. I also take care about longevity and upgradeability when buying something. With "milking" I meant that when a model&configuration is designed, it is very carefully decided how to make really tricky deficiencies which are motivating to buy a 20% more expensive config.arnavvdesai - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
I believe ME2 uses the Unreal Engine whereas Dragon Age is a completely in house engine built by BioWare. Dragon Age engine was designed to be made for the PC initially and later ported to the consoles(PS3 last actually).JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Sorry, you're right. I just figured with such similar performance and coming from Bioware, they would use the same tech. DAO uses the Eclipse engine while ME2 uses Unreal Engine 3.5. (The original ME was UE3.) Anyway, neither game runs particularly well at minimum detail and 1366x768. I'll update the text....RAGETRON - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
My concern is about how loud typical actions done on this Asus would sound in a quiet environment such as a classroom or a library study area. Even though these actions might not be of concern in a normal environment, a quiet environment amplifies the sound and can be especially irritating to others around you and make one self conscious about how they are using their machine. So, how loud is a mouse click in such a very quiet environment (Library, classroom)? I imagine that the rocker button would be louder than laptops with two discrete buttons. Thinkpads seem to be very quiet in this regard. How loud can fast typing get on the chiclet style keyboard? And how about the sound level when the fan kicks in or hard drive churns?JarredWalton - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Noise levels are listed on page two: 33.5 dB at idle and 35.5dB at full load. Most of the time the laptop runs at ~33 dB. (My testing environment bottoms out my SPL meter at 30 dB.) The keyboard is about average... the Dell XPS 16 as an example has a softer, quieter key action, but most other laptops sound the same. The touchpad buttons aren't particularly loud, though they're a bit more clicky than some other touchpads. I think it has more to do with the specific design of a touchpad than it does with the rocker style. I figure as long as you're doing normal activities like taking notes no one will care about the noise the U30Jc makes. If you're playing games, though.... ;-)killerclick - Wednesday, May 19, 2010 - link
Small screen, too expensive, yet too thick and too heavy. Might as well go for a full-sized laptop.