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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JarredWalton - Thursday, May 20, 2010 - link
I'll try running that once as a reference point. Is there a way to loop a PowerPoint slide? I'm guessing that's what you mean: external display, PowerPoint, and battery power right?Furuno - Friday, May 21, 2010 - link
Yes. And for looping the slide, you can set it by going to the Slide Show menu and pressing the Set Up Slide Show Button, and there's should be a loop continuosly checkbox in the dialogue box. Oh, and you'll need to adjust the Advance Slide option under Transition Menu.Best regards,
Furuno
MacGyver85 - Thursday, May 20, 2010 - link
Excellent article, thanks for the thorough and honest review.The only thing that keeps me away from buying these (or any) laptops is the abysmal display quality.
Maybe you guys could literally set the bar for the manufacturers ?!
You could add bars to the display graphs that would say: abysmal, decent, good, industry leading quality or something similar.
That way we'd see at a glimpse what is worth buying and what is not in this category.
Hopefully it will encourage more manufacturers to give higher priority to a good panel instead of those extra few percentages of processor performance.
Setsunayaki - Friday, May 21, 2010 - link
4 hours of DVD playback time isn't so bad, though the idle state gives us a 550 minute battery life.The important thing with a laptop, which is being challenged lately by the latest cell phones is application speed.
An example:
Task: Taking an image on site and sending it to all your friends.
I used to use laptops for this, way before cell phones had cameras....I used to take a picture on a digital camera, then upload them to my laptop by USB. I then would have to find some Wireless Network out there...or Wired Connection to deal with the internet...and then send an email to everyone with Attachment. This takes forever on a laptop....
Today I can just get to the site or target location.....I can sneak around and take an image with a phone....and then I can use the 3G coverage of an area and send an email with that attachment to everyone to everyone in my list...All in the time it takes for a laptop to start up and set up.
The more laptops try to take the role of mobile-desktops, the farther they will drift from the concepts of what mobility (and stealth) brings to the table, and the slower they will become each generation against cell phones.
There is a reason why more people today buy an iPhone or GooglePhone these days....
Specially the idea that voice recognition software is becoming more and more common....Its fun to be able to say something and have it record a note, or dial a number....
I can say "I need to buy eggs and bread" and walk into a store and play it back.....than having to type it.
The more they try to make a laptop into a mobile-desktop, the more mobility it actually loses and the slower it becomes vs the cell phone craze...Yes, its amazing how a $3000 laptop doesnt hold a candle to the speed one can do things on the IPhones and other Phones out there that compete against it.
T2k - Monday, May 24, 2010 - link
Seriously: LIGHT at almost 5lbs?I hope Asus paid a lot for this piece - it would be awful to realize you just made a complete fool of yourself publicly for chump change...
Alexo - Saturday, July 10, 2010 - link
Can you get your hands on a PL30JT?Supposed to have an i5 processor and a matte screen, maybe a little better battery life as well.
I would love for you to review it (or even a quick comparison with the U30JC).
Thanks,
Alex.
mrmbmh - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
very very useful article for me!I've found Vaio S Series a good competitor against this laptop...same weight...same processor...same graphic chip... but there are a few articles about S series.. and seriously... This website is one of the few websites I can trust :)
So can you read an article about S series? I love U30jc but as you mentioned it has a poor screen... I think vaio makes better displays...
thanks anyway...