ASUS U35Jc: Jogging in Place
by Dustin Sklavos on September 30, 2010 3:00 AM ESTThe Daintier U35Jc
Maybe the headline isn't fair: the ASUS U35Jc is certainly smaller than the U30Jc, but "dainty" isn't necessarily the right word: maybe "sleek" is more appropriate. "Dainty" suggests flimsy build quality, but the brushed aluminum lid of the U35Jc is firm, attractive, and cool to the touch. The screen is LED backlit, keeping with the modern trend of ultraportables, and results in a fairly thin profile.
When you open the U35Jc, you're unfortunately greeted with the only major instance of glossy plastic, and naturally in the worst possible place: the screen bezel. It's enough of a mystery why manufacturers continue to use glossy plastics (though thankfully they're starting to become a little more scarce), but why would you use it on the one part of the notebook (outside of the keyboard and touchpad) most likely to see fingertips? It's a minor complaint but a relevant one: a glossy screen bezel is a smudge factory. The other instance of glossy plastic is at least someplace you're less likely to care, which is above the keyboard. There's a black accent on the top of the battery, between the screen hinges, and at least it matches pretty well and doesn't call attention to itself.
The inside surface of the U35Jc is, I'm sorry to say, not aluminum, but at least is an attractive silver that matches the lid well enough. Credit where credit is due, the pattern in the plastic is nice and subdued, giving it a textured look, and overall the inside of the U35Jc is nicely minimalistic. There are only two shortcut buttons outside of the keyboard: one on the upper left for switching power plans in ASUS' Power4Gear software, and a power button with a blue LED backlight on the upper right.
Chiclet keyboards are in fashion right now, so if you don't like them, the one in the U35Jc probably isn't going to change your mind. That said, it's a good one, with very minimal flex (a welcome change from some other ASUS units we've tested), and an intelligent layout. The keyboard's a comfortable one, and the keys are thankfully a textured matte plastic. That may seem bog standard, but after dealing with the bizarre aluminum island-style keys on the Gateway ID49C and pretty much any Toshiba consumer notebook, a sensible keyboard design is welcome. ASUS doesn't reinvent the wheel anywhere on this keyboard, either: the layout is what you would expect, and that's perfectly fine.
It's a shame the touchpad isn't very good, though. ASUS along with many other manufacturers has made it a habit of integrating the touchpad with the rest of the shell lately, presumably because it reduces costs, but it also reduces quality and makes the notebook look cheap. While I appreciate a textured touchpad (something I know is a matter of taste), an entirely different surface would have been better. The rocker-style touchpad button needs to go the way of the dinosaur, too. At least it's not a unified touchpad as has become fashionable for HP and others these days, though: shoddy knock-offs of the MacBook Pro touchpad can make mousing a nightmare.
Circling the U35Jc, we find that the port selection isn't a big winner either. I seem to remember ASUS making a concerted push for USB 3.0 on many of their laptops, so its stunning absence here is felt, especially when there isn't at least an eSATA/USB combo port to make up the difference. No ExpressCard, no eSATA, no USB 3.0, no FireWire. Hope you like transferring data over USB 2.0.
Access to the internals is extremely basic and actually somewhat unusual for an ASUS machine. There are two separate hatches on the bottom, one for accesing the hard disk and hard disk only, and one for accessing the two RAM slots and the two RAM slots only. Under part of the hard disk bay you can actually see the antenna connections for the wireless card. It's disappointing that upgradeability is so minimal; larger ASUS machines tend to be very forthcoming. One thing that does concern me is the lack of any ventilation to the hard disk, though. It's true that notebook drives don't generate that much heat, and SSDs even less, but at least a little bit of ventilation would've been welcome.
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justaviking - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
You stole my thunder....no excuse for NOT going with the faster hardware...
Even though I'm not in the market for a laptop, I still enjoy the articles. As with all AnandTech articles, I enjoy the blend of factual/analytical reporting blended with opinions any "why" commentary.
It's so easy to claim that you do or do not like something. But WHY? When that is included, we can decide if we agree or not, or if the comment even applies to us.
ONE EXTRA NOTE TO DUSTIN: Beware of too much light sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek commentary. Some people may get confused, especially if it is overdone. I like the style, just be careful to not get carried away.
Thanks again, and keep up the good work.
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
I do try to keep it in check. I'm actually still pleasantly surprised how much they let me get away with here. ;)If you want to see how bad it can actually get, you should look up the stuff I do/have done for NotebookReview. I've been getting away with murder there for years.
Kegetys - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
> The battery on our review unit is operating at a reduced capacity, substantial enough to account for a small portion of the differenceHow many full discharge-recharge cycles did you put the battery through? I think all li-ion batteries require at least a few such cycles to reach the max capacity, as the battery of my UL30VT did. But as the capacity starts to drop off after some use maybe it is better to not test with the max capacity as it won't retain that for a very long time...
synaesthetic - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
Dear nvidia,Please kill the GT218 core dead.
No love for you,
Cori
I would be perfectly okay with this being 50% thicker if I could get a GT 335M or Mobility Radeon 5650 inside it.
...
Dear Asus,
Stop using crappy 1366x768 screens.
No love for you,
Cori
MrSpadge - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
"no reason not to go with 7.2k rpm HDDs"I disagree: there's noise. I went from a Toshiba 160 GB to a Scorpio Black 320 GB, both 7.2k rpm and both considered very silent in reviews. However, mounted in a Thinkpad (some rubber around the drive) both drives are clearly louder than my desktop with ~7 fans and 24/7 load of ~300W. In silent environments the noise can disturb my concentration.
- Screens: hurray for kicking them for the crappy TN panel again. At least give us an IPS option, Asus!
- GPU: personally I don't want to pay for a fast GPU in a laptop as I woudn't really use it anyway. So I'm definitely not with you here if you continously ask for better models. The G310M at least gives one a solid driver, if the Intel fails.
- GPU-Memory: 1 GB at 64 Bit is ridiculous! I wouldn't want to pay for that either. Mine's got 16 shaders as well combined with 128 MB and frankly it's always been enough for me.
- Keyboard: and while we're at it.. give us a Thinkpad keyboard ;)
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
My experience with 7200rpm notebook drives has been a bit better. The Momentus 7200.4 in my Studio 17 is dead silent, but I'm one of the freaks that misses hearing the drive anyhow.As for the GPU, if you're not interested in the 310M, that's fine. The way I see it, there are either users like you that don't really care about the laptop's GPU, so just sticking with Intel's HD IGP would be fine...or there are users that do care about the laptop having a decent GPU, in which case the 310M is dismal. I just don't see anywhere on this spectrum where the 310M justifies its existence, and mercifully with the upgraded IGPs in Sandy Bridge, Ontario, and Llano, this isn't going to be a problem anymore.
Alex Smith - Thursday, September 30, 2010 - link
I'm a newbie here, is there a place to request reviews of other laptops?For example, my boss is looking at getting a Sony VAIO Z Series Laptop and it would be nice to know how it compared to the others you have reviewed here.
Cheers.
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link
The comments are the best place to go, but the problem is that we can only review what the companies send us. Some companies, like ASUS, MSI, Dell, or Acer, are very forthcoming. ASUS in particular is downright hungry for a piece of the pie and they've really been working at it.Sony, though...the only places you're going to find reviews of their kit are the MAJOR consumer-grade publications. My "alma mater" (so to speak) NotebookReview.com doesn't even get Sony hardware.
You can always request reviews in the comments and we do our best to see if we can't secure review hardware. From there, the best thing you can do is just read the reviews and recommend them to friends. The more read we get, the more pull we'll have to get the review hardware you guys want to see.
Evil_Sheep - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link
I feel like the review was a bit overly critical. I know there are a lot of things that could be improved on the U35Jc but, let's put it in perspective, if you want a "Windows MBP" this is as close as you're going to get, and the U30/33/35 family is actually better in some respects (primarily: value for money.)The fact is, there is no other notebook right now in the Windows solar system that is touching the U30-series trinity of Value, Performance, and Battery Life. Personally I think those are the three most important specs to hit on a computer, particularly in the 13" category. No one else is even close, and I feel like Asus is the only OEM who "gets it" right now (and a part of the reason why so many are defecting to Apple.)
Here's another reason why the glass is half-full, not half-empty: two years ago, before the advent of the budget-ULV CPU, you were looking at $2000 for a computer with half the performance (and no GPU) and worse battery life than what we are getting now (just think if your best option in the 13" category was the Dell Adamo...)
Finally, I don't think it's fair to look at the U30Jc and say, oh look, it's been six months and they haven't improved anything. The U35Jc is not intended as the successor to the U30, it is a *variant.* It's like we are already expecting a brand new model but, come on, it's been just six (actually, five from shipping) months! Asus doesn't have infinity engineering resources and it's a bit much to expect brand new iterations every six months...the U35 is just supposed to be a minor tweak.
The U35 (/U30-series) is not perfect but it's by far the best 13" we (windows folk) got right now; I think for that it deserved at least a bronze award...
All that said I think Anandtech has among the most honest laptop reviews on the net right now, but sometimes they can go overboard with the negativity. I know that the intention is for the manufacturers to make better products, but sometimes you just need to sit back for a moment and realize, whoa, everything's amazing and nobody's happy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
Dustin Sklavos - Friday, October 1, 2010 - link
We need to be critical when we think companies can do better. It's true an ultraportable in this price range was unheard of just a couple of years ago, but that doesn't mean we should just accept what we have either. I like the U35Jc, but I like the U30Jc better because it performs better and for some inexplicable reason produces superior battery life.We even tried giving ASUS' "Super Hybrid Engine" a shot but it didn't add more than maybe forty minutes of useful running time. That's not bad, but it's small beans when you're dealing with portables that are already hitting over six hours, and it still wasn't enough to make up the difference between it and the U30Jc.
We actually gave the U30Jc a Bronze Award, and I would still recommend that notebook over this one.