ASUS Zenbook (UX21) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2011 8:00 PM ESTBattery Life
With limited time to test before I board a plane to Nokia World in London I only had time to run through one of our standard PC battery life scripts. I chose the web browsing test which involves frequent opening/closing of web pages until the battery runs out. It's a pretty stressful test that's not just indicative of web browsing but also battery life in general.
As you may have already seen from our UX21 teaser earlier this week, performance here is as expected. The UX21 has a 35Wh integrated (technically non-removable) battery, which just isn't a whole lot of capacity—particularly compared to your more run of the mill 13- and 14-inch notebooks. Battery life is naturally the price you pay for portability and form factor. You're looking at around 4.5 hours of continuous usage on a single charge. Obviously run something more CPU intensive and that number will drop considerably.
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losonn - Sunday, October 30, 2011 - link
Any chance the UX31's 900p display is better? Any chance of reviewing the UX31 is the future?losonn - Sunday, October 30, 2011 - link
Any chance of an UX31 review? Is the screen on the larger model any better / worse than the UX21?cab2012 - Thursday, November 3, 2011 - link
As a designer this is getting increasing more pathetic. There are many configurations and designs that can be produced without stealing other designs from a competitor who product is widely known for its industrial design. I know there is a lot of copycats, but seriously copying the style of famous Apple transformer?Oh wait it is different, its BLACK. The whole thing looks like a MBA only thunderbolt-less, and crappier graphics. Who do they think they are fooling. Only the dumb customers stupid enough to buy one of these and IT does not even have a magsafe power adapter? Who in their right mind would buy a laptop without a magsafe adapter. As someone who has an owned a laptop that was yanked off a countertop by a running dog caught up in the power cord, I would find impossible to believe that a computer laptop company would make a laptop without a magsafe adapter. Absolutely idiotic.
"While I can't quite pinpoint ASUS' source of inspiration for the Zenbook UX21's 45W power brick design, the end product looks great. Cable management is handled via a standard velcro strap and the power connector itself has an LED on it that glows orange when charging or green when fully charged. "
seriously really? blatant copying. you mean just like the connector on all mac laptops for how many years now, 6-7? Only not magsafe.
"Unfortunately It also glows green when it's not connected, which can cause confusion if you plug it in but don't push the connector in all the way. Is it fully charged or just not fully connected? Guessing is half the fun!" copycats and half-assed copycats at that. IF you going to steal others ideas, because your designers are pathetic then at least have good engineers to make the product work, but I guess that is TOO much to ask from thieves.
netmann - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
Asus Zenbook UX31E-DH52 with 128 GB Adata SSD and Intel i7-2677M CPU is available in UK but not in US!!! Does anyone know the reason?Also the Asus Global site has Windows 7 Pro as one of Operating System choices, but not for US!
ianken - Thursday, November 10, 2011 - link
...I'm hitting it. Asus test lab failtrain now boarding on RMA track to newegg.RAGE.
reebsauce - Sunday, November 13, 2011 - link
Does anyone know if the processor/GPU can handle HD video editing without issues? For example, I use Sony Vegas on my desktop (Core i7 860 2.8GHz, ATI Radeon HD 5700) and I'm wondering if I'll be able to do the same with the Zenbook... if so, will I be able to perform other tasks while videos are processing (like browsing the Web)?KrisB - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 - link
Does the Zenbook have the capability to close the cover and not power off when an external monitor is connected?Mateusz - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
To begin with you pay more than 1100 euro for this laptop1) After 4 weeks of using the power socket breaks... laptop is shutting down randomly, due to problems with socket, and battery is not charging. I have to turn around the plug and play with it, to be able to use laptop
2) I tried to return it to shop, no its not possible to return it to shop after 6 weeks, but they can replace it, by sending it to Asus, it will take approximately 1 month because there is no real service in Netherlands, and they have to send it to France.
3) Website is sometimes down, and they don't answer phone calls
4) They don't give a fuck about Linux users, answer from service is "We don't support Linux platforms" in other words "Go fuck yourself, you already paid loser".
5) Its hard to open it, it gets dirty very easy, and LCD panel is moving too loosely, and its overheating (i7). I could probably add that auto-updating tool from Asus is crashing on Windows, and some of their software runs MS-DOS command line on startup...
So currently, since its may daily working tool, I cannot afford to be without laptop for 1 month, I am waiting till it'll break totally, and than maybe I will donate it to some homeless people.
MikeWoods - Monday, October 29, 2012 - link
I purchased 3 (2 for sales staff) Asus Zenbook first generation UX21E notebooks (1 I7 and 2 I5s) and have been very dissatisfied with all three. The keyboard problems are incredibly troublesome. It is difficult to type anything without missing letters or having the curser jump to other locations while typing.Would I buy again? I don't think so. Asus would have to replace all three laptops for me to ever consider buying Asus again. I do have an office full of desktop computers, all with ASUS motherboards and have been happy with the desktops.
To ASUS: if you would like to make good on these computers, you can contact me on any phone number you find at the bottom of http://www.mswoods.com.
Or, contact me by mail
Mike Woods
msWoods Real Estate, LLC
4111 Wythe Ln
Indianapolis, IN 46250