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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Lu-Max - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 - link
I own a UX31E and I can confirm that the Atheros AR9485WB-EG WIFI adapter installed in it is 2.4GHz capable ONLY. I was very disappointed when it would not connect to my N AP which was running in 5GHz mode.I confirmed this information with ASUS Technical Support. I could not find this specification listed anywhere for the Zenbook, not even on the ASUS site. Had I know this prior to purchase it would have been a key decision factor.
chrnochime - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
You whining about this laptop? Don't buy it. There's a new concept.Oh and btw 5GHz has sh!tty range/wall penetration so not everyone wants great speed at short ranges and no signal beyond that at all.
Filiprino - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Adding 5Ghz is $10 more at most. And 5Ghz is less prone to interferences. It's great for videostreaming, backups...jjj - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
Crappy perf,crappy battery life,crappy screen,crappy connectivity ,overpriced but thin.Devo2007 - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
You forgot to add "crappy post" at the end. Crappy trollduploxxx - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
expensive typing machine is a better word... afterall that is what you can do with it.fancy, fast enough cpu and HD without any graphics performance. Sure i can believe that it will only start to increase sales when IVY arrives, then they might finally be able to achieve some level of graphic performance.
silly OEM always follow the silly Intel rules just to sell there way to expensive cpu.
B3an - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
Nice first attempt. But i'd also like a better display, specifically better viewing angles, thats most important. Secondly i'd like a higher res for the 11 inch model, and 1080p for the 13 inch model. If this atleast had better viewing angles i would have bought this right away. Shame.I love how the battery life on this is better than the AIR, even with improved specs but same battery capacity on the Zenbook.
Impulses - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
Any plans to review the UX31 or will it be too redundant? I'm curious whether that model's screen will fare any better... I think it's probably gonna be the more popular model too.JarredWalton - Saturday, October 22, 2011 - link
Should be coming soon....Impulses - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
Cool, thanks!