ASUS Zenbook (UX21) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2011 8:00 PM ESTPerformance
Raw CPU performance of the Zenbook's UX21 is obviously within the realm of the 11-inch MacBook Air, however its SSD really pushes it ahead of the MacBook Air in a lot of the PCMark 7 tests. PCMark tends to emphasize the benefits of an SSD but it really does illustrate just how much of a difference an SSD can make. A lot of the faster systems we've reviewed with mechanical drives simply feel slower than the Zenbook as a result of the latter having an extremely capable SSD. If there's any impact that Ultrabooks have on the market I hope it's the more widespread use of SSDs by OEMs.
Gaming performance is not a strong suit of the Zenbook UX21. Pretty much anything with a half-way decent discrete GPU is going to put this thing to shame. While you can play some games on the Zenbook, if you're planning on doing any real gaming with your notebook you probably don't want an Ultrabook.
Boot and Resume Time
ASUS did a lot of BIOS optimization work to make the UX21 boot as quickly as possible. In its default configuration you don't see a POST screen; instead you get a quick flash of the ASUS logo before immediately being dumped into the Windows 7 startup sequence. The whole process from power off to desktop takes 16.7 seconds, which is actually marginally little quicker than a MacBook Air from off to OS X (17.2 seconds).
Resume time is even more impressive. By default the UX21 goes into a suspend-to-RAM state when you shut the lid. Resuming from this state takes just a hair over 2 seconds (I measured anywhere from 2.04—2.22 seconds)—it's quick. The WiFi usually takes a couple more seconds to become active beyond that, and Windows doesn't remember your previous brightness setting just whatever setting the active power plan was set to upon resume. Other than those two hiccups, the experience is just awesome.
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Fradelius - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
what if i work in a corporative enterprise (90% windows) ? do i have to switch to osx, wich i dont like, coss its not for working?btw im a unix sysadmin
and still prefer windows for workstations.. ALL THE WAY...
the real question is, why would i go with a portable that has a different os than my workstation?
you dont have to hate apple to like this thing...
pdjblum - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
It seems the vast majority of folks responding have a hard-on for apple and believe they are superior because of it. Jobs certainly did, the arrogant bastard. Some of us are still tech enthusiasts and still prefer using Windows and the freedom it affords. This site has become apple-centric, no doubt.lukarak - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
Is Apple forcing you to use their OS?pdjblum - Monday, October 24, 2011 - link
How twisted are you man? This is a review of a windows laptop. How has it turned into a discussion by a bunch of apple fanboys about how great macs are? No one is forcing you to be a total dick.jconan - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
But then you would have to partition the drive and give away that precious space to Win7 and 64gigs the bare minimum on a MBA is a bit already stranded.Shadowmaster625 - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
I dont understand why so much memory is used in standby. Why not swap most out and then have one single low power DRAM chip powered up to store the ~256MB~512MB that cant be swapped out? Then you can sleep a long time and still have fast resume.pdjblum - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
Some of us who frequent AnandTech still prefer windows. Obviously Anand prefers apple and so do many, if not most, of his readers, or at least his more vocal ones. Comparing a windows machine to an apple machine is like comparing apples to oranges. Apple's control over hardware and software makes it much easier to insure things work just right; however that control is limiting as far as windows users are concerned.Of course, many of your apple users will react badly to my sentiment, which is odd since I don't see how I could have offended. You, and your readers, can make out of that sort of reaction what you will, but why be defensive if you have such a great thing, which I am sure it is, at least to you, and your readers.
lukarak - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
It will not be a bad reaction. However, buying a mac is not limiting, as you are free to use any operating system you wish. Buying any other pc is, because you are generally left without OSX.I have been using windows my whole life. And i still use them every day. But they run inside VMs on my Macs and other PCs i have 'equipped' with Mac OS X.
Sunburn74 - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
Not pcs fault that OSX can't run.lukarak - Sunday, October 23, 2011 - link
So? It's a fact, i don't care whose fault it is. It is not even a subject of fault. The clear fact is that with a mac i'm not limited in OS selection, either through VMs or 'native', and with a PC i am. So how is buying a mac limiting?