Ultrabook Head to Head: Acer Aspire S3 vs. ASUS UX31E
by Jarred Walton & Manveer Wasson on December 21, 2011 5:40 AM ESTNetbook Levels of Battery Life
When netbooks came on the scene, they made the idea of a $1000+ ultraportable seem rather laughable. Several years later we’re rebranding ultraportables as ultrabooks (provided they have Intel Inside) and giving it another go. Of course, ultrabooks pack a few tricks like SSDs for better battery life and performance, and Intel’s ULV Sandy Bridge processors are proving to be very efficient when it comes to saving power. We ran our usual suite of battery life tests, with the LCDs set to as close to 100 nits as possible (50% brightness on the Acer S3 and 18% brightness on the ASUS UX31E).
The Acer has a much smaller 3-cell battery, but even with a 38Wh capacity it still boasts respectable battery life of over four hours of H.264 playback and nearly eight hours of idle time. Switch over to the UX31E and not only do you get a higher battery capacity, you also get apparently better power optimizations. In our H.264 test the ASUS “only” manages close to 5.5 hours of playback, while it jumps to 8.5 hours of Internet surfing and over 10.5 hours of idle time. Look at the relative battery life charts and the results are even more impressive: the three ultrabooks we’ve reviewed place at the top of the charts, and even if we compare with Atom, the UX31E matches and sometimes exceeds what the best netbooks could achieve; the other two ultrabooks where we’ve done full reviews also place near the top of our relative battery life charts.
Something else we tested that we don’t have in the above charts is idle battery life with the LCD at maximum brightness. The Acer drops to 400 minutes, but then it only gets about 120% brighter as we’ll see on the next page. The UX31E on the other hand does a swan dive down to just 357 minutes, but you have to take into consideration the 450% increase in brightness. Put another way, power draw for the Acer is around 4.7W at 107 nits (50%) and 5.59W at 234 nits (100%); the ASUS on the other hand uses 4.38W at 93 nits (18%) and jumps up to 7.91W at 519 nits (100%). Even though that’s a pretty big jump in power use, we still have to credit the LED backlighting technology: 500+ nits for less than 5W of power isn’t really that bad.
The short summary here is that you may have to pay more, but you do get substantially better performance than a netbook, you don’t sacrifice much in the size or battery life departments, and build quality is generally far higher than inexpensive laptops and netbooks. Does that make ultrabooks a better option than other laptops? Not for everyone, but there are certainly people that will like what ultrabooks have to offer.
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djpavcy - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Jarred,Can you comment further on the touchpad of the UX31? You seem to like it, but Anand in his original review of the UX21 found it to be horrible. For that matter, so do I: I own a UX31 (the 256GB/core i-5 version) and the touchpad is bordering on useless: crappy cursor control, random and erratic shifts of the cursor, etc.
My suspicion is that the touchpad on Anand's review sample and on my laptop are ones made by Sentelic but the one in yours is made by Elan which seems to be much better. Do you know anything about this? Is it a luck of the draw whether you will get a sentelic or an Elan touchpad or is it model dependent?
snuuggles - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
I owned the same model, and had an equally horrible time with the touchpad. I can't confirm the manufacturer, as I've already returned the unit based on this issue, and more importantly, what I suspect is a flawed keyboard design (though since some people seem to be ok with it, I'll admit it *could* be that I had a bad unit).But the touchpad was, indeed, horrible.
PS I followed up by purchasing a 13" MBA and installing win7. It was awesome, and I would have kept *that* except within the 2 week refund window I heard that there would be a huge number of ultrabooks introduced at CES this jan.
I just stuck an old SSD in my current laptop and am waiting till spring.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
I know Anand didn't like the UX21 he initially reviewed, but I had no problem with the UX31 touchpad. As I noted in the review, our sample is using Elan hardware/drivers, so if some are using Sentellic that would be a serious problem. Frankly, the worst touchpads I can recall using had Sentellic hardware.SirKronan - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
"We’ve got excellent 10.1” IPS panels now shipping in $400 tablets; why can’t we get a similar panel in 13.3” trim in a $1200 laptop? I’m probably preaching to the choir, but seriously: first IPS panel in a 13.3” laptop for under $1000 gets an Editor’s Choice award (as long as the rest of the laptop doesn’t completely suck)."I couldn't agree more. It makes no sense. They'd certainly look a lot more attractive sitting on display in the store with a good LCD. I guarantee that's one of the main reasons Apple's laptops grab so much attention from passers-by. Their screens are bright, contrasty, and display a good range of colors. If you set the Asus or Acer next to the Macbooks, along with their $1000 Ultrabook price tags, they won't look nearly as impressive. Performance and battery life are fine and dandy, but like you said, would it REALLY be soooo dang hard to put in a good screen at that price point?
Toughbook - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
What is so frustrating is that if Apple can do it, why can't the others? It's not like Apple makes a damn thing, it's all 3rd party work.Death666Angel - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
The power plug looks similar to my Acer one and I disagree that it is inferior to the old 2 cables with one PSU in the middle design. Those things always gave me trouble because I never had a good place to stuff the PSU, it would sometimes hang or be on the edge of something and fall down. It also has more connections to get loose and is more unwieldy in my experience (harder to store when on the go). :-)JarredWalton - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
My problem is the cable ends up being shorter, and the plug takes up more of your electrical outlet real estate. Not everyone will mind, but I certainly wouldn't call it an improvement over standard laptop power bricks.Death666Angel - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
You keep mentioning how great the MBA is compared to these in some areas, but you fail to mention any negative aspects of it, which distorts the picture quite a lot. I realize this is an article about 2 ultrabooks, but then either don't mention the MBA at all or include it fully.And if you say that the MBA can also run Windows, show it in the graphs as well.
The way you do it seems like just a promotion for Apple tbh.
JarredWalton - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
I linked our MBA review; unfortunately, I haven't had nearly as much time with a MacBook Air, and we didn't run all of our Windows tests on the MBA13 I don't think, but it's still mostly comparable. The one issue with MBA under Windows is that the keyboard keys are "mislabeled". I personally wouldn't buy an ultrabook or a MacBook Air -- the Dell XPS 15z is probable the best overall laptop for my personal usage habits -- but for those in the market I'd at least look at all the ultrabook style devices before plunking down money on one of them.vision33r - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
Today's world of $299-499 13-15" notebooks. People in general have gotten used to seeing Dell and HPs for under $500. While these are ultrabooks, people in general still have problem buying a $1000 Windows notebook unless it's a premium brand like Sony or Apple.What will end up happening is these will drop down to $699 and some parts getting cheapen and quality goes down. The Alienware m11x is the perfect example, the quality gotten worst with the m11x R3 versions because the price went down.