ASUS Zenbook Prime (UX21A) Review: The First of the 2nd Gen Ultrabooks
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 22, 2012 2:46 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- CPUs
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Zenbook
- Zenbook Prime
- Ultrabook
- Notebooks
The Display in Numbers
The new 1080p panel looks good, but does it make any sacrifices in its performance? Thankfully, no. Max brightness is down a bit compared to the previous generation, but it's still higher than any of the portable Macs and much higher than your typical PC displays. Black levels are much improved over the original Zenbook as well:
The resulting contrast ratio is almost tablet-like:
It's not just the basics that ASUS delivers well on, color accuracy is top notch:
Color gamut is shy of the MacBook Pro but much better than the previous Zenbook and the MacBook Air:
Size is definitely an issue here. While I think the 1920 x 1080 panel will be a very good fit for the 13.3-inch UX31, there's a smaller subset of folks who are going to appreciate it in the 11.6-inch UX21. Personally I think it's fine but at 189 PPI the 11-inch Zenbook Prime is going to be a tough sell for those who have a tough time looking at small text.
Text on the 11-inch 1080p panel
ASUS' solution is to ship the UX21 with Windows set to 125% DPI scaling by default, unfortunately most applications (including many of Microsoft's own) don't deal with non-integer DPI scaling very well.
Here's what the default desktop looks like at 125%:
And here are examples of applications that don't behave well with Windows 7's DPI scaling:
In Skype, some text elements are tiny while others are huge. PCMark Vantage is an example of where you see this as well:
Here the scaled text actually can't fit in the area allocated for it, while the rest of the text is entirely too small.
There's not much you can do to work around this today with Windows 7. You're either going to have really small text or have to deal with funny scaling. This is unfortunately a major downside to not controlling the OS layer, ASUS is at the mercy of Microsoft to get scaling for displays with high pixel densities right. Windows 8 should be better in this regard but I ran out of time to try it out on the Zenbook Prime before the embargo lift.
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Pneumothorax - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
Finally,my days of running bootcamp on a MBA are coming to an end!g1011999 - Wednesday, May 23, 2012 - link
Beginning of new retina display MBA?Endeavour1934 - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
2 years ago when Sony first released the VAIO Z with the 1920x1080 display, they said that because the grid of pixels was more dense, it needed 25% more backlight power than the 1600x900 version in order to have the same level of brightness.Maybe the same thing happens with this new IPS display, and that may be one of the reasons why the battery life is not better than the previous generation.
saneblane - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
I've yet to see what's so ultra about this. The performance is not their, the gpu sucks and they are not Apple to be selling things with not much use. Good luck with this.CaioRearte - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
Sorry Intel, but it seems AMD won the slim-notebook round. Intel can't catch up on video performance at this wattage, and tons of processing power aren't exactly what a laptop owner is looking for. Since AMD has been turning towards diverse computing methods for a while, and actively dedicating more to the graphics than to raw power, their products will be more balanced and enticing in the long run.Anyway, the UX32 with the dedicated 620M looks like a good contender, when are you getting your hands on it? :)
Lilian_Anne32 - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
I have the previous version of this which I bought a few months ago.... it didn't have a backlit keyboard or anything else I expected it to have, with the keyboard being annoying and all, but the laptop functions well. I was just curious if the first models are tradeable for a newer model?That extra USB port would be very useful for me right now.
TrackSmart - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
Well, you certainly won't be able to trade in the older model, but you could easily sell it on Ebay when the new one comes out. If you are talking about replacing your keyboard for the backlit keyboard on the new one, I wouldn't count on it. It sounds like it has been substantially redesigned.On the plus side, you'll have enjoyed your new laptop for have a year by the time the new model comes out. There will always be a better model coming out in 6 months. Enjoy what you've got.
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
I think the improvement in battery life can be attributed to the following:-USB 3.0 controller moving from a dedicated chip to a integrated one in the HM7x PCH
-Improved software/hardware build quality. Also maybe the Sandisk SSD offers bettery battery life?
-DDR3L memory? Ivy Bridge allows DDR3L support, and I've also read that the new Zenbook uses one
kenyee - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
I know it's a copy of the Macbook Air, but 4GB isn't enough for people running VMs. And you know Apple is going to increase their memory limit with the next release ;-)Love the screen though...about time they started putting high density screens in these things...
theknowhow - Tuesday, May 22, 2012 - link
Confused on the configuration versus the price on UX32.As far as I can see, the $799 vs. $ 999 device differs only in additional HDD. I would have made sense if its an SSD difference
Am I missing something here?