ASUS UX31A: Putting the Ultra in Ultrabooks
by Jarred Walton on August 28, 2012 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Intel
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Zenbook Prime
- Ultrabook
ASUS UX31A: First Screens First
Normally we save our look at the LCD characteristics for last, but in this case the LCD happens to be one of the highlights of the product. No one else is doing 1080p IPS screens in a 13.3” laptop that I know of (though obviously with the screens available for ASUS we may see some uptake from other manufacturers in the near future), so the UX31A is in a class by itself. We’ve commented on the overall good build quality and keyboard, but it’s the display that really sells the UX31A. Here’s how it stacks up to other Ultrabooks.
Desktop LCDs might still be better for the most part, but contrast ratios above 1000:1 in laptops—with matte displays—are practically unheard of. ASUS tops our contrast ratio chart, but it doesn’t end there. At 400 nits maximum brightness, it’s also one of the brightest LCDs you can find (though not with perfect colors, and post-calibration you’re looking at 300-350 nits, depending on how you calibrate). Obviously battery life will suffer if you run at 100% brightness, but there are occasions (e.g. outside in the sunlight) where it will be necessary and it’s great to have that option. In practice, I was able to use the UX31A—thanks to the matte surface—in a car without trouble with the LCD set to around 200 nits, and I was extremely pleased to not have to look at my reflection for a change (not that I’m ugly, mind, but vanity can only take you so far…).
As for color quality and accuracy, ASUS gives up a bit of ground there compared to some other higher quality LCDs, but dE of less than 2.0 after calibration is good in the laptop world and the color gamut is a respectable 80%. That gamut actually isn’t quite right, though—the gamut is wider than AdobeRGB in some areas but less in others, so if you’re working within the AdobeRGB color space it’s more like 67%. If you’re serious enough about color accuracy that you have the necessary hardware and software for calibrating your laptop, you may not be completely satisfied with the UX31A’s display, but you’ll really have to spend a lot of money to find a better laptop LCD (e.g. the $500+ LCD upgrades found on high-end mobile workstations).
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Viewing angles is obviously where IPS can really shine, and while there’s a loss in brightness and contrast at acute angles, there’s no color shifting to worry about. Use it at a desk, on your lap, in an airplane, or wherever else you might find yourself and the UX31A display will still be completely usable. In 2012, this is what we’d like to see from all laptops, but in particular there’s no excuse for $1000+ laptops and notebooks to continue peddling sub-standard TN panels. ASUS gets a well-deserved gold star for their choice of display.
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With all the good we have to say about the LCD, we do need to offer one minor word of caution. Windows 7 still doesn’t handle DPI scaling perfectly, and 1080p in 13.3” makes this one of the highest density LCDs around. Windows 8 may improve on the situation, but for those who stick with Windows 7 you’ll still encounter the occasional quirk. ASUS ships with the DPI scaling set to 125% as mentioned earlier, and it’s really necessary if you want most text to be legible. Even with the minor issues with some applications, though, I’d take this sort of display ten times out of ten if given the option.
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nerd1 - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
I'd like to see some quality review of sammy's series 9 laptop. So far I have only seen crappy amateurish reviews so far (*ahem* engadget *ahem* theverge *ahem*) and I think it is one of two best ultrabook options out there with 1600*900 matte PLS display.Toshio - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
notebookreview.com has a decent review:http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6...
also they reviewed the 15" version, pretty interesting:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6...
an Anandtech review would be pretty good whatsoever ;)
nerd1 - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
That's old gen model with sandby bridge. Engadget review reports 7 hrs of battery life with new laptop - I'd like 'proper' review here. ;]JohnMD1022 - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
PC Decrapifierhttp://pcdecrapifier.com/
ajp_anton - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
"ASUS did provide an updated Realtek driver that seemed to improve the audio quality slightly"Does this mean ASUS has tweaked the drivers themselves, or that it's just a newer version and I don't lose anything by upgrading from Realtek's website myself sometime in the future?
JarredWalton - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
It looks like stock Realtek, but I could be wrong.geniekid - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
Let's not forget the predecessors to these new fancy ultrabooks - the Asus UL series! My laptop at the moment is the Asus UL80Vt and even with its G210M, I can still run TF2, Civ 5, Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 on this machine, albeit at low quality and 1366x768 resolution. And this is a 3 year old laptop that cost me $850.These days, I won't be happy without a 650M and 900p resolution on a 14" screen, but the UL80Vt will always have a warm spot in my heart.
falc0ne - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
I really don't see all the fuzz about ASUS.I had quite a few issues with ASUS products, most recent being with a brand new laptop featuring Sandy Bridge platform with core i7 processor that came with the hard drive DOA. I've only seen this happening with Acer or other OEMs that sell 'value' products. But ASUS is charging you premium prices. I just see them charging for premium quality but that quality just isn't there...
From my past experiences I have 2 other desktops that I built and the motherboards failed. One failed in 3 months, the other 9-11 months. I have to mention the laptop the came DOA was in the range of $1600 and the latest motherboard that failed in the $150 price range - so not cheap ones at all.
Anyone else had issues with their products?
Roland00Address - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
Why can't AMD make an ultrathin that is about $500 dollars that uses the a6 or a10 ulvIt would be so easy for AMD to get an OEM to actually build an ultrathin that is cheap and actually good just by swapping out a few parts.
Use a standard 11.6" netbook case. Many oems have cases that can take 17w processors in this form factor that are cheap remember the e series of amd processors have the same tdp as the a6 ulv. The faster celeron and pentium ulv dual cores also use 17w for tdp. For example hm dm1, Sony YB, Sony E11, my favorite the Lenovo Thinkpad x130, Lenovo x131, etc and the Acer Aspire One 756 (they finally got rid of the floating island crap and are now use chicklet). I am going to be talking more about the Acer Aspire One 756 below
Place at least 4 GBs of ram in the computer but it has to be in dual channel mode. If you can't do 2x2GBs then 6 GBs (1x2gb+1x4gb) or 8 GBs. Note all the models I listed above have two memory slots.
At least a 320gb hard drive or a 128 gb ssd. Note all the models I listed above use standard harddrives though some are limited to 7mm high models. The cheapest 320gb 7mm hard drives on the open market cost about $55 to 60, a samsung 830 128gb 7mm height ssd goes for about $100. So lets say $40 dollars extra for ssd.
A 1366x768 screen, it doesn't need to have a high rest just good viewing angles. Currently TN panels are all you can find in the 11.6 form factor, but with the rise of tablets and windows 8 tablets coming out this fall I won't be suprised we will see 11.6 ips screens starting to appear. To put it in comparison a 11.6 inch screen with 768 pixels height in the 16x9 ratio is 10.11" by 5.68" the ipad 2 4x3 ratio with 768 pixels 7.75" by 5.83." Chinese OEMs have complete ips tablets in the 9.7" form factor going for $120 so the screen cost isn't exhorborant if someone is actually making that size and form factor. Problem is no one is currently making this form factor but I hope for windows 8 to change all this.
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To put it in comparison. Acer has a Acer Aspire One 756 with a celeron dual core, 4gbs of ram, and 500gb hard drive, with 7 home premium going for $349 final price on the open market. (Full model is AO756-2808-US) It weights 3.04 lbs with its 4 cell battery and is 1.1" inch tall.
AMD has $150 dollars to play with (if they can convince acer to build it) to put the a6 ulv dual core and place an extra stick of memory and suddenly they are in the $500 dollar price market where people will seriously consider buying an amd ultra portable. I know the a6 ulv price that oems pay is nowhere near the difference of a celeron price+$150 since the tray price (which is not neccessary what acer pays intel) of the 3rd generation ultrabook i5 ulv is $225.00. (Intel and AMD don't publish tray prices for their celeron ulv or the a6 4455m)
So why hasn't amd been able to convince anyone to do this? There are only two computer I have seen with the a6 4455m is the 15.6" hp sleekbook. I personally consider this computer fail for it is a 15.6" that weights as much as a 14" and still costs over $600 dollars. Why would someone pay that much, for an item that is so big, yet the have to go with the sacrifices of a ulv processor.
There is also a samsung series 5 13.3" that uses the a6 4455m but its going price is $660 to $700. This computer is more my style but when the 3rd generation i5 version is going for the same price $660 to 700 why the hell would you go with the slower AMD option? (To top it off the Samsung uses the 500gb seagate hybrid drive while the AMD system does not.)
nevertell - Tuesday, August 28, 2012 - link
I'd love to see an article about an ultraportable or atleast a laptop with a 17w i7 dualcore with an express card slot with an external GPU. I know that there is some guerilla hardware involved in these setups and these are the exception, not the rule, but I've always entertained the idea of a portable that doubles as a desktop once you put it in a dock.Ultrabooks by themselves are never going to get further than they are now, since you don't need an i5 to browse the web, but to do anything more, the form factor is sort of limiting the machine. I don't really understand the fuss behind ultrabooks, if intel isn't making it a rule for them to have thunderbolt, as that WOULD solve most of the problems at this point in time I have with ultrabooks. Whilst you wouldn't have a special dock for extra cooling to exceed the thermal limits of the platform, you would at least have a way to connect an external GPU, high speed and high capacity storage and other peripherals.
At this point in time I don't really need a modern ultrabook, I already have one from the 2009- the X200s. It's keyboard is far superior to any of the chiclet keyboards that are trending nowadays, I can easily get 5 hours of usage on my 9 cell battery on wifi (7 and more if I am just writing stuff) and it still is easy to carry around. The only thing I would love to have is a unified high speed interface to connect peripheral devices as the express card slot is too slow. Or, in other words, THUNDERBOLT! Since these ultrabooks have hardware limitations. I can't really do any serious work on them anyway, so why would I need more processing power than I have at the moment from a ultra low voltage Core 2 processor, if it is sufficient enough for the same usage model the ultrabook (as it is now implemented) is intended.
TL/DR version- if there is no thunderbolt, then even a 4 year old ultraportable would suffice to do the ultrabooks job as the form factor and hardware of ultrabooks limit their usage model.