ASUS Zenbook UX51VZ: Great Laptop, High Price
by Jarred Walton on April 30, 2013 1:00 AM ESTClosing Thoughts and Other Items
I really like the UX51VZ, but there have been a few flies in the ointment. One is that WiFi connectivity is intermittent—there’s a workaround that involves disabling Bluetooth support, but while I can live with that it’s not ideal for many people. Pricing is a second concern, and even at the now-reduced pricing I still feel the UX51VZ is priced a couple hundred dollars too high for most. It’s a premium product at a premium price, sure, but ASUS is not Apple, and Apple is notorious for their high profit margins.
Battery life is also somewhat middling, considering the 72Wh battery—I was expecting to see more like seven or eight hours of useful battery life, but perhaps the IPS display draws a bit more power than TN displays. And speaking of the display, while it's better than any TN in my opinion (thanks to the viewing angles), color accuracy and color gamut aren't particularly noteworthy, with out-of-the-box colors that are too red and too blue.
The final concern is thermal throttling. While there are two fans in the UX51VZ, the CPU, chipset, and GPU are connected to both fans via heatpipes. That’s good for instances when the CPU is loaded and the GPU isn’t, or vice versa, but when you put a full load on both the CPU and GPU at the same time, the cooling system shares the heat between all the parts. That can lead in some cases to a bit of throttling. I didn’t see this with pure gaming workloads, but if I put a heavy load on the CPU (e.g. run x264 HD on three of the cores) and then run a game, GPU usage in some cases does appear to drop down in order to control temperatures. On the other hand, without the extra CPU load I was able to run the GPU at 970MHz/5GHz core/RAM (that’s the full GPU Boost clock and a 25% bump in memory clock) for an extra 10-15% performance without any noticeable problems. Depending on the climate you’re in, your performance may vary.
With the concerns above, let me end again by reiterating the good. ASUS provides a good IPS display that I’d like to see become the minimum standard for a quality laptop in 2013. The build quality and industrial design are both good, performance ranges from acceptable to great depending on what you’re doing, and the only way to get a substantially faster laptop is to abandon the thin and light/Ultrabook market entirely and grab something that’s at least 50% thicker and 25% heavier than the UX51VZ. Yes, you can get similar and even slightly better performance from ASUS' own G55VW for $1156 (don't forget to add an SSD!), but I'm not sure anyone would argue the G55VW looks better than the UX51VZ.
If you can wait a bit longer, there will always be something newer and better. I don’t expect Haswell to offer substantially better performance in most cases, but if nothing else I expect better battery life than Ivy Bridge on laptops. More importantly, I expect ASUS will have a revised UX51VZ that will address the WiFi issues and perhaps improve in other ways as well. If you can wait, there’s almost never harm in doing so—we’re not talking about a stock where prices might jump up 50% or more if you fail to act! If you want a good “large Ultrabook” right now, though, there really aren’t any others that I can immediately recommend. Next month, I might be singing a different tune; in the meantime, welcome to Mobile Bench 2013.
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ananduser - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Speedstep is supported under OSX not under bootcamped Windows(don't confuse it with turbo boost). Lack of ACPI, lack of discrete graphics switching and poor overall driver support means that on a mac, Windows is not able to fully take advantage of the hardware. Therefore it will always be the "worst" Windows machine. Again, don't forget the Windows cost that must be added to the bottom line.But you're right, for the mac crowd, a bootcamp or a VM from time to time is good enough. However, for the Windows user that knows these drawbacks, it's a no go.
Battery life suffers plenty not just "a little". 20% minimum and more on macs where discrete graphics is present and switching it off not available.
ajp_anton - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Turbo doesn't exist on the C2D Mac I've been using. The CPU happily steps from 800 to 2400MHz and everything in between. Has something happened since then?snuuggles - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Er, is "anti-glare" different than "matt". Sorry I'm seriously asking what the difference is...snuuggles - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Just to be clear: the reason I ask is that the first paragraph says this is an anti-glare screen, but the chart says it's glossy. I'm just not sure I'm clear what the differences are. Thanks! Sorry if I somehow missed it in the review.ShieTar - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
According to the ASUS homepage the screen has an Anti-Reflection Coating. So it is glossy, but with reduced/removed glare.JarredWalton - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Sorry, the table was not updated. I always copy/paste a table from elsewhere and then update it, and it seems there's always at least one item I miss. LOL Anyway, it's anti-glare/anti-reflective, but not quite as much as on some LCDs.UpSpin - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Anti-Glare (AG) normally stands for a matte display, which spreads the incoming light across a larger surface, thus reflects it over a larger surface and reduces glare thereby.Anti-Reflective (AR) stands for a special coating which absorbs a specific wavelength of the incoming light, thus it consists of several layers absorbing different wavelengths. The display remains glossy, but reflections get partially absorbed. The more it absorbs the more expensive the coating gets. It's always used on camera lenses or on the lenses of glasses and also often found on higher end flat screen TVs. The reflected light looks purple: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-reflective_coati...
You can combine both to avoid too high costs and take the best of both worlds.
What exactly the Zenbook has remains unsolved :-)
ShieTar - Thursday, May 2, 2013 - link
1. AR coatings do not absorb light. Their working is actually explained correctly on the link you posted.2. What the Zenbook has is very clearly stated on their own specs, it is an anti-reflective coating.
user777 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
At the Asus web site I can see only the model UX52VS (probably UX51VZ is a model only for the USA). Do you have any plans to review the model Asus Zenbook UX52VS (UX32VD is also an interesting model)?DanNeely - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
I found both models with a quick Google; they appear different enough I don't think they're just being sold to different markets. The UX52VS only has a GT645 GPU (vs GT650), a significantly smaller battery (45 vs 70Wh). The battery size is potentially compensated by the use of a ULV CPU instead of standard voltage.