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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Flying Goat - Sunday, May 5, 2013 - link
This weight 4.5 pounds, the G55VW weights closer to 8.4 pounds. Significantly lighter, thinner laptops tend to cost a lot more than comparably equipped heavier laptops.Don't suppose you know of any other quad core laptops with the GT 650M or better that cost significantly less and are under 5.5 pounds or so? If so, I'd love to know. Thinking about getting something like this with Haswell for my next upgrade, some point after it comes out.
Zap - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Regarding the WiFi issue, I think it is a problem with some of the Intel WiFi adapters. I've encountered similar issues with the Intel 130 and 1030 models (B/G/N + BT) in Samsung and Dell notebooks, and I've read of issues in HP notebooks. All were using Intel adapters, and various "fixes" include disabling BT, disabling N mode, rolling back drivers, updating drivers.RomanMR - Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - link
Can anyone provide any details on the "various fixes involving disabling BT support"? I'm at the end of my wits here. Been tweaking the card options this way and that, but nothing has worked so far. Disabled BT both in W8 options and in Device Manager. Connection drops every 2-3 minutes even with very strong WiFi signal. Please share you insights, this is driving me crazy. Ordered 2 usb wifi sticks at Amazon...ZorkZork - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
I wish there was an option of having one SDD and one HDD (when playing around with video and/or images in raw format then a 1TB HDD is invaluable). And they should get rid of the numpad - never use it and I like my keyboard centered.Freakie - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - link
That's a valid reason, I will admit. Though I find that so long as the touchpad is off center with the keyboard, then it doesn't bug me one bit but if the touchpad wasn't, then I would obviously not enjoy the uncentered main keyboard. But another really nice thing about a numpad is having this nice 3 inch area to the right of your keyboard to set something on, like your phone or a notepad, or a graphing calculator if you're a student, or a camera/mp3 player you're syncing with your computer and you aren't at a desk and have the laptop in your lap. I do frequently find myself using that extra wide space for such things!mabl4367 - Friday, May 3, 2013 - link
Graphing calculator?Run graph89 on your phone! Its free!
Oh that's right if you are an Apple-man you are out of luck.
-No emulators for you! That's one of Jobs commandments you see.
akdj - Sunday, May 5, 2013 - link
Lol...apparently you've not been by the App Store in a while? The TI89 and any other calculation example you could possibly think of, available, and typically a buck or less. Emulation? Forget-About-It! No need to have an emulator when the app is coded in such a way it's indistinguishable from the almighty '89'! Not sure that for an engineering student though that the 'real thing' isn't arguably a necessity...though with the apps and available 'emulators', $140 calculators will go the way of the slide rule. Sooner than later.nerd1 - Thursday, May 2, 2013 - link
I'd like to see the review of new samsung chronos with 8870M GPU - initial gaming benchmarks look quite spectacular (for the size), and I was very (positively) surprised to see +10hrs endurance too.Younes - Thursday, May 2, 2013 - link
My paranoia is arising on the dimensions and weight published for this unit on your article, Sir. It can't be of nearly the same of those of the Macbook Pro Retina 15.4'', they had to go on radical terms to slim the latter down to 0.71" and 2.06kg, other sources say the Asus is rather 1'' thick (you've probably only measures the edges!) and weighs in about 2.2kg. Please do recheck and make corrections if needed.Younes - Thursday, May 2, 2013 - link
measured*