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ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A-DB71 13.3-Inch Ultrabook Opinions

I got the ux31a-db51 yesterday. So far it's pretty good. Reports are that there are some QA issues with backlight bleed. Mine has a little around the lower corners, but not so substantial as to bother with returning it.

Unless you're committed to that model, consider a 128GB variant actually sold by amazon since they're offering free $100 gift cards with purchase through the 21st.
 
Gooberlx2 said:
I got the ux31a-db51 yesterday. So far it's pretty good. Reports are that there are some QA issues with backlight bleed. Mine has a little around the lower corners, but not so substantial as to bother with returning it.

Unless you're committed to that model, consider a 128GB variant actually sold by amazon since they're offering free $100 gift cards with purchase through the 21st.
Click to expand...

How is the battery life? And the trackpad?
 
Sunburn74 said:
How is the battery life? And the trackpad?
Click to expand...

I think the battery is still calibrating, so not as good as it will be. I've also been using the "high performance" preset, so my experience probably isn't a good judge. So far I've been getting 4-ish hours.

The trackpad is nice. Best I've personally used on a PC. Not as good as apple's, but still nice.

@chiefcrowe: I haven't had any issues with wifi that I can tell. I haven't benchmarked throughput or anything like that though.

I will say that, aside from hidden recovery partitions, the default windows install definitely had some bloat I had to remove. Even after removing the bloatware, there's still something chewing up significant space. ~40GB of ~100GB is being used. That's pretty fat for what should be a bare windows 7 installation. My guess is pre-loaded drivers and apps, like when OEMs used to include the XP i386 folder on their machines.

Might consider wiping the drive and doing a clean install. Though, apparently there's some trickery involved with pre-loading the wifi and USB drivers.
 
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Gooberlx2 said:
I think the battery is still calibrating, so not as good as it will be. I've also been using the "high performance" preset, so my experience probably isn't a good judge. So far I've been getting 4-ish hours.

The trackpad is nice. Best I've personally used on a PC. Not as good as apple's, but still nice.

@chiefcrowe: I haven't had any issues with wifi that I can tell. I haven't benchmarked throughput or anything like that though.

I will say that, aside from hidden recovery partitions, the default windows install definitely had some bloat I had to remove. Even after removing the bloatware, there's still something chewing up significant space. ~40GB of ~100GB is being used. That's pretty fat for what should be a bare windows 7 installation. My guess is pre-loaded drivers and apps, like when OEMs used to include the XP i386 folder on their machines.

Might consider wiping the drive and doing a clean install. Though, apparently there's some trickery involved with pre-loading the wifi and USB drivers.
Click to expand...

No trickery needed as Windows will install default drivers which are, for the most part, just as good as those overfeatured drivers are. 😀
 
Want to get a sub 14" laptop also. Was considering:

Lenovo IdeaPad U310
Dell Vostro V131
Samsung Series 3 NP350U2A-A01
Toshiba Portégé R835-P83

Still undecided.
 
Gooberlx2 said:
I think the battery is still calibrating, so not as good as it will be. I've also been using the "high performance" preset, so my experience probably isn't a good judge. So far I've been getting 4-ish hours.
Click to expand...
Can you keep us updated on the battery life? Its pretty much the only thing I'm waiting for in the upcoming anandtech review.
 
Gooberlx2 said:
I think the battery is still calibrating, so not as good as it will be. I've also been using the "high performance" preset, so my experience probably isn't a good judge. So far I've been getting 4-ish hours.

The trackpad is nice. Best I've personally used on a PC. Not as good as apple's, but still nice.

@chiefcrowe: I haven't had any issues with wifi that I can tell. I haven't benchmarked throughput or anything like that though.

I will say that, aside from hidden recovery partitions, the default windows install definitely had some bloat I had to remove. Even after removing the bloatware, there's still something chewing up significant space. ~40GB of ~100GB is being used. That's pretty fat for what should be a bare windows 7 installation. My guess is pre-loaded drivers and apps, like when OEMs used to include the XP i386 folder on their machines.

Might consider wiping the drive and doing a clean install. Though, apparently there's some trickery involved with pre-loading the wifi and USB drivers.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I wonder if my trackpad is just defective or something. I just got a ux31a-db51 a few days ago, and I find the trackpad is far too sensitive to accidental taps and is really jumpy. It actually ranks at the bottom of the list for laptop trackpads I have used, which is pretty disappointing. The multitouch gestures actually work pretty well, but I can't get over the sensitivity/jumpiness. Other than that, I love it; the screen is gorgeous and the keyboard is pretty good for a laptop. I haven't extensively tested out battery life and such yet, but it seems to hold up pretty well.
 
neocpp said:
Hmm, I wonder if my trackpad is just defective or something. I just got a ux31a-db51 a few days ago, and I find the trackpad is far too sensitive to accidental taps and is really jumpy. It actually ranks at the bottom of the list for laptop trackpads I have used, which is pretty disappointing. The multitouch gestures actually work pretty well, but I can't get over the sensitivity/jumpiness. Other than that, I love it; the screen is gorgeous and the keyboard is pretty good for a laptop. I haven't extensively tested out battery life and such yet, but it seems to hold up pretty well.
Click to expand...

Play with the sensitivity settings.
 
neocpp said:
Hmm, I wonder if my trackpad is just defective or something. I just got a ux31a-db51 a few days ago, and I find the trackpad is far too sensitive to accidental taps and is really jumpy.
Click to expand...

It was working great for me until they updated the drivers from "elan" to "Asus Multitouch" or something like that the other day. I just wiped mine today to do a clean install, remove bloat/recover space, etc.. I'll have to be sure that I don't install those latest drivers.

edit:
Much improved. Used the latest version Elantech Touchpad Driver from here
 
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Beyond recovery software partitions, Windows 7 also preserves a lot of space to be able to roll back to previous states in the event of catastrophic configuration failures. The number of versions that Windows tracks for rollback can impact the drivespace pretty significantly. If you can spare the drivespace, it is a pretty handy feature to have.
 
This recently arrived, ordered from here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...enbook%20Prime

I am very impressed with this laptop! Awesome screen, very fast, super light and looks really great. They put a lot into the design and it shows. I don't think i'd get a laptop without an SSD now. I did not see any Wifi issues that some people were mentioning. Didn't really get to test battery life but i'm sure it's pretty good.

The only issue is that the trackpad wasn't perfect, but it was fine most of the time. I don't really like them anyway and would use a mouse. I would definitely recommend this to others. It is the best PC laptop i've seen.
 
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We just ordered one from Amazon which arrived tonight. I noticed from the box that it has the SanDisk SSD instead of the AData drive. I've been reading reviews noting the SanDisk performing significantly worse than the AData drive. Is this bad enough to warrant sending it back or is it being blown out of proportion? Would a firmware update fix this kind of issue? Has anybody actually used either and noticed a significant difference in the everyday non-gaming usage?
 
You would not notice in everyday non gaming and even gaming useage. I don't have any specific knowledge on the laptop, but what I do know is that when I went from intel x-25m to vertex 3 ssds in my desktop, I noticed no performance difference despite the vertex 2-3x faster than the intel SSD in essentially every benchmark.

I would take it back if its easy for peace of mind, but honestly you would likely never notice the difference.
 
Emrys said:
We just ordered one from Amazon which arrived tonight. I noticed from the box that it has the SanDisk SSD instead of the AData drive. I've been reading reviews noting the SanDisk performing significantly worse than the AData drive. Is this bad enough to warrant sending it back or is it being blown out of proportion? Would a firmware update fix this kind of issue? Has anybody actually used either and noticed a significant difference in the everyday non-gaming usage?
Click to expand...

I don't think the ultrabook having a different SSD than what you would have preferred is covered under the warranty.
 
I have to report, its really not so cut and dry. The adata SSDs offer 120gb of space whilst the sandisk ssds offer 128gb of space. The adata however is better performing in benchmarks. Its impossible to tell which SSD you're getting with these drives which is annoying because asus advertises them as the same amount of space when clearly they don't offer the same.
 
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I have the sandisk SSD, as for desktop experience, it is the same as my desktop's corsair forceGT drive. Instant everything except for steam, that takes a second to load. Very pleased with the drive. I dont see myself getting frustrated at data transfer speeds on this ultrabook. All that kind of work will be on my desktop. It is nice to have an ultra portable secure connection to my office for those "oh crap i forgot to do x" moments. But for crunch time, I will be on my big rig.

Love the laptop. Favorite feature so far is the heat exhausts upwards instead of melting my legs or chest depending on where I'm using it. Bonus points for being so light I can lay down and have it resting on me without impacting my breathing. LOL. LOVE IT!:wub:

Forgot to mention the touchpad. It kind of sucked at first. After the recent live update patch, I'm completly spoiled by the smart gesture scrolling.
 
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ASUS has been releasing quite a few touchpad drivers recently. I see some new beta 1.0.29 drivers. Any thoughts? I'm getting ready to reinstall Windows to get rid of all the junk on this thing and I'm prepping the driver "package".
 
I'm still using the last version of the elantech drivers. I just don't like the scrolling movement in the asus smartgesture drivers. Specifically that I can't disable the "inertia" feature. Haven't tried the latest beta though.
 
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