Asus zenbook UX305FA

[suresh86]

Alright, I have been researching for weeks now and this one seems to be the only option in my budget that meets my needs. 1080p IPS matte display, 256 GB SSD, 8 GB RAM, 10 HOURS BATTERY, very portable. The only concern seems to be core m cpu. My previous laptop had 1st generation core i5 cpu, I wonder how much faster is this machine going to be. I live in canada and I can get this one for about 850 without taxes. Its the best bargain but are there better alternatives? With the same quality screen, SSD, battery life and 5th gen core i5/i7 cpu?

 

[Essence_of_War]

What are you intending to use this machine for?

Here is the head-to-head:
http://ark.intel.com/compare/47341,83610

Since Broadwell is ~33% faster clock-for-clock than Nehalem, in single threaded tasks, the the 1st-gen i5 will be ~10% faster (assuming they can both turbo aggressively). In multi-threaded tasks, the first gen i5 will be about ~20% faster than the core-m. If you're coming from integrated graphics on the first gen core, iGPU should be a big upgrade.

My bet is that unless you're doing video encoding, heavy gaming, or heavy scientific data processing you won't notice the dip in CPU, but you WILL notice the portability, display quality, and SSD. I don't think there is a better alternative at the same price point.

Edit:

For reference, the Dell XPS 13 starts at 899 USD, often with a 100 USD promo code through microsoft store, but it only comes with 4 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD, although the CPU is a higher performing non-fanless broadwell ULV chip. To get the larger SSD and the 8GB of RAM you'd need to spend over 1k USD. I'm extremely impressed with the UX305 at its price point. I've recommended it to two of my friends who needed new laptops. They do basic computer stuff (email, web browsing, videos, documents and spreadsheets, one of them does a little python for some text analysis) and they were coming from 3-4 year old mid-range toshibas that were chintzy, heavy, had garbage displays, not enough RAM, and slow spinning disks. They have both been blown away by the improvements in the UX305.

 

[fire400]

ya, get the asus zenbook. the screen is strong, sharp matte, and offers very slim aesthetics.

ten hours of battery life is a little questionable, but according to asus, it's possible,
https://www.asus.com/us/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/ASUS-ZENBOOK-UX305FA/

they did a great job on the x205's battery life run time at 8+ hours.

i physically tried picking one up, and it's like an extremely light weight version of the HP spectre.

not a fan of the XPS pricing, but it's an alternative. like the spectre, is also available at $900, very similar configuration to the entry level XPS.