The ASUS Zenbook UX305 Review

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9104/asus-zenbook-ux305-review

by ismavis • 11 years ago

80 78 11 years ago

andrewfong2• 11 years ago

Sort of off topic, but I'm kind of stuck with Lenovo Thinkpads thanks to my love of the Trackpoint, but we're a shrinking group and there are many, many tempting alternatives these days. Anyone know if there's any way to graft a Trackpoint onto other laptops?

freehunter4• 11 years ago

You can buy a USB keyboard with a Trackpoint built in. Check Amazon. For putting one on a laptop without an external keyboard, I'm not sure how that would work.

dorfsmay3• 11 years ago

That's fine in the office, but not on the road...

dorfsmay3• 11 years ago

I'm the same, can't work without the track point, trackpads are inefficient if you type a lot.

One of my colleague in the same situation ended up buying a Toshiba.

joshuapants3• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, Lenovo makes the best trackpoint hands down. Dell and Toshiba both offer models with one (I believe HP used to, but not anymore). Dell doesn't offer a middle mouse button on the models I've seen, which makes the trackpoint hideously inconvenient for scrolling. Toshiba does, but the trackpoint just doesn't feel as good as on Lenovo models. Lenovo won't get any of my money anymore after Superfish, though.

The answer for me is to use the keyboard as much as possible. This is already possible in a large number of text editors, and there are a good number of browser add-ons that will allow you to control everything completely mouse-free.

edit: corrected some spelling

r00fus• 11 years ago

I'm the same, can't work without the track point, trackpads are inefficient if you type a lot

This is only true if your trackpad driver/software sucks. Good trackpads (like on Macs) are great at palm rejection and other heuristics to prevent these issues.

Really good hardware has great software to complete it.

buckbova• 11 years ago

I just shell out for the thinkpad. Have a new carbon x1 on the way and I can't wait to get my hands on it. Yes it is twice the cost, but there are things to cheap out on and the things you use every day shouldn't be one of them.

bduerst• 11 years ago

Using Carbon X1 right now (older version, not the newer one with the weird touch keyboard) and it's phenomenal. I've been trying to find an upgrade though, since it's several years old now.

mladenkovacevic5• 11 years ago

So basically a fanless, ultraportable, 13" laptop with an IPS HD screen that beats the 2014 Macbook Air on both performance and battery life, has more than one USB port and costs between $700 and a $1000.

Seems like a winner to me.

baddox2• 11 years ago

That price gets you the slower 800 MHz CPU and a 1080p display, but apparently they will soon be offering it with a 1.2 GHz CPU and a 3200x1800 display.

mladenkovacevic5• 11 years ago

You're right of course. It all depends on how capable Windows is on a 800 MHz machine with 1080p as compared to the new MacBook's 1.1 GHz - 1.3 Ghz CPU. Also how will battery life be affected when upgrading the Asus to a 1.2GHz and higher res screen.

drudru11• 11 years ago

Unless this has great, zero-issues unix support, I'll have to pass.

Is there a laptop like this that is supported by linux or any of the BSDs well?

mladenkovacevic5• 11 years ago

I don't think you'll get anything officially Linux "supported" unless you got for one of Dell's developer "Sputnik" laptops that comes with Ubuntu installed.

But I have had no problems installing Linux on older Acer and Asus laptops (with very minor driver tweaks post-installation). I'm not sure, however, if that has changed for the better or for worse with newer Windows laptops.

wyldfire• 11 years ago

AFAIK the Pixel is one of the best around this class, but it's a bit more expensive at 1000 USD.

tdicola• 11 years ago

The 2015 Dell XPS 13 sputnik edition is similar and will have full support for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS out of the box. It's still in the last stages of development & bug fixing from what I understand though: http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/f/46...

this_user• 11 years ago

I have been using the UX31E for some years now and Linux runs just fine. I got the laptop right when it came out and initially had to do some tweaking under Arch (mainly enable some newer features needed by the hardware), but all in all I am perfectly happy with the machine and its quality.

ams6110• 11 years ago

OpenBSDs 5.7 includes "New iwm(4) driver for Intel 7260, 7265, and 3160 wifi cards."

scrollaway• 11 years ago

I've used two UX-line netbooks and they have had excellent Linux support. Of course, YMMV when it comes to touchscreens and hidpi as those are heavily DE/config-dependent.

Nullabillity• 11 years ago

My old ASUS laptop (must have been from 2011/2012) ran nicely on both Ubuntu and Arch out of the box. My only needs to tweak stuff manually were 1) installing Bumblebee (2 lines of bash) and 2) tweaking some PulseAudio settings so my crappy USB headset would work well with Skype.

I just got a new ASUS ROG laptop, and so far my experience has been almost the same with Ubuntu. The new issues were that 3) that while the key backlighting works fine, the screen brightness buttons don't work (although the GUI controls do) and 4) touchpad drivers weren't set up with any way to do a MMB click.

hobarrera2• 11 years ago

Except for the webcam, the MacBook Air works flawlessly with Linux.

As far as BSD goes, I at a loss. :(

dntrkv• 11 years ago

The 2014 MacBook Air does not have a single USB port, you're confusing it with the new MacBook.

freehunter4• 11 years ago

I think there were two thoughts there, one that it beats the Air on battery and performance, and two that it's a fanless ultraportable that has more than one USB port (with an implied "unlike the new Macbook").

mladenkovacevic5• 11 years ago

No I realized that, but I am just trying to position this as a great compromise of portability (same size as the new MacBook), versatility (USB ports, HD screen, good battery life, processing power of an Air) and price. This is something that doesn't quite exist in the Mac world right now (maybe when the next gen MacBook replaces the Air?).

I haven't tried this laptop's track-pad but I suspect this is one feature where Macs still have an edge especially with force-touch. And of course OSX is an irreplaceable feature in and of itself if you're developing for the Apple ecosystem.

headShrinker• 11 years ago

Seems like this is an unnecessary somewhat inaccurate comparison. The 2015 Macbook has retina 12" display, redesigned force touch haptic feedback tracepad, redesigned lit keyboard, and weights 25% less than the Asus. Asus battery life is not spec'd in the writeup. The MBA 2014 battery and performance are most surely more powerful than the Asus. So the 2015 Macbook is more portable and probably has a longer battery life, and the 2015 MBA is way more powerful, and definitely has a longer battery life.

I'm at a loss why you chose to highlight the stats the way you did unless you simply have a bias against Apple. I understand not wanting to pay for crazy expensive tech and the packaging Apple is pumping out. It's a good a reason not to buy Apple products. The Macbook lines do serve a purpose and they serve it very well. Frankly, I don't see this Asus completing successfully in any of the three Apple portable computing lines.

bane• 11 years ago

The trackpad and keyboard are not stats, they're marketing that you've just successfully regurgitated like you were meant to.

If you want to complain, complain that it took almost a decade before anybody else could put together a competent Air beater, even given manufacturing, pricing and supply chain advantages.

notsony2• 11 years ago

The ASUS has a matte screen whereas the 2015 MacBook continues Apple's obsession with a glossy screen. As a programmer, the matte screen is essential.

Btw: A different ASUS laptop has a trackpoint and three buttons, directly competing with Thinkpads, but I don't know see any retailers selling it:

https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial_Notebook/ASUSPRO_ADVANCED...

mladenkovacevic5• 11 years ago

Battery life is in the writeup. Also you say the 2015 MBA is "way more" powerful. I don't see evidence of this anywhere especially since this Asus seems comparable to a 2014 Macbook Air. I wasn't even trying to "compare" this Asus to any Apple offerings, but rather just saying if you want a Windows machine with the portability of the new Macbook but without some of the compromises, this seems like a good choice.

Also my current laptop is a 2015 Macbook Pro so your anti-Apple bias argument is out of place too.

IkmoIkmo3• 11 years ago

The force touch thing seems extremely minor value. Perhaps in a few years when all hardware has it and every OS supports it, and all applications build around it... but right now? Oh wow I can speed up a video by 2x or 16x depending on how hard I click... as opposed to a million software-based solutions, like pressing longer makes it go faster, pressing a faster button makes it go faster, press and hold brings up a speed slider, clicking on the video bar to move around etc etc. I doubt you'll get any significant value out of this '3rd control' in 2015 or even 2016.

The keyboard design is an engineering effort, not a consumer benefit over alternative laptops. It was redesigned so it could still function while being thinner and smaller. A slightly thicker or bigger (e.g. 13' Zenbook/XPS/Air) laptop doesn't need this redesign. It has a butterfly switch now so that the keys won't sag on the edges, which isn't a problem normally. But for the 12', because the keys were made bigger in a small area, if you sag a key, your finger slides off and onto the other key causing typos. In other words, the butterfly switch is a solution to a problem created by its small size. It's not actually a better keyboard to type on than an Air. In fact, worse, as there's less travel, less space between keys, less space between keys and touchpad. In many ways the touchpad came out of this, too: no space for real travel, so let's remove travel of the touchpad and add magnets that give the illusion of clicking, so you can make it thinner. This isn't a better system, it's just necessary for a thinner device. And then you might as well play with the magnets and add a 'force touch'.

As for all your spec comparisons, read the review. The performance and battery benchmarks are pretty similar between the Air and Asus. And that means the Asus beats the MB, as the MB isn't quite as strong as the Air.

Seems like the Asus and Dell XPS have beat the MB and MBA competition pretty solidly if you ask me. Unless you're not OS-agnostic.

IkmoIkmo3• 11 years ago

Compared to the air it doesn't get better performance or battery life. On performance the Air performs a bit better in most charts, and on battery the air is better for light stuff and the dell better for heavier stuff (which might be because the Air has a 1.4 ghz processor, versus the 0.8 ghz on the Asus leading to more work being done). As for the port, Air ports are great.

Beyond that though the Asus is a great device and for anyone who is OS-agnostic, I'd definitely recommend the Asus over both the Air or without hesitation. It's indeed a real winner.

A decade or so of superior Macbooks seems to have ended with this ASUS and the Dell XPS 2015, they're really great. I don't see the new Macbook or the Air competing either on specs, price, build quality. The Macs still ahve great touchpads and the OS is preferred by some, but it's hard for that to be the only thing going for you.

SG-2• 11 years ago

They compared it to last years MBA, not the one released 2-3 weeks ago so I'm not sure how it really compares.

SCdF• 11 years ago

The new MBA is near identical in terms of CPU / general system performance, Broadwell brought the expected 5-10% but nothing startling. The SSD IO is twice as last years though. How much that matters to you is questionable and dependent on your what you're using it for.

ricw• 11 years ago

Unsure. Two years ago we bought two zenbooks and two MacBooks. Two out of the four are still working, two don't. The broken ones are not made by apple.

This also happened to the two Lenovo workstations we bought. Needless to say we've stopped buying non apple products, primarily because fixing them is a hassle.

barake4• 11 years ago

Purchased the UX305 about two weeks ago for ~$630 (15% off at the Microsoft Store) with tax.

I have nothing but good things to say about the hardware - screen, keyboard, and touchpad are A+, and I'm getting 8-10 hours working in Visual Studio 2013.

Two things not covered in the review: HDMI port is 1.4, and the SD card reader is half-depth similar to Macs.

The only issue so far is the touchpad gesture software crashing Chrome sometimes when pressing alt-D to select the address bar.

nfoz2• 11 years ago

How is the keyboard? The "thin" craze seems to me that keyboards are all disappointing compared to small laptops that I own that are 5+ years old.

dxhdr• 11 years ago

I agree. How does it compare to the Thinkpad chiclet keyboards? Those have to be the best laptop keyboards I've ever used. I'm loathe to purchase anything else just because of how important a quality typing experience is for me.

barake4• 11 years ago

Very similar to current MacBooks, if not a little bit crisper. Could do with a bit more travel just like most new laptops.

imperialdrive2• 11 years ago

umm... I am surprised you, nor anyone else (yet) mentions the power key being right above the backspace key... I've turned off or put to sleep that stupid laptop so many times I went back to using my iPad 1st gen with bluetooth keyboard and RDP lol

but seriously, how they can continually overlook what clearly is a flaw? if I've got this all backwards, please share the logic behind it

dangrossman• 11 years ago

Hit the Windows key and type "power button" to open the power options control panel. Set "when I press the power button" to "do nothing". You can sleep/hibernate/shutdown from the start menu/screen, or automatically when you close the lid.

I have a UX301. The first time I accidentally hit the power button while working, I disabled it.

barake4• 11 years ago

It hasn't been an issue, and I thought it might be. I believe all the current MacBooks have the power button in the same location. Luckily OS X and Windows let you disable sleeping when the power button is pressed.

martijn_himself• 11 years ago

I was initially interested in getting this for Visual Studio 2013 development on the move but very worried it is way underpowered. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts!

barake4• 11 years ago

I was also worried, but figured it could always be returned. So far it's been perfectly adequate. The CPU scaling and power management seems to be balanced really well.

Email is in my profile if you'd like me to time a solution build.

tedunangst2• 11 years ago

Where can I get one of these for 699?

freehunter4• 11 years ago

Newegg seems to have it for that price: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834232...

Amazon's cheapest is $799 for some reason.

tedunangst2• 11 years ago

ah, cool. google "ux305 newegg" only returned a link for the ux31.

cgjaro• 11 years ago

Besides Newegg, it is also at $699 on Microsoft Store: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/ASUS-Zen...

franciscop2• 11 years ago

"ASUS has kept the styling consistent over the years"

Well, they look completely different to me:

1. Zenbook UX31E http://www.techspot.com/images/products/laptops/org/10306327...

2. Zenbook infinity UX301: http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ASUS-Zen...

franciscop2• 11 years ago

I will wait for the Skylake version, that should bring the best out of these beauties. I have the Ivy Bridge version (UX31) and I love it. When I bought it I wasn't sure if choosing it or Macbook Air, choose the Zenbook for its better resolution. Same thing is happening now.

nfoz2• 11 years ago

I love laptops and follow the market quite carefully. But why is this here?

I can understand the discussion about the new Apple Macbook, and the Google Pixel 2015, and the Dell "Sputnik" linux laptops. Because they all have some element that's a bit "out there" for discussion. This one... is just another laptop, there are many laptops on the market.

Why not discuss this one instead? It's much more interesting IMO:

http://panasonic.jp/pc/products/mx4h/

The Panasonic MX4, only available in Japan, features: - 2.6lbs (same as this Asus), but it's durability-tested like it's a lightweight Toughbook, they have drop-test videos etc. - 1920x1080 touchscreen - Flips around to become a tablet (yoga), pen is included. - Advertised 12hr battery life, but there are two batteries: the one that drains first is hot-swappable, leaving you with a few hours of battery life for you to swap in a replacement. - An extra accessory allows you to charge your removed-battery from the wall via USB. So you can keep the laptop on battery forever, swapping them out and charging them. - More connectivity options than anything else: VGA, HDMI, separate mic/headphones, SD card, 2xUSB3, and physical wireless on/off switch - Physical touchpad buttons - Ample-size trackpad, and the keyboard buttons are advertised as a decent 2mm of travel distance (deeper than most small laptops nowadays) - Optical disc (blu-ray) drive. In that tiny form factor with exceptional battery, pen-included yoga-tablet, lighter-than-macbook-air durability-tested machine. Amazing!

cwyers• 11 years ago

If I had to guess:

The most amazing thing about the ASUS UX305 though is that the company has crafted an all-aluminum, thin, light, and capable Ultrabook for only $699. With this kind of price point, one would expect sacrifices to be made in the specifications, but that is not really the case at all.

stevenjohns• 11 years ago

It was more or less the same with the last two generations, with the first generation only really suffering from a 'poor' keyboard.

IkmoIkmo3• 11 years ago

This one... is just another laptop

It's pretty significant when you have a potential MBA/MB killer, a line which was very very hard to beat the past decade or so. Some competed on better build quality, some did on specs, some did battery life, some did a screen, some did price, but rarely multiple or all combined.

But this new ASUS at $700 or so has 2x the Ram of an $1000 MBA (4->8) 2x the storage (128->256). Has a higher resolution (HD -> Full HD). Is thinner (0.68 -> 0.48). Is lighter (2.96lb -> 2.7lb), and slightly smaller in width/length, too.

Its performance and battery life benchmarks are virtually similar to the Air. (slightly better, slightly worse in the charts)

It has a metal unibody excellent build.

It's fanless.

That was pretty holy shit to me. If you decide this over the MBA, they will give you $300. And they will give you 4gb more memory. And 128gb storage. And make it thinner. And make it lighter. And make it fanless. And increase the resolution. And make it smaller.

In short it's absolutely crazy value. It's the type of thing that heralds a decade in which ultrabooks which are tiny, thin, fast, with great battery life, are available for bargain prices of $700, probably $500 in a few years. Compared to 8 years ago with the launch of the MBA which was $1800, and an extra $1000 if you wanted a 64gb SSD, with a weak performing chip and a few hours of battery life, this seems like a new generation of ridiculous 'performance/price' ratio.

I know performance/price always improves... but somehow for me this was a significant laptop. I haven't before seen anyone nail these specs, this build quality, this performance, this battery life, at this price. It feels as if the Nexus 4-5-7 just arrived for laptops, only then even a little bit better.

It's not perfect by the way. Biggest gripe is no backlit keyboard and a noisy click on the touchpad. But they feel minor and I expect future iterations to be really solid.

apricot• 11 years ago

Yes, Panasonic "business rugged" laptops are generally very well made, amazingly light and robust, and come with niceties that you seldom find elsewhere: a good, spill-resistant keyboard, optical drive, physical wireless kill switch, ability to survive 200 pounds of pressure on the lid, etc.

I have an older CF-Y7 model from 2008, with a 14-inch 1400x1050 screen. It's still my primary laptop. With Arch Linux and a tiled window manager, it feels surprisingly zippy.

avargas• 11 years ago

The IPS matte is lovely. I have a touchscreen I impulsively bought and it can't face a source of light directly, or else it's unreadable.

olso• 11 years ago

Could that CPU handle lets say WebStorm, postgresql, gulp, apache/nginx, laravel(php-fpm)/rails open all at once?

Running on Ubuntu MATE

I see boost up to 2GHz, so.. yes?

rocky1138• 11 years ago

If it can play games, it can definitely do what you're asking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agYxs3MwaQs

WildUtah• 11 years ago

"WebStorm, postgresql, gulp, apache/nginx, laravel(php-fpm)/rails"

I used to run all that stuff -- or its contemporary equivalent -- on a 400MHz single core laptop with 128MB of RAM. But that would be impossibly slow today. I wonder what changed.

kyriakos• 11 years ago

It should just fine. Webstorm has a hunger for memory but since you got 8gb with this laptop it will be fine.

Procrastes• 11 years ago

I bought this a couple of weeks ago. Works pretty well with xubuntu 14.04.

I don't have it with me, so I will update this comment when I get home with specifics. Many of these may be xubuntu oddities more than general Linux issues.

Issues so far:

* wifi does not work out of the box (fixed: add /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-7265-8.ucode[1]).

* top of windows disappear (fixed: turn off composition in Settings/Window Manager Tweaks).

* most "special" keys do not work, (volume and mute work)

* applications menu stopped responding. (still broken)

Otherwise it's fine. Good battery life, and very lightweight. I hardly ever use the applications menu, and I generally use my desktop for a browser and terminal windows, so it works well for me.

1. https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/_media/en/users/drivers/iwl...

SG-2• 11 years ago

Ignoring the product which seems to be pretty nice especially for that price, I found the review which was mostly about showing charts and comparisons to be pretty poor.

It seems some charts they've omitted models to compare, and they're comparing it to 1-2 year old models of competitors (no 2015 MBA, sometimes a 2013 MBP).

It would have also been nice to see SSD benchmarks considering how Anand has typically pretty good at reviewing SSDs in the past.

The ASUS Zenbook UX305 Review

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