Asus launched its take on the Ultrabook, dubbed the Zenbook in Sydney last night. What’s Asus’ thin and light laptop actually like?
There’s only so much room to innovate within the Ultrabook specification, simply because once you’ve made an extremely thin laptop, there’s very little room to move.
From the brief hands-on time I had with the 11.3 inch UX21 and 13.3 inch UX31 laptops, Asus has produced a solid looking and feeling model, with a few nice features along the way.
It’ll handle USB charging of external devices via its USB 3.0 port, even when powered down. Asus’ claim is that it’s good for up to two weeks of standby time, which is impressive, but naturally enough I didn’t have time to test that.
The keyboard response was fairly good in a brief test, and while the keyboard on both models isn’t backlit, the bright display screen means that the silver keys are easy to pick out in a darkened room — and the launch venue last night wasn’t terribly well lit, which gave me plenty of opportunities to test out how bright the screen is.
32.5×22.3×0.30-1.8cm
1.1kg
13.3″ LED HD+ (1600×900) 450nits ZBD
Intel Core i5-2557M or Intel Core i7-2677M
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
4GB RAM
128 or 256GB SATA III SSD
WLAN 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth V4.0
Up to 7hrs battery life, 2 week standby
1x USB2.0, 1x USB3.0, 1x Headphone-out & Audio-in Combo Jack; 1x micro HDMI; 1x mini VGA, 1 x SD card reader
$1499/$1999
There’s an elephant in the room, and in this case it’s an elephant with a turtleneck sweater on. There’s a distinct similarity between the Zenbook and the Macbook Air, and that’s no bad thing; competition in the affordable thin and light space is an excellent idea. Asus’ presentation on the Zenbook even drew that exact comparison with a few slight pricing jabs, as they’re bundling in a USB Ethernet Adaptor and VGA adaptor with the Zenbook, something you’d pay extra for with the Macbook Air.
I had a Macbook Air on me, so while the staff wasn’t looking, I popped it out for some quick physical comparison. There’s not that much between them, although I would note (and I wasn’t the only one present to make this observation) that the Zenbook’s edges are less rounded than those of the Macbook Air; this makes for a slightly sharper feel on the sides of the Zenbook, especially on the screen frame.
Pricing for the 11.6″ UX21 Zenbook starts at $1399, while the 13.3″ UX31 pricing starts at $1499.
Palms
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 9:18 AMSo much for the $1000 target price…
Sylver
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 9:37 AMWhat are you worried about, Apple is going to stick an injuntion on it soon because they invented thin laptops.
It is nice to have some competition in the market though. We’ll see what else comes to the table once the OEMs get the hand of it.
(Also, I may or may not have accidently reported your post. Sorry about that.)
Palms
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 10:04 AMHaha, no worries. At least Acer is closer to the $1000 (although, minus the SSD).
Mike
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:02 AMI thought the Acer model came in under $1000? like $899 or something?
Palms
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 11:37 AMThe Acer website lists the cheapest price as $1199, but you can get it from Umart for $1069.
http://www.acer.com.au/ac/en/AU/content/series/aspiresseries
http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=67&bid=2&sid=80904
Greg
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 1:19 PMNo SSD == ultrabook fail.
Chris
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 9:37 AMYeah, starting to look a bit pricy. In the market for one of these, but mainly as a super netbook (not every day machine). Not sure which to get – the apple seems best value?
Wonder how long 128 gig will be enough space.
john in brisbane
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 5:28 AMyeah – strange but true! At this stage the apple does seem like better value. I’m dead keen to upgrade and ultrabooks are going to be awesome but it looks like I’ll be using my battered eee asus for a while yet.
vijay
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 10:03 AMBetter get this from Bestbuy from US. Its much cheaper. Just looking for some friends who can post it :)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=5148592989383387672&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=asus+ux+&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960
MDolley
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 10:04 AMI was hoping the 11″ was going to be cheaper
For the same price can get a 11″ Macbook Air and a retail copy of Windows 7. Then I’ve got a Mac and a Windows machine. Sure the specs on the Air might not be as good but both of them are going to run everything I need just fine.
Mike
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 2:03 PMWell lets try and even things out a little on the spec field shall we? Get a MBA which also has a 128GB SSD and 4GB ram, and the price is already at $1349, but still with a worse CPU. So the difference is $50 and a better spec’d CPU. Not so cut-and-dry anymore is it…
james
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 10:22 AMgood to see the bestbuy price for the 11 inch is under 1k – means no customs duty on it as well.
Wok
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 1:23 PMSweet.
amy
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 1:50 PMMakes the MBA surprisingly cheap in comparison (SSD; OS X factor that no windows machine can legally boast if you’re into Lion)
Puddiepants
Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 4:48 PMWhy is there a girl all in silver in the 2nd pic?
BodenM
Friday, November 11, 2011 at 7:33 AMBecause ASUS are weird ;D
CDL
Tuesday, November 15, 2011 at 12:43 AMWhy are we yet again paying more for this product than in the USA considering our dollar is stronger- we should be paying LESS ???!!!!!
john in brisbane
Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 2:16 AMThese are a good start but the pricing obviously needs to come down before they start to realise their potential. For these units to launch with similar or higher pricing to the Apples is just nuts. Asus has gotten this wrong and that is both surprising and disappointing, especially given their success with the dirt cheap eee lines… apple has already had to drop their prices in response to the ultrabook threat – their manufacturing costs are almost certainly lower but they simply won’t drop their prices much more for brand-related reasons whereas Asus can flog millions of these ultrabooks at maybe 15 to 20% lower than the MBA and clean up.
MotorMouth
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 9:46 AMI bought an 11.6″ model from JB Hi-Fi yesterday. It was reduced from $1594 to $1494and when I told the sales guy I was probably looking to purchase overseas, he asked what price I could get. I told him “around $1200″ and he asked if I’d buy one from him for that money. Naturally, I said “yes” but he checked the price and their cost price is $1358. So he did it for me for $1350 and I can get $130 back in GST when I go to the US tomorrow. That makes it effectively $1220 for an 11.6″ model with Core i7 and a 128Gb SATA III SSD. So far it is awesome! It also undercuts a MB Air by almost $300 and I don
t think the Air has SATA III storage. (The SSD in the Zenbook rates a perfect 7.9 in the MS Windoze Experience Index.)
Dave
Thursday, November 24, 2011 at 2:52 PMWhats the screen like? ill be getting one of these in the UK in a month and im worried the display will look a little crappy after the display on my Vaio Z. I just dont need the same graphics power that i needed 2.5 years ago.
Gangadhar
Sunday, April 1, 2012 at 9:11 AMmuch as I like SSDs and want to have one, it’s still too expensive.. a 60GB SSD goes for above 6k while 128GB vnerioss costs above 11k so adding that to an Acer S3 brings it near the levels of the UX31 maybe only a bit cheaper.and oh, as good as the reviews are on the Mac book air, three of the six units we deployed to our VPs at the office are constantly having problems, the rest the only complaint is that they wish it were faster (well aside from stuff you usually hear from people used to using windows).. they love the battery life though.. executives hate power cords..