This review is from: Asus UX32A Zenbook 13.3-inch Laptop (Silver) – (Intel Core i5 3317 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, WLAN, Webcam, BT, Integrated Graphics, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit) (Personal Computers)
I was eyeing up the UX31A but deemed it too expensive and with image and text size issues due to the high (but not quite high enough!) resolution screen, I chose the cheaper option, the UX32A. The build quality is identical and feels very premium! There is no flex of any note in the casing, and it looks very aesthetically pleasing as any good Mac-clone should! The backlit keys are nice.
This laptop is a dream to use! It feels like a Macbook Air but with Windows instead of IOS! Just what I was looking for. The battery life, screen contrast and brightness are fantastic! The keyboard is very pleasurable to type on, with good size keys, good travel and nice surfaces and sound. The touchpad is excellently sized with a nice smooth surface and lovely drivers to produce mac-like smooth two-finger scrolling, two-finger tapping for right click etc. More control over the touchpad functions would be nice, however. Maybe future drivers will provide! The instant-on feature is nice to have but as the small SSD is only used for caching, is not quite as quick as advertised, but is quick nonetheless. The speakers give great boom for their buck considering the size of the laptop, perfect for watching movies or television from under 10 feet away.
The lack of SSD-only storage does irk at times when the constant albeit quiet clicking of the computer caching the HDD data onto the SSD makes noise during quiet times. This, however, is not a problem considering the lack of SSD is reflected in the price. Otherwise the bloatware is a minor inconvenience, but can be sorted with effort. Rather annoying is now when the non-Asus sleep mode is used, the touchpad’s extra functions such as two-finger scrolling and three-finger swipes are not always reactivated on wake-up. The lack of a palm-check for the touchpad is definitely a problem that many will suffer from but I have been able to avoid it thus far, so it does not worry me to any great extent.
All in all a decent buy. To improve I would add an SSD, add a retina-screen and improve some of the above problems, but then it is the UX31A and £900 more expensive! Thus for the price it is very desirable when compared to the competition’s equivalents.
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This review is from: Asus UX32A Zenbook 13.3-inch Laptop (Silver) – (Intel Core i5 3317 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, WLAN, Webcam, BT, Integrated Graphics, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit) (Personal Computers)
I spent almost a month extensively researching laptops before deciding to buy the UX32A. There are many superficial reviews out there (techradar, expertreviews and whatnot). Then there are a couple of superb, detailed review sites from which you will really learn what makes a good laptop: notebookcheck and anandtech. I would suggest to anyone looking at buying this (or any) laptop to read the reviews on these two sites.
Now to my own experience from having bought this machine 3 weeks ago:
It is light, fast, has a lovely backlit keyboard, a very robust sleep/hibernate function and power options that ensure battery is well conserved. The best part (and unlike the macbook air and many many other ultrabooks out there) the RAM can be upgraded (from the current 4GB upto a maximum of 10GB) and the hard disk can be upgraded (from the 500GB ‘traditional’ hard disk to a fast SSD of upto 500GB and probably 1TB in the future). Unlike many people (esp on amazon.com) who have immediately upgraded I haven’t, because I find this machine is fast enough as it is. I am a light user doing browsing, word processing, playing music and movies, and after my 5 yo netbook this thing is super quick.
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This review is from: Asus UX32A Zenbook 13.3-inch Laptop (Silver) – (Intel Core i5 3317 2.6GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, WLAN, Webcam, BT, Integrated Graphics, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit) (Personal Computers)
The laptop is reasonably fast and responsible for its weight and price. I like – The design: not as classy as Apple but not bad – The backlit and fairly silent keyboard – The hard drive size (500GB, not SSD) – The fast startup time, I guess thanks the the additional SSD disk
What I liked less: – needed some heavy software upgrade from day 1. It was not fully automated so it might have been a bit scary for someone who is not very familiar with computers – the fan used to make a freaking noise (VOOOOO!) going suddenly to full speed, especially when resuming from suspend mode. I had bought it because I wanted to use in a quiet environment where noise is not welcome, so this quite defeated the purpose. Fortunately, Asus has come up with a BIOS update (v212) that fixes this.
So to summarise, a good piece of hardware, but you should probably be a bit computer savvy to use it without being disappointed.
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Great considering the price!,
I was eyeing up the UX31A but deemed it too expensive and with image and text size issues due to the high (but not quite high enough!) resolution screen, I chose the cheaper option, the UX32A. The build quality is identical and feels very premium! There is no flex of any note in the casing, and it looks very aesthetically pleasing as any good Mac-clone should! The backlit keys are nice.
This laptop is a dream to use! It feels like a Macbook Air but with Windows instead of IOS! Just what I was looking for. The battery life, screen contrast and brightness are fantastic! The keyboard is very pleasurable to type on, with good size keys, good travel and nice surfaces and sound. The touchpad is excellently sized with a nice smooth surface and lovely drivers to produce mac-like smooth two-finger scrolling, two-finger tapping for right click etc. More control over the touchpad functions would be nice, however. Maybe future drivers will provide! The instant-on feature is nice to have but as the small SSD is only used for caching, is not quite as quick as advertised, but is quick nonetheless. The speakers give great boom for their buck considering the size of the laptop, perfect for watching movies or television from under 10 feet away.
The lack of SSD-only storage does irk at times when the constant albeit quiet clicking of the computer caching the HDD data onto the SSD makes noise during quiet times. This, however, is not a problem considering the lack of SSD is reflected in the price. Otherwise the bloatware is a minor inconvenience, but can be sorted with effort. Rather annoying is now when the non-Asus sleep mode is used, the touchpad’s extra functions such as two-finger scrolling and three-finger swipes are not always reactivated on wake-up. The lack of a palm-check for the touchpad is definitely a problem that many will suffer from but I have been able to avoid it thus far, so it does not worry me to any great extent.
All in all a decent buy. To improve I would add an SSD, add a retina-screen and improve some of the above problems, but then it is the UX31A and £900 more expensive! Thus for the price it is very desirable when compared to the competition’s equivalents.
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|Brilliant 2012 ultrabook, especially at this price. Future-proof-able: RAM and Hard Disk can be upgraded at home!,
I spent almost a month extensively researching laptops before deciding to buy the UX32A. There are many superficial reviews out there (techradar, expertreviews and whatnot). Then there are a couple of superb, detailed review sites from which you will really learn what makes a good laptop: notebookcheck and anandtech. I would suggest to anyone looking at buying this (or any) laptop to read the reviews on these two sites.
Now to my own experience from having bought this machine 3 weeks ago:
It is light, fast, has a lovely backlit keyboard, a very robust sleep/hibernate function and power options that ensure battery is well conserved. The best part (and unlike the macbook air and many many other ultrabooks out there) the RAM can be upgraded (from the current 4GB upto a maximum of 10GB) and the hard disk can be upgraded (from the 500GB ‘traditional’ hard disk to a fast SSD of upto 500GB and probably 1TB in the future). Unlike many people (esp on amazon.com) who have immediately upgraded I haven’t, because I find this machine is fast enough as it is. I am a light user doing browsing, word processing, playing music and movies, and after my 5 yo netbook this thing is super quick.
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|Nice little piece of hardware,
The laptop is reasonably fast and responsible for its weight and price. I like
– The design: not as classy as Apple but not bad
– The backlit and fairly silent keyboard
– The hard drive size (500GB, not SSD)
– The fast startup time, I guess thanks the the additional SSD disk
What I liked less:
– needed some heavy software upgrade from day 1. It was not fully automated so it might have been a bit scary for someone who is not very familiar with computers
– the fan used to make a freaking noise (VOOOOO!) going suddenly to full speed, especially when resuming from suspend mode. I had bought it because I wanted to use in a quiet environment where noise is not welcome, so this quite defeated the purpose. Fortunately, Asus has come up with a BIOS update (v212) that fixes this.
So to summarise, a good piece of hardware, but you should probably be a bit computer savvy to use it without being disappointed.
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|