The ASUS Zenbook UX305 Review
anandtech.com
anandtech.com
Seems like a winner to me.
Is there a laptop like this that is supported by linux or any of the BSDs well?
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.
I think this happened to some broadcom chips.
Heck, Ubuntu's kernel actually has lots of patches, so unless you carry those along, the modules may even not-work on a same kernel version for some other distro.
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.
As far as BSD goes, I at a loss. :(
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.
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.
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.
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...
Also my current laptop is a 2015 Macbook Pro so your anti-Apple bias argument is out of place too.
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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
I have a UX301. The first time I accidentally hit the power button while working, I disabled it.
Email is in my profile if you'd like me to time a solution build.
One of my colleague in the same situation ended up buying a Toshiba.
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
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.
Additionally, I find it more efficient to apply pressure to move the cursor accross the screen rather than the "put fingers down, rub, fingers up, move through the air" loop!
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-ca...
https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial_Notebook/ASUSPRO_ADVANCED...
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ASUSPRO-Advanced-BU201LA-D...
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...
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.
Running on Ubuntu MATE
I see boost up to 2GHz, so.. yes?
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.
Amazon's cheapest is $799 for some reason.