Customer Reviews

ASUS UL50AG-A2 Thin and Light 15.6-Inch Black Laptop - 12 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

At around $800 for a 15 inch, this laptop undercuts the Apple Macbook Pro by about half. It is thin and light and with great decent build quality. The multi touch mouse is a little too sensitive but I believe with the correct collaboration, it can be easily fixed. The screen is bright with the LED backlighting. The battery in real life test lasted me about 8-9 hours while surfing the internet. There are additional features which I have yet to masters like smart login with camera. All in all, very satisfied with the purchase. The only thing I found a bit disappointing is that one of the rubber thingies that hides the screw already came off on day two. It does not impact the performance in anyway but it's a bit disappointing. Also there are alot of screw points around the monitor as well which was a bit of a surprise. The 15.6" widescreen is a bit non standard and cannot fit into my LV messenger bag. Windows 7 64 bit requires a bit of adjustments to work with older apps. But other than that, this is a beautiful, FAST, LIGHT alternative to the MacBook Pro.

A modern laptop design - thin, lightweight, long battery life, and very nice screen. Unless you are a power user (ie processing speed), I'd get it. Probably the lowest quality aspect is the keyboard - I'm not sure why they didn't tighten the keyboard up a bit, because they obviously spent a lot of time on all other aspects. The keys are loose feeling, and it's a bit clangy. On the other hand, I like having the numeric keypad - will be great for certain games like Civ. And clearly, you can still type on it. I'm giving it 5 stars anyway because the overall package of price and quality is still a great deal. Windows 7 is much improved versus Vista. They have a lot of stylish icons and whatnot in the ASUS Bios, and they have even spent the time to put a fastboot OS onto the laptop - it really is like a 5 second boot. Not worth using in my opinion since Windows 7 boots quite quickly itself.
This is my first Asus, having had Gateways, Dells, and several IBMs before. Comparisons to a MacBook pro aren't totally off-base - my wife is sitting beside me with her MacBook Pro, and the screens are definitely comparable, as well as the thinness, lightness, etc. However, there is the keyboard thing. Then again, my wife's macbook has gone in twice for a keyboard repair. Hmm.
Battery life is of course awesome. The warranty is very good as well, better than most other manufacturers'.

Overall good value laptop for the price - paid $750 including sales tax.

positive: super thin and light, large hard drive @500gb, bright LED widescreen, HDMI out at 1080 resolution, webcam which has face-recognition authentication, 10 key number pad, decent altec lansing speakers, stay cool keyboard, quiet fan, averaging 10+ hour battery life.

negative: windows 7 premium 64bit OS is a bit buggy with 32bit apps and device drivers , no built-in bluetooth, fingerprints left on black brushed aluminum case, maximum capacity of 4gb ram.

The laptop uses the su7300 Intel core 2 duo processors, which in my opinion is more than adequate for a poweruser. I can run adobe CS4 suite, MS Office, several different browsers and VMware workstation running 2 VMs (2003 server and Fedora Core11) all at the same time.

I was considering buying a Macbook pro laptop - but after seeing this at my local BB store, I bought it on impulse and am more than happy with this purchase. Best laptop I have ever bought, i'm official done with HP, Lenovo, and Acer brands.

First, some background:

I've been a Mac user for 10 years or so as my primary machine. I use a MacBook Pro and OS X as my work machine and needed a secondary laptop for personal use.

I couldn't justify dropping $2,000 for another MacBook Pro so close to Christmastime, but I could justify $600 to $700 for this unit. I've had it for a couple of weeks now and love it.

The Good:

While it does not have the claimed 12 hour battery life, you can easily get 7-10 hours out of it depending on how you configure brightness etc. More than enough to make it a joy to use.

The screen is 15.6 (call it 16" widescreen) and is bright and crisp with plenty of room to work in.

Chicklet keys are really nice touch. In general the unit is really solid and fast.

The one year warranty ASUS has is unusual in that it covers spills and drops. Other manufacturers have this available but you have to pay for it. Comes standard with ASUS.

The Bad:

As other reviewers before have said, there is a very slight flex in the keyboard, but to me it is not noticable, nor do I really care because it doesn't affect my typing.

The exterior black is a neat finish but again, as other reviewers have stated, it is a fingerprint magnet. Not too much of a concern for me though because the machine is a joy to use. Really. It is. If you buy this you will not be disappointed.

The Ugly:

I've tried really hard the past two weeks to find something wrong with the machine and really the only thing that is bad about it is that it runs Windows 7 rather than OS X. Windows 7 is not a bad OS and on this machine it is quite fast, particularly if you don't load up a new laptop with software right when you get it, but rather install one program a day to see if any give you problems.

Final recommendations:

Strongly recommend two things with the purchase of this unit. One is the Microsoft ARC Wireless Mouse. Very cool.

The other is a Backblaze account for set it and forget it, backup. [...]. Get the $50 per year account rather than the $5/month and for less than five bucks a month you will have offsite backup and peace of mind.

In terms of how this unit compares to the MacBook Pro?

The MBP is undoubtedly a more solid machine - and the solid aluminum carved block is a joy to use. But if you don't have the money for it and if you need a solid, reliable unit that is fairly similar, this ASUS is a really solid choice; and at $600 to $700, you're not going to find anything comparable to it in the PC line. Trust me, I know. Before buying this unit at Best Buy, I looked at ThinkPads, ACERs, HP, Toshiba, Sony and DELL.

I'm sold on ASUS.

Hope this helps!

I bought this computer mainly because of the claims made about the battery life. I am in college and my laptop goes everywhere that I do. I use a laptop to take lecture notes in all of my classes and on days when I am on campus for 5 plus hours, I really needed to step up the battery life. So, I put my HP to rest and went with this, the Asus ul50ag-A2. This particular model is great! The battery claims are correct. I have been getting easily 8 to 9 hours worth of battery life and I could get even better if I wanted to keep tinkering with the power settings. The ultra-low voltage processor runs just fine, fast enough for me!The quality of this laptop is awesome. It feels very sturdy and well-made. It looks very sleek. All black with a black brushed aluminum finish, LED screen, blue lights, and a very cool "smart-pad" mouse that blends right in with the rest of the computer. I especially love the way the smart-pad works, very much like the mouse on a Macbook, with two-finger scrolling and three-finger tapping that can be used as the right-click function (don't worry, there is also a button for right and left-clicking). So far, I have not had any problems with overheating, but the computer is still relatively new to me (the ice cool palm rest also helps). I also would like to point out that the computer is thin and light. It fits in my book-filled backpack and does not add much more weight at all. I feel safe saying that this is the best laptop I have purchased yet and I will continue to use Asus in the near future. It is easily comparable to computers in the 1000 dollar plus range.

I have the Best Buy version with 500GB. This is an amazing machine. I did a lot of research on laptops and decided to go with this one. It is the perfect balance between weight, style, and performance. It is a speed demon of a laptop. Very fast start up, no lag, and has everything you want except bluetooth. The battery life is amazing. It charges quickly and lasts throughout the day with my wife and I using it. It does not come with bloatware either. The sound is nice and loud (at least compared to our 4 yr old presario).

I was going to go for a 13" laptop, but for a little more you can get this 15.6" that is just as light and comes with an optical drive.

The cons, if you type on it like a mad secretary on a desktop keyboard trying to meet a deadline then you might notice some flexing. Also, I made some changes to the trackpad setting since there were some scrolling features that did not work well together.

Seriously, this laptop looks and performs like it should cost over a grand. Just go for it.

Just got one of these for one of my computer business clients. It's elegant, speedy, lightweight, powerful, and has that fabulous killer long long battery time. For $800, it's THE way to go right now if you want a laptop. You don't know how much you'll love long battery life until you've experienced it (as I have the past 9 months w/ my Asus netbook)

Everything one could want in a laptop. Fast, incredibly portable (you won't believe how little it weighs), and with a battery life which - while not exactly what is advertised - is absolutely phenomenal; if I'm careful, I can get an average of five and up to seven hours worth of active use on one charge.

I couldn't recommend this enough!

To be honest, I know very little about computers. This brand was recommended by some of my "computer geek" friends. So far I have been satisfied with this laptop and would recommended it to others. This is only the second computer that I have ever owned and is the first lap top computer that I have ever owned or used.

The key board does have a little flex in it, but it is nothing that has bothered me or effected the performance.

The battery life is not quite 12 hours. It might reach its full potential if I where to set all the settings to the proper setting for max battery life. I generally use it for checking email and word documents. With the settings that I have it at, I can get about 6-7 hours before needing to plug in. It has been used more less as a desk top computer. I have not used it outside of my house yet.

The over all appearance is sleek and slender. I like the look of this computer, but I also love the color black. (Very clean and professional looking in my opinion.) The down side is that it does collect and hold lots of finger prints, both on the outer shell and the inner face around the keyboard.

The touch pad mouse is nice and user friendly for the most part. If or when your fingers get sweaty you will have difficulties using the touch pad. It can be a little sensitive at times, especially when clicking. I have found it best to start a command off of the pad and then slide my finger onto the pad. This helps prevent unwanted commands. This was only an issue for a couple of days since I have been using a mouse for almost all navigation since.

It is a little bigger than I would have liked it to be, but that is my fault. I wanted the number pad on the right side of the key board. I would have probably been better of with the UL30 or UL80 for this reason. I am going to use this laptop for as a stationary business computer and look into an Asus net-book for on the road applications.

Once again, this review is coming from some one that knows very little about computers. Take my comments for what they are worth. I would recommend this product or brand to anyone. I have been very happy with it thus far.

When looking for a laptop my major concerns were at least decent processing power and a long battery life. I have had this laptop for a number of months now and believe it fills the bill.

As others have noted, it typically lasts 7-8 hours of normal use. Compared to other laptops this is great. I was able to watch three DVDs on a long trip to China without re-charging the battery. Just as a side note: the 8 cell battery is not bulky and the design of the laptop hides it well.

Some have complained about the sound, but for a laptop I think it excels. I only turn up the volume to about 50% when my kids watch a movie together. However, one note, since these speakers are angled down the laptop needs to sit on a hard surface to get a good sound.

Up to this point the SU7300 processor has fulfilled my needs. However, I am only a casual user. If you are a gamer or have processor intense programs to run you may need more than the 1.3 Ghz dual core and on board video card.

One of my few complaints is the keyboard. I'm a touch typest and I have a hard time typing on this laptop without making a number of mistakes. The travel of the keys are a little shallow and I haven't been that impressed with the chiclet style keyboard. I don't think it is any worse than other keypads of this same style but it doesn't work that well for me.

As others have also noted this does show fingerprints. But I knew it would when I bought it and it is not a huge deal. I just have to clean it often or live with it.

One other minor anoyance are the viewing angles. The picture on the screen doesn't degrade much from left to right but from top to bottom the picture quickly becomes washed out. For day to day use what this means is I have to get the screen angled just right. It helps that the top lays down rather far.

In summary...I have made a few complaints but these are minor. It is a quality laptop with a 3 year warranty. It has an excelent look and I would definately buy it again.