Customer Reviews

ASUS UL80Ag-A1 Thin and Light 14-Inch Black Laptop - 12 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, I did not purchase the Asus UL80Ag at Amazon, rather at Cos---.
That out of the way, this laptop is an extremely good choice for any grad student,
especially those in Business courses.

Most of these laptops are quite good these days. I've had Toshibas, Sony's and HP's.
But, at least when at school, two performance issues make a huge difference: battery
life and quality of WiFi connection. In these areas the Asus UL80Ag absolutely excels.
I get an absolute minimum of 6 hrs battery life, but usually 8+ hours. And, the connection
and data throughput of the Wireless N are faster than nearly all the other Laptops. Just
Google WiFi features on Laptops to see specific testing results. At school, there are never
enought plugins for all the laptops. Or, the plugin can be akward to use (eg someone trips
over your cord). With extended battery life, you just charge the Laptop at home and can
go the entire day without needing a recharge.

On the Con side, the keyboard isn't the same quality as on a Sony with chicklet keyboard.
Furthermore, the overall fit and finish are not as good in general as with Sony laptops.
Nevertheless, the quality is good, and it is extremely functional. At their new price of
around $650, including a 2-year warranty, first year includes accident coverage, the value
of the Asus UL80Ag is very high.

Finally, I am running XP and got most of the drivers from the Asus website. However, Asus
does not, at least as of this writing, post the latest Elantech TouchPad driver, 7.0.59.
Its a day and night difference if you upgrade to this driver. If you don't then the mouse
can randomly jump around on your document due to slight sensations from resting your palm
on the touchpad or some other biomechanic anomaly with the touchpad. The upgraded driver, 7.0.59
does fix this problem. It also makes the finger gestures much more responsive and accurate.
It other words the touchpad becomes functional instead of just frustrating.

To sum up, this is an excellent Laptop at a very good price. I expect it to last at least two
years and pay for itself within 6 months.

This is the second Asus in my my family, and i have to recognized this brand rocks, great prices, great battery life, not as at advertised, but using wifi, for email purposes, around 9 hours.

No hassles with the keyboard, mouse or anyuthing, even so i can give you the advice that after you remove the sticker in the mouse, you must clean it with a moistured pad.So it will run more smoodly.

Dont think it twice this is a Best-Buy.

Pros:Really Slim, Amazing battery life, Nice Display, ultrafast booting, 8 sec system to browse, music, skype,etc..!

The only Cons: Its hard to keep it without fingerprints because of their finish.

I've had this laptop for about 2 weeks now and I have to say that this is one of the bast laptops I have ever had. One of the things that you notice right away is the battery life. With my previous laptops I constantly had to check on the battery level to see if I had enough juice left but not with this one. The laptop is not heavy at all and it is extremely portable because of its size and weight. I am a student at WSU in Michigan and all my classes have the little tiny desks, and this laptop is just the perfect size. Some other great features that the laptop offers are the fast boot up, great display, stays nice and cool even after being on it for hours and hours. Overall I love the laptop. I have been in school all day since 10 this morning and it is now almost 8pm and I am still at 43% ( 5 hr 07 min)of battery. One thing that is kind of a pain is the sensitivity of the mouse pad but I got used to that in a day. Good job Asus, keep pumpin out these good laptops and you'll put hp, dell and gateway out of business in no time.

Whats so Great?
- Incredible 8 hrs battery life.
- Lightweigh Design and the slim size despite the huge 8 cell battery.
-Spacious and easy to use keyboard

Whats not so great?
- Over sensitive touchpad.
- The front part on the right of touch pad is kind of flimsy.
(but none of these matter a lot to me)

This is overall an excellent slim and portable laptop for everyday use. Its excellent for MS office applications and websurfing. And the 4 GB RAM is more than enough for everyday multitasking.

If you bought this laptop, dont forget to update the driver of the Graphics chipset (Intel GMA4500MHD) through Intels website. This will improve the graphics performance.

I dont understand why ASUS didnt properly checked the user friendliness of the touch pad and the build quality in the retail versions of this laptop. ASUS's reputation as the trusted and one of the most reliable laptop brand will go down if they ignore such aspects in future.

I've had this laptop for 3 months now and I have to say it I am really happy with the purchase. I mainly use this laptop for email, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Onenote, reading ebooks (textbooks mainly), and watching videos online on hulu, etc. Even though its clocked at 1.3 GHz, the SU7300 processor is more than enough to handle these tasks. This laptop also stays incredibly cool. My previous laptop would get noticeable hot on my lap and on the wrist area. It doesn't matter what you are doing, you will never feel the heat with this laptop on your lap. I don't play 3D games on my laptop so I can't judge its performance in that regard.

The battery life is really stellar. I can realistically get 10 hours of use on a single charge. I have gotten 8+ with WiFi on, but could possible have gotten more. There are four power modes that you can use on this laptop: High Performance, Entertainment, Quiet Office, and Battery Saver. From the High Performance mode down they basically throttle down your CPU usage and dim the display progressively. You can tweak their individual settings, but the stock settings are pretty good. For example, in Quiet Office mode, the max CPU usage you can get is 70%. However, even at 70% I have never experienced any sluggishness or lag. I have never even used the Battery Saver mode so I could probably get close to 12 hours on a single charge in that mode. Needless to say, if I start the day with a full charge, I don't have to take the charger with me,..ever.

Other than that, the laptop is sleek, and lightweight. It is very easy to carry around all day. I take it with me everywhere. Its not a rugged laptop by any means, but it isn't cheap feeling either. It will handle being pulled into and out your bag repeatedly. It also manages to squeeze in a DVD burner, while maintaining its small size and weight. I don't use it often, but on the few occasions I need it, I'm glad its there.

The keyboard is really easy to type on. I don't use the webcam so I can't evaluate it. The laptop does come with a facial recognition software to allow you to log on with the webcam. I could never get this feature to work, but I never cared for it to begin with.

The laptop also comes with the Splashtop OS. There is a second power button, that when pressed boots into the Splashtop OS. It boots up in less than 10 seconds. This feature can be useful those few times when you need to check your email really quickly. However, it's not good for much beyond that. I find it use it about once a month.

The one negative of the laptop is the glossy material. The lid is not terribly glossy (its actually a really nice brushed metal look), however the plastic around the keyboard, where your wrists rest, is very glossy. It picks up finger prints and "wrist prints" very easily. I have a microfiber cloth with me and give the wrist area a wipe every now and then. The wrist area can start looking pretty gross with all the fingerprints and what not. This is the only complaint I have about this laptop. Just to be clear, the keys of the keyboard itself are NOT glossy. Just the plastic around the keyboard is glossy.

I have read other reviews complaining about the mouse pad. I was concerned about this prior to my purchase,as well. It does a little bit of getting used to. I did go into Control Panel and tweak the mouse settings a little bit. It took a few days to get used to the mouse. With that said, now I have no problems at all. Although, if a friend uses my computer they do have some issues with using the mouse pad.

In Summary:

Pros:
Windows 7
Fast Performance
10 hour battery life
Lightweight
Good Keyboard
DVD Burner
Looks attractive
TWO year warranty
Splashtop OS (not really a make or break feature, but a nice bonus I suppose)

Cons:
Glossy

If you are on the fence about this laptop, and you getting it for a good price (I got mine for $575 after rebate, which I think is a great deal) you should go for it.

I've been using this laptop for over a month. I bought this from Amazon and with a $100 rebate from Asus it cost me about $640 (NYS sales tax included) which I think is a great value because of performance combined with, very amazingly, light weight portability and long battery life. I will summarize the pros and cons below:

Pros:

-14" display. Vivid and not overly glossy. More importantly, unlike the humongous laptops with 15.6" screens, this one fits into my backpack. The reasonable footprint also makes finding suitable work surfaces easier without compromising anything, to my eye (literally! :-)).

-Excellent keyboard. The chicklet style is great and the give when typing is very comfortable. But because I'm so used to my Samsung NC10 keyboard (95% of typical size), sometimes I find the keys too large and far apart (especially the 'del' key and the pg up/down keys from the touchpad. Have to move my hand off it in order to reach those keys). But that's just my personal preferences/quirkiness.

-Battery is nowhere near as advertised, unless you go into the eye straining battery saving mode. BUT, 6 to 7 hours under normal usage with WiFi on is the norm, which is more than enough for me. Where can you find that with a laptop this light and a relatively large screen? It beats even my Samsung NC10, which after one year of usage battery life has deteriorated to about 4.5 hours of normal usage.

-WiFi. It's the fast N Draft. But I am used to fast WiFi because my Samsung G is also very fast (credit to my ISP?). What I find excellent about this Atheros WiFi card is it connects very quickly with both public and private networks. It takes a very short time to "shake hands" with any router and gets connected in just a few seconds. It beats the two Toshibas we have in the house also with N Draft WiFi cards in "handshaking" and I've never experienced any unexpected dropoffs with the Asus. The same can't be said about one of the lesser Toshibas in the house.

-Speakers. It's very decent. I could complain but I won't because of the trade off in weight. But it's much better than the Samsung netbook, that's for sure.

-Performance. It's fast. I don't know if it's because of Windows 7 or it's because it's 64 bit, it's just fast. Or the processors or the 4GB memory or what. Granted, I am not a gamer so I place minimal demands on the processors. But when I click something, it's on immediately, works without hesitation and flawlessly. And it's the same with both the system and applications. I must say, either it's because Microsoft finally got it this time with Windows 7 or the excellent job of Asus putting together this machine, there are just no headaches and aggravations. Just turn it on and use it. When you don't have to think about crashing or blue screens or error messages, you're in heaven (my expectations too low?). Kudos to both Asus and Microsoft.

-Ease of use. See above. Plus, system installed in no time. Though took forever to create backup discs. But I think this step can be skipped because the Asus came with a OS recovery disc. But I did it anyway when prompted just to be safe.

-Ice Cool Palm Rest. Not just the coolness, but no accidental touching the touchpad and ample space for true palm rest.

Neutral:

-Touchpad. I don't know. At first I was not happy with it. Then I updated the driver just like other users have recommended doing manually. I thought it improved after that. And then not so much (psychological, perhaps). And then the more I use the touchpad, the more I find out its useful features (such as opening new tabs by light tapping with two finger) I began to like it more. But the fact that one has to grow to like it means it could be better. Like not having it as an issue at all, Asus.

-Express Gate. Tried it once to see what's it about. Decided it's not a must for me because: 1)Windows 7 comes back on from hibernation very quickly (I don't shut down the computer unless I have to); 2)as mentioned above, the Atheros WiFi card connects so quickly (1 or 2 secs after waking up from hibernation) that I don't see any need for using the Express Gate. Especially when the Firefox browser is a must for me. (Express Gate uses a different browser that's functional.)

Cons:

-Dust and finger prints magnet. No, make that a black hole!

-Not as cool looking as the pictures in its advertisements and own website. But much better looking than the pix on Amazon.

Overall:

I started out wanting to buy the VT model from the UL80 series. But when a special price and $100 rebate was introduced for the AG model I see that I can save $300 from its sexier cousin with accelerated graphics and DDR3 memories, etc. But I know I don't need all that muscle. I mean, my Samsung NC10 netbook is already meeting my computing needs so why do I need all those souped up hardware? I bought the AG for it's larger screen (my eyesight is worsening) to be used at home and an emergency backup that I can carry around with ease should anything happens to my Samsung or for presentations. I must say I am very happy with my purchasing decision. Asus makes high quality computers at a great price. Even the website for filing the rebate was very well designed and easy to use. It updates quickly and now I know my rebate has been approved just by typing in my tracking number. Everything is hassle free - from the computer to setup to usage to filing for a rebate. I don't know about their customer service because there's been no need to contact them. I hope I'll never have to find out!

Lastly, I find that most of the problems I've had with Windows came from its browser, the Explorer. I've stopped using it with my Samsung NC10 that runs XP and the first thing I did with the Asus after setting up was to visit [...] and install Firefox and making it my default browser. You'll discover that you'll never have security issues, your computer never freezes, you'll have lots of fun with add-ons, and the system will never crash on you (I don't ever have to shut down my computer until Windows and other software updates require me to restart the computer. I just hibernate and thus avoid the interminable wait for start ups. Just make sure all the lights in front are off when you hibernate before you pull the plug). More importantly, you don't have to keep listening to how you should've gotten a Mac Book with lesser hardware for a higher price. It's truly a blissful world when using Firefox and Windows 7.

Great laptop and very fast. A really good value for a core 2 duo. I like that ASUS has changed the exterior to a brushed aluminum finish for this laptop. I have another ASUS laptop that has the piano black finish on the exterior and it is hard to keep looking nice.

The touch pad works fine for me -- I think I had read some previous reviews when I purchased that some people had problems; I haven't had any. The left-click is a little stiff and hard to click, but I think it is just my laptop, and I'll probably send it in for repair over spring break when I have time to go without the laptop for a few days. Also, the right front edge of the laptop "creaks" when I rest my hand on it to type; something to do with the case where the bottom portion meets the top portion. Again, this is likely a quality issue with my specific laptop that I will have taken care of when sent in for repair.

Overall, a VERY good laptop, especially for sub-$700 for a core 2 duo. Very light, easy to carry. Awesome battery life. Haven't formally kept track of how long the battery lasts from start to finish, but I'd say 8+ hours easy. Amazing for a laptop when I consider that my Sony Vaio that this replaced lasted 1 1/2 hours tops.

If you're considering this laptop, I'd say DO IT! Don't let the little problems I've had with mine deter you (left-click and creaky case) as they are likely just a quality issue with my specific laptop. I have another ASUS laptop (about six months older) and it has no problems and works just fine too.

Bad things: The touchpad is quite annoying. I can only use my mouse. There is some wrong with the microphone and speaker. The voice is too low so that the person who chat with me can not hear me clearly. The life of the battery is only 6 hours.
Good things: The cooling system is good. I like it! The price of this computer is not too high. It's still a good deal.

Purchased this laptop in January, 2010. It is still working great. With heavy CPU usage while running on battery, I get about 6.5 hours of battery life, light usage (email, web browsing, etc.) I get over 10 hours (haven't ever run it all the way down before recharging). Battery is still strong. No hardware problems in the past year. Have been happy with the quality of the Asus laptops an can't beat the 2 year warranty! I haven't had to use it, and hopefully won't have to.

I bought this computer a month and a half ago, took it on a trip and have used it at home. It was easy to set up and has done everything I have asked of it, with no problems so far. Perhaps this is too early to comment, but I have nothing to complain about yet.