151 of 152 people found the following review helpful:
One of the best under $700 notebooks
Just received my Asus UL30A-X5 yesterday. After much review, and a try-out with an Acer 1410, I decided that I wanted a full-sized chiclet/island keyboard and the larger screen. I'm already quite pleased with my decision. At the <$700 price point, this is an excellent notebook.
Pros
- Keyboard. A pleasure to type on.
- Touchpad. It drags at...
64 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
Display too glossy
Update 11/14: I've decided that I'm going to return this laptop. The glossy display is too reflective. It's not really that noticeable if you are looking at a web page with a white background with the brightness turned all the way up, but in almost every case it's just too glossy for my tastes. Also, as mentioned blow, this display fails horribly for sharing the screen...
This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
Just received my Asus UL30A-X5 yesterday. After much review, and a try-out with an Acer 1410, I decided that I wanted a full-sized chiclet/island keyboard and the larger screen. I'm already quite pleased with my decision. At the <$700 price point, this is an excellent notebook.
Pros
- Keyboard. A pleasure to type on.
- Touchpad. It drags at first, but once you get some finger oil on it, and change the pointer speed, it's one of the best that I've used. Very smooth two finger scroller. Support for customized two and three finger click.
- Screen. Bright and easy to read at 30 degree angles.
- Battery life. Yes, it will do over 10 hours.
- Weight/size. 1 inch thin and very light.
- Body. Love the brushed black metal look on the case.
- Asus facial recognition login. Didn't think that I would care, but it's nice to have the computer log in, without touch, when I'm sitting in front of it.
- Asus FastBoot (not the BIOS fast boot). This lets you configure which programs load during startup and which load after. Speeds up the boot quite a bit.
- Decent speakers. Not ear-destroying, but suitable for the size. Much better than most netbooks.
Cons
- Placement of touchpad. It still registers my palm as I'm typing even at the extreme setting. Downloaded the new touchpad driver, but that didn't fix. Still looking for a solution. This is by far the most frustrating problem. UPDATE: The TouchFreeze utility seems to almost fix the issue.
- Case still shows fingerprints.
- Web cam is low res and has difficulty in low light (haven't tried different drivers yet).
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
I recently purchased the Asus UL30A-X5 through Amazon and am very pleased with my decision. Let me first begin by briefly explaining what I was looking for in a new laptop, as I believe that will give the reader better information when deciding if this laptop is right for them. I am currently a student on a budget and was looking for the following: 1) Less than $700 in price, 2) Screen size between 13-14", 3) Windows 7 already installed (I didn't want an older computer with Vista that I would have to manually upgrade to Win 7 myself), 4) At least 320GB HD, 3 GB DDR3 RAM, and a Pentium Core 2 Duo SU7300 equivalent or greater processor, 5) Thin and light, and 6) 4+ solid hours of battery life. Although a netbook offers a small size and easy portability, I didn't want to sacrifice power and performance for everyday tasks. On the other hand, I also didn't want a large "desktop replacement" laptop that would be a hassle to carry around or difficult to take with me anytime I was away from home. In summary, I wanted a laptop that offered a good combination of power, performance, and size for my money. With that being said, here is my impression thus far after 2 days of using this computer:
Pros:
-Performance: Able to smoothly and efficiently handle everything I have wanted to do to this point. It is even faster than my 3 year old 15.6" Dell Inspiron that I originally paid $1300 for at the time.
-Size and Weight: Couldn't be happier with the sleek look and light weight. It looks even better in person than in the pictures.
-Quality: Some people may think you are sacrificing quality for a laptop with these specs for under $700. I think this computer is built very well, and would argue it stands up to the much more expensive or name-brand models in the same class.
-Warranty: The accidental protection warranty offers an extra piece of mind, which is also something not often included without an additional cost in other laptops.
-Keyboard: Very easy to use, great design!
-Mousepad: I love the textured touchpad on this model. It is difficult to see in the pictures, but the touchpad is actually not a traditional "pad", but a bunch of tiny dots that track the movement of your finger. Also, I really like the extra features such as being able to scroll up or down a page by using two fingers anywhere on the pad.
Cons:
-The only thing that I am not too excited about is the small (or "smaller" when compared to my larger laptop) mouse buttons below the touchpad. This might be something that just takes a little getting used to, but it is more difficult to click the buttons than on my older laptop. Again, this is my first 13.3" laptop so it probably just comes with the nature of a smaller laptop and I will get used to it with time, but it's just something I wanted to point out if you are transitioning from a large laptop to a smaller one.
Overall, I couldn't be happier with my purchase. Sure, there are better laptops on the market as some will argue, but only if you are willing to spend $1000+. This computer definitely earns "5 stars" and I think anyone who is looking for an affordable, ultra-portable laptop with powerful performance will be very happy as well.
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
I really love this computer despite the facts that it has some issues. I really like the finish, it's very thin, less than 1 inch, but by no means is thinner than the macbook air. The casing is very sexy, it looks very nice from all angles. The keyboard is amazing, the only problem is that it has a little flex but its not the end of the world I can type pretty well. The most annoying thing might be the touchpad, whenever you type and you have your hands positioned close to it, the touchpad might register some click while you type. A lot of people are talking about the battery life of this computer that it won't even reach 10 hours, I can confirm I get 11+ hours on this lappie, Windows 7 is much more energy efficient than Vista (note: I tested under wireless off, lowest screen brightness, power saving mode, word 2007). I really enjoy the price point its less than $700, which is the perfect price for the performance.
PROS:
- Stylish, very sexy looking.
- Keyboard feels amazing.
- Multi-touch track pad works well
- Fast compared to a netbook (C2D, 4GB DDR3)
- Battery life 11+ hours
- Smart Logon, very nice cool feature
- Big hard drive 500GB
- LED screen has nice viewing angles
- Very light and portable
- The charger is very small and portable too.
- Loud quality speakers from small size
- Warranty, 1 Year of accidental Damage
- Price its a deal!
CONS:
- Fingerprint magnet (inside and outside)
- Loud Hard drive (a little annoying)
- Little flex on the keyboard
- ASUS bloatware
- Intel GMA4500MHD, where's the UL30A-VT? can't do gaming
- It doesn't cook, do laundry, or cleans my room.
This computer is perfect for students, and travelers. Recommended
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
Update 11/14: I've decided that I'm going to return this laptop. The glossy display is too reflective. It's not really that noticeable if you are looking at a web page with a white background with the brightness turned all the way up, but in almost every case it's just too glossy for my tastes. Also, as mentioned blow, this display fails horribly for sharing the screen for something such as watching a movie. If they swapped out the display and trackpad, this would be the perfect budget laptop.
---
I was torn between this product and the Acer Aspire Timeline. I ultimately decided to go with this product because of the battery life claim. Obviously the battery life claim on ANY laptop is quoted using settings that will not be reflective of the typical user.
One of my biggest concerns with this laptop was the processor. I was not sure if it would be able to handle my daily computing activities. This machine is by no means a powerhouse, but it is more than capable. As long as you do not need to do anything such as gaming or multimedia editing, you should be fine with this laptop. This machine is capable of playing HD videos with a little extra left over for background tasks.
Notes:
- While you do receive recovery DVDs, if you need to take advantage of them you will need to get an external DVD drive. I have heard some reports that some external DVD drives do not receive enough power through one USB port and require either a powered USB hub or plugging the drive into two USB ports. (This is why USB cables for portable HDD and portable disc drives have two heads.) I am pleased to say that the Samsung USB 2.0 8x DVD Writer External Optical Drive for Mac and PC SE-S084C/RSBN (Gloss Black) works perfectly with just one USB plug.
- The power brick can get hot. One review claimed it got as hot as 130 F. I have not personally experienced temperatures this extreme.
Usage: Microsoft Office, Web Browsing, Media Player
Pros:
- Great balance between speed and battery life.
- The keyboard is fantastic.
- Very lightweight and portable.
- The laptop does not get so warm that it is uncomfortable in your lap.
- The laptop has a very sleek look.
- Excellent value for the price. Even on top of the specs, they throw in one year of accidental damage protection. That's an incredible value.
- The fans are very quiet even when they are on.
- Comes with little bloatware.
- Ability to play HD movies with no tweaking whatsoever (using VLC). Keep in mind that Adobe Flash will soon be releasing an update that will push HD decoding off to the GPU. If the new 1080p at YouTube is choppy for you now, just wait for the new version to come out.
Cons:
- The screen is very glossy and reflective.
- I've really discovered that the viewing angles aren't all that great if you want more than one person to look at your screen at one time for something such as watching a movie together.
- The track-pad is less than ideal. The track-pad tends to move the cursor position while you are typing. The gestures are nice, but I found that the scrolling doesn't register. The trackpad utility is greatly lacking in features.
- The hard disk squeaks. It's not terribly loud, but you will notice if you have no other background noise.
- The chassis is indeed a fingerprint magnet. Again, this seems to be an issue with every make and every model laptop these days.
- No back-lit keyboard. This is not necessarily a bad thing since a back-lit keyboard would drain on the battery.
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
This little laptop is a wonder. It's a beautiful piece of hardware, runs very quick, multitasks great, is dead silent, and I'm getting 10-12 hours of battery life on stock configuration.
I've never seen anything like this; you just keep using it and using it and using it. Even when I've got every MS Office program running at once + a bunch of Firefox tabs + iTunes playing music, I still get 6-7 hours.
I was pleasantly surprised how little bloatware came with it. The only annoying piece of software I really needed to uninstall was some antivirus program. MS Office Home/Student came preinstalled on a free trial, but I was going to use that anyway so they saved me the installation.
Windows 7 runs great on this laptop. Power management and networking features work beautifully. The great sleep/wake functionality in Windows 7 makes startup time largely irrelevant, but even when you do have to start up from scratch it's nice and speedy. There are lots of nice little touches to this machine that let you know Asus is a really class act. Things like attractive on-screen displays for volume and brightness adjustment for example.
My only nitpick is that the trackpad is a little jumpy. It's a little hard to land the cursor onto some of the smaller buttons, like scrollbar arrows. This is probably a driver issue, so it likely will be fixed soon enough. The keyboard is very spacious and pleasant to type on.
Overall I'm extremely satisfied with my UL30A-X5.
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
Best in class, price/performance. ASUS is excellent quality, highly recommended. Much better than netbook, better performance/battery in similar form factor.
pro:
+battery life: 12 hour max is true for light use (word processing), 8 hours heavy use is extremely reasonable, much better than 4 hours max for other laptops
+performance: low voltage core2 duo is powerful- even though it says 1.3ghz, still far outperforms any atom/turion/pentium/celeron budget trash processors + 4gb DDR3 RAM, 500gb HD, excellent
+price: a few years ago this class of ultrathin laptop would start at $3k+ (this is why technology is sweet - constant improvement)
+design: brushed aluminum top is pretty, laptop is really thin, light and portable, lasts the entire day
+windows 7: is quite good
+keyboard: good.
+screen: very clear and bright, better than my old dell lcd
+speakers! I really like the altec lansing built-in speakers, they go pretty loud and are clearer than most laptop speakers. they are in the front of the laptop pointing down, so you can still hear them when you close the lid
note these points:
-integrated graphics: no heavy gaming on this
-no bluetooth: actually I never use bluetooth so this is a positive, saves battery
-no DVD drive: just be aware that you need an external drive if you need this capacity. but with everything on the internet now, DVD is kind of like floppy disk now, might as well save weight + battery
-glossy: wipe it off every few days, good habit in general ;) (on matte surfaces, even if it doesnt look dirty it is still dirty, might as well know when it is dirty with glossy surface...)
btw I bought this computer for my gf, she loves it.
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
I have been using laptops for close to 20 years. This is actually the most powerful and the least expensive laptop I have owned. The interesting thing that this machine has is the "express gate" boot up. If you don't read the intro instructions you might miss that it has 2 "on" buttons. One on the right and one the left. The left side on button boots up a linux based operating system in about 15 seconds. It really basic and only offers a web browser, a music and photo program. This fast boot is great for just checking your email or surfing the web. Since it is linux based and separate from your windows 7 operating system, it's like a MAC, viruses or spyware has no effect. What a concept. Actually, in that web browser, other than saving passwords and bookmarks, it does not let you saving anything or download anything to the harddrive. You can save it to a memory stick if you want to save attachments or a download.
I have also partitioned the 500 gig harddrive to set up a third operating system for my linux ubuntu. But that is another story. The windows 7 operating system works great and very stable. I originally bought a Toshiba Mini NB205-N230 Netbook with Windows 7 starter. The Toshiba was great for traveling but I really needed a slightly bigger machine for business. The shortcomings of the Toshiba were:
1. Keyboard a little small
2. Video playback not adequate for hd video files
3. Scrolling on the mouse pad not as smooth as Asus netbooks.
What I did like about the Toshiba was it about 1.4 pounds lighter. But, you can't have everything.
The major things I like about the ul30a are:
1. Prefect size of keyboard.
2. Great screen
3. Super fast
4. Super large harddrive
5. My estimate of battery life is around 6-7 hours. I have never run it down to zero. But I don't think i will get the 10 to 12 hours Asus advertises. One of the differences between the ul30a-x5 and the ul30a-x2 is the x5 has a 6 cell battery and the x2 has a 8 cell battery. (also the x2 is silver and has a 2 year replacement warranty. The x5 has a 1 year warranty)
6. Asus ExpressGate fastboot. When you want to turn it off, you don't even have to go thur shutdown. Just close the screen and next time you turn on the expressgate, it is a totally fresh startup, ie it doesn't waste energy in hibernation or sleep. because it don't save anything.
7. I have not had any problems with the wifi reception. It has in fact been very strong.
8. Great builtin speakers and great sound.
Things I don't like about the ul30a:
1. When i am in expressgate or ubuntu, the cursor jumps around while i am typing. I don't notice this in windows 7. (is anyone else having this problem?)
2. It could be a little lighter. (I wish i could have compared it to the ul20a. The ul20a is lighter but a little smaller with only a 250 gig harddrive and 2 gigs ram instead of 4 gigs. Has anyone out there used the 20a and the 30a?)
3. The webcam shows an upside down picture of me in ubuntu.
I did have a problem with my first UL30A. The switch in the hindge the causes the laptop to go into sleep or hibernation mode was faulty and the laptop went into sleep mode when the screen was moved. Amazon to their credit was very good and sent me a replacement within 5 days. And this was just before Xmas.
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
I'm something of a "road warrior" who is frequently away from my office on business, and this is my 9th laptop computer in the past 22 years. I love everything about it! The screen is sharp and bright, the keyboard is well laid out and a pleasure to use, it's fast, light, good looking, has lots of RAM, a large hard drive, plenty of USB ports (3), great speakers for a laptop, exceptional battery life, runs cool and quiet, boots quickly, well priced considering all the features, and seems quite solid. The touchpad is easy to use, although I turned off "tapping" (a unless, annoying feature of laptops, IMHO). Its size is perfect for travel, although perhaps a bit small as a desktop replacement. It doesn't come with any software to speak of, which is fine with me as I install my own software. The ExpressGate feature is not of much interest to me -- the resolution is lower than when in Windows, it doesn't do e-mail, and I can wait a few extra seconds to view the web. I haven't yet tried the facial recognition software, so I can't comment on that, but the web cam is adequate (if you care about such things). I'm very happy with this computer and highly recommend it to anyone who needs a relatively small but powerful laptop.
Update 12/3/09: I tried the facial recognition software, and although it works, it's slow, so I dumped it.
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
Yup. This is a great little laptop, but minor niggles and annoying design choices keep it from being the perfect notebook/thin-and-light computer.
The pros, as so many others have written it down before me: light-weight, powerful-enough for most purposes (I haven't tried running my Igor Pro codes on this yet), Win7 is pretty cool (I skipped Vista; Win7 = Vista cleaned up?), pretty nice speakers*, long battery life (though I get only 5-6 hours, but w/o battery saving mode or with, but running an external webcam**.) Small power adapter. Smart-login (using the included webcam) works on-and-off, depending on the lighting conditions (d-uh!) and on the security settings you employ (I have it on the factory-default.) Large hard-drive.
The cons and niggles, or what in my view prevents this little nugget from being a true contender:
1) *Speakers face downwards! So when it's on my lap, I have to be careful not to cover the speakers, otherwise the neat sound gets muffled.
UPDATE: From the ASUS website, "The angle of the speakers also allows audio to be `bounced' upwards from any surface to provide better amplification, delivering a wider frequency range, which in turn produces lower pitches that allow users to hear every reverberation of the drums, as well as every note in pitch perfect quality." Ummm... sure.
2) The battery was initially tight in it's slot, but has started jiggling (yes, I have locked it properly.) Duct tape? :-)
3) The price of being a sub-4lb notebook: no optical drive. I just purchased an eMedia guitar learning software pack - which comes as a CD - and had to dig out my old external DVD-writer. I am hoping that most of my not-on-TV-movie-watching and software will be downloads. [Thankfully, the eMedia upgrade from v4, which I have, to v5 is a download.]
4) Dirt and finger-print magnet.
5) I tried removing the plastic from the touch-pad, but it started behaving erratically (glue remnants from the sticker?), so I put the plastic back on. I use an external mouse (trackball) when possible.
6) **Webcam is just 0.3 MP, which is barely OK for video-chats. I use an external, higher-resolution webcam to record my dog when I am away (she's getting over separation anxiety issues.)
7) UPDATE: Just remembered: No Bluetooth (available on the Vt series.) As Sheldon said: "Everything's better with Bluetooth!" :-)
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This review is from: ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life) (Personal Computers)
I'm a college student and this is the perfect computer for me. Reviews on this site are very accurate, and I got exactly what I was expecting to get.
Pros: Lightweight, good keyboard, battery life (appx 10 hours), function hotkeys, video output and SD slot, charges quickly, performs multiple tasks with no problem, windows 7 nice to use.
Cons: Aesthetics only. Does show fingerprints and dust excessively. Textured track pad not as nice as the glass pads on Macs,and multitouch only works for scrolling, not flipping back and forth between pages.
Overall, the pros greatly outweight the cons.
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