Discount ASUS ZenBook UX31A-R5102F 13.3" FullHD UltraBook

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So far a great laptop. I am using it with a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse and an Asus 24" LED monitor. I also hooked up Lenovo's Hub to it, so it is basically a workstation and a laptop when I need to take it along. After installing all of the MS Office and other software I use, I still have more than 50 GB of free space on the SSD. However, I hooked up a Toshiba 1TB portable (2.5") drive to it via Lenovo's USB 3.0 hub and the space is not an issue. It is also connected to my home server, so it is truly a workstation. So far so good. One thing I was surprised by... It is really thin, yet weighs almost as much as my 15.6" work laptop. Still, since I do not have to lag it on regular basis, it is not on issue.

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Excellent keyboard, nice feel. 1920 screen. Great battery life.

Refurbished unit has Windows 7 Pro-64, which allows the PC to be productive.

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The size, the touch, the feel, the resolution are great. The more I use it the better I like it. The default screen was difficult to read with its minuscule font and the magnifier was awkward until I found I could readily increase the size with the touchpad. My only complaint, expressed by others, is the sensitivity of the touchpad when inadvertently grazed as I type. If I change my technique in a way to overcome that objection I'll give it the other star.

Honest reviews on ASUS ZenBook UX31A-R5102F 13.3" FullHD UltraBook

I am very happy with this laptop. It is thin and light and look great. The build quality generally feels very solid, though there is a bit of hinge wobble, not enough to worry that the screen will fall down, but more than there should be.

Performance is acceptable, though not overwhelming. I haven't tried too much to stress it, but the built in processor and graphics are just strong enough to play Civ V in 1080p on medium settings (after a driver upgrade; out of the box there were some issues). Normal applications load quickly off the SSD and I haven't ad any issues with the machine being unresponsive. You can hear the fan spin up when doing CPU intensive tasks, but it never gets loud enough for me to be bothered by it.

The screen is wonderful. Crisp with good contrast and viewing angles. I do sometimes wish it could be brighter, but it is not dim by any stretch. The machine ships with DPI scaling set to 125%, but I found that using it at 100% is fine for me. After using this screen, going back to my old laptop's 1600x900 display really hard, the extra room is so much nicer. Somehow, even when watching video, it feels bigger, though both are 13.3" screens.

The speakers are louder than most laptop speakers and provide crisp, rich sound.

The machine comes with a nice enough laptop sleeve, a 100MB usb ethernet adapter, and a VGA adapter. If you want HDMI output you will need to buy a micro-HDMI to HDMI cable. The charging brick fairly small and plugs directly into the wall, rather than being a multi-part affair. The power port itself is small and is not compatible with most third-party power kits (forgot mine somewhere, so went looking. Ended up buying a no name charger from Amazon that works well).

Battery life has been good, I'd guess 6 hours or so, though it is not a user removable battery, so I do worry about where it will be in a couple years.

The big downside is the touchpad which simply isn't very good, especially on soft surfaces like a bed. It is very overly sensitive, and as it is large, easy to hit by accident. It frequently thinks that using the buttons while you have another finger on the pad is some attempt at a multitouch gesture rather than a simple button click. Using the Samsung driver recommended by another reviewer helped, and provided many more configuration options and gestures, but ultimately it still isn't great.

Also while the machine is very narrow, and definitely light, in the other two dimensions it is large for a 13" laptop. There is a significant bezel around screen causing it to take up more space than I would like. Compared to my old Vaio Z which is a little smaller in terms of width from left to right and much smaller in terms of front to back depth, but more than twice as thick, I think I like the Zenbook more, but it does feel a lot bigger in some ways.

There is another Zenbook prime model (UX31A-DB51 I think) that has the same basic specs as this one, but which is normally more expensive. I was only able to find a few possible differences. One said that the DB51 has a 4 cell battery compared to the 6 cell here (though with basically identical capacities). The other said that the DB51 is the USA model while the UX31A-R5102F is a foreign market model that people import to the US (everything is in English, and I didn't see anything in the packaging to confirm this though). The R102F has all the important features so it seems like price is the only reason to prefer one over the other.

All in all, it is a pretty wonderful ultrabook, and while I'd love a Thinkpad X240 or ASUS Zenbook Infinity or some other high res, Haswell based ultrabook, those are almost twice as expensive. For the price this is a spectacular machine.