List Price: $2,499.00
Sale Price: $2,162.14
Today's Bonus: 13% Off
Accessories included:
* External subwoofer.
* Mini VGA to VGA adaptor cable.
* Micro USB to USB adaptor cable (not sure what this is for).
* DVD with WIN8 drivers. Not very useful for a machine without a DVD drive.
Bloatware:
* McAfee.
* Microsoft Office 10 Starter.
* MS Store.
Positives so far:
* Beautiful design, fit and finish.
* So light and thin.
* Very little bloatware so flattening is really unnecessary.
* Keyboard and screen are perfect.
* Trackpad works pretty well.
* Wi-Fi works great.
* No keyboard flex and no hot spots.
* My external USB keyboard and mouse work fine.
* Super light, solid chassis with no flex anywhere.
Negatives so far:
* The fans do run continuously. They are not loud and cannot be heard except in perfectly quiet room hopefully this will be solved with a BIOS update.
* The status lights are cool but misplaced under your hands in front of the trackpad.
* driver_power_state_failure on resume from sleep so I had to disabled the sleep feature completely this never worked in Win7 either.
* The power supply is big and clunky and has no easy way to wrap the cables.
* Ugly stickers on palm rest.
* The network connector plug is upside down so it's very hard to press the connector release to unplug the cable without lifting the entire unit up off the table. This is a real PITA.
* The mini-vga adaptor works OK with my external NEC monitor but looks a little noisy at times.
* No WIN8 Product Key is included with the system (but embedded in restore partition).
* The indicator lights for power and charging on the sides of the UX51 are too small and dim to see unless you hold the machine up to your face.
Vendor:
* I got mine from DataVision Computer they delivered on time and with no problems 5 out of 5 stars.
Summary:
Very nice laptop with excellent size, weight, performance, style and wonderful IPS display. If they fix the fan issue it will be perfect. This IS the laptop right now for those of us who really want a rMBP and this laptop is so good it makes putting up with WIN 8 worth the pain (so far).
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I have owned many Dell Computers, and during my years as a Network Engineer, I configured and installed hundreds more. They had been my choice for many years after Sony stopped supporting the VIAO line with good driver updates, etc. My last Dell worked well enough, but it had a lot plastic parts, it shipped with a scraping cooling fan, and the bezel cracked quite quickly. This put me in mind that I would shop elsewhere for my next computer.Asus had been my favorite motherboard for desktop builds, and I never had trouble with one. When I learned that they were making laptops, I was interested. I read other reviews where people talked about cooling fan noise, but this seemed silly to me. This particular Zenbook is a very compact, very powerful unit, and it made sense to me that it might run the fan most of the time, which it does. I live high in the Colorado Rockies in a secluded location, and the fan noise has never been an issue at all.
The decals that others complained about came off in five minutes with a little nail polish remover (acetone,) Kleenex, and my fingernail. The touch-pad is indeed large and sensitive, and I do sometimes find that I have brushed it unintentionally. However, Function-F9 toggles the pad off and on for extended typing. I don't know what anyone else was expecting from a big well-made touch-pad. The recovery time from sleep mode is blazingly fast; just a few seconds, and it will stand by in that fast mode for a week or more.
I hate Windows 8 as much as anyone else, but a company called Stardock software makes a little program that gives you back your start button and all that it offers. This cost five bucks (really!)
This computer is not only the finest I have ever owned, it is one of the prettiest pieces of equipment I have ever owned. The shipping carton is even beautiful. I thought the sub-woofer would be a silly item, but it works surprisingly well. With companies like Dell seeming to fall on their sword, I am happy to have my money going to a company so clearly anxious to earn it.
This laptop does not have a touch-screen.
After two months of ownership, this gets my highest ever rating.
Best Deals for ASUS UX51Vz-XH71 15.6-Inch Laptop (Silver Aluminum)
I have been looking at buying a new ultrabook that meets my needs for a few months. I started by having other laptops and tablets but really wanted something more. Initially I purchased a Samsung ATIV book 9, which is in no way a bad product. However, after owning it, it did leave a lot to be desired. There are a few things in particular that I can say made me jump to this Zenbook. I want to start off by saying that I currently have been in the Technology field for many years, because of this I might be a little more critical in some areas, however I also believe that this can help give a more accurate review.There are many different aspects of this UltraBook that I like. It can obviously do the basic functions; ie Surf the Web, Email, MS Office etc. However when you really need the power to perform other computer tasks like gaming and video or picture editing, it does have the power to tackle some more serious stuff. I have been able to load and use different applications such as Adobe Photoshop CS6 and although it isnt the fastest thing in the world it does have the ability.
On to the gaming side of things. I have a few different experiences with some games on this. The games Ive played so far are: Mark of the Ninja, Borderlands 2, Darksiders 2, StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, Crysis 2 and The Witcher 2.
The machine can play all of these games on Medium to High setting. I do experience frame drops on Witcher and Crysis sometimes when in 1920x1080, but switching to 1600x900 seems to really help.
Speaking of the screen, I will admit that yes it looks good, however the screen on the Samsung did overall look better. Yes I know, the Ativ is NOT a 1920x1080 and it wasn't an IPS display, but this screen just doesn't look AS bright (Samsung does use a higher NIT). The matte finish was a definite plus on here but sometimes being a full HD display, it causes some games to have a hard time.
While on topic of things that do slightly take away from the experience is the touch pad. I want to say that it is good. But it is a little buggy. Something that I wish an update would have fixed but it didn't.
Now something else that I usually don't care to elaborate on however... The speakers on this thing. All I can say is wow. They seriously are one of the best built in speakers I have ever heard.
Finally I will say this. This machine is great, lightweight and great for mixed applications. Yes it is a true Quad Core and yes it has a dedicated graphics card but if you want to truly game, I would recommend buying a Sager or something of that sort. For the money you could buy a better "gaming" computer. However, if you are like me and want something to do light gaming on and other productivity applications then by all means, stop thinking and buy it. It doesn't have the thinnest profile or the best battery life but it definitely is no slouch.
Also to answer any questions about the fans, ASUS did release a BIOS update that changed the fans profile however they still seem to run. Its not noisy and doesnt bother me at all. And also I know some people are not into the new windows 8 operating system. Yes I can admit going to the whole "Metro" screen can be annoying however I simply installed Start8 and I love it. Windows 8 knows how to properly address SSD performance so I would recommend keeping it.
All in All this has been a great computer and I will recommend this product to anyone.
Honest reviews on ASUS UX51Vz-XH71 15.6-Inch Laptop (Silver Aluminum)
This computer is great. It's basically the closes thing to a Macbook Pro Retina that you can get without the Mac OS and price. Since I wasn't sure before I bought this PC I will provide a little insight for those that might be looking to add memory or update the wireless. Both can be done pretty easily with a torx bit and removal of the two rear feet under the computer. I've upgraded the memory in mine to 12G by replacing the single 4G RAM card that is NOT soldered into the motherboard with an 8G chip. Quick install, the computer recognized it and booted up fine after the upgrade. While I had it open I noticed that the Intel wireless card that is installed could also be easily upgraded (to an 802.11ac card for example). I haven't yet done this as I don't have an ac router but it's nice to know that I can when the time comes.One of the other nice things about this computer that I liked and still appreciate is the face that it has an ethernet port that doesn't require a dongle....no connector that's constantly getting plugged and unplugged that will eventually break. Having 3 USB 3.0 ports is also nice.
One other thing that I noticed is that the on-board video drives the VGA port unless you specifically tell the video card to be used with a particular application whereas the HDMI port is driven directly by the video card...it made for some confusion when I switched between the two types of connectors.
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