Surprisingly decent budget ultrabook.
I picked up one of these used for a bargain. And after a month of usage I am surprisingly pleased.
It has a Broadwell Core M CPU with a base clock speed of 800MHz and no dedicated graphics card (duh it's an ultrabook) so this will not be running Witcher 3 or editing 4k videos. And on top of that the model I have only has 4 gigs of memory. Overall it can handle most processor undemanding tasks I throw at it very well- word processing, web browsing, writing code, etc. Overall I am pleased with the purchase.
It has a Broadwell Core M CPU with a base clock speed of 800MHz and no dedicated graphics card (duh it's an ultrabook) so this will not be running Witcher 3 or editing 4k videos. And on top of that the model I have only has 4 gigs of memory. Overall it can handle most processor undemanding tasks I throw at it very well- word processing, web browsing, writing code, etc. Overall I am pleased with the purchase.
Date Purchased: Jan 2016
Decent laptop for the money
Great size and share, does catch a lot of fingerprints however. Was significantly cheaper than the competitors at the time of purchase. Used at home for web surfing, media consumption and word processing.
The positives:
1. Fanless: hopefully this means it will last longer than previous laptops without heat throttling
2. Quick boot with the SSD. Windows takes between 10-20 seconds to load. Quicker than recovering from sleep.
3. Great screen resolution and good screen however the auto adjustment of brightness makes it very hard to see in even moderate sunlight. This can be switched off however results in 2 hr or so battery life instead of 4-5.
3. Touch screen (this is important to negate the downside of the track pad below). Without this the PC would be crippled without external mouse. This is my first laptop with this feature and I surprisingly use/like this a lot.
4. Small charger, however it makes a whirring sound.
5. Good quality construction that feels strudy (albeit with what feels like a little more heft to competing products). I am happy with this trade off as the unit is still overall very light for a laptop.
The negatives:
1. When sleeping the unit then returning the touchscreen device stops working. You need to go into device manager then disable re enable the device. I had an error where doing this did not bring back the touchscreen and even a full factory reset did not recover this. Happened on a Friday. Was to be returned on a Monday. Sunday miraculously the functionality returned. Can be negated by shutting down every time however this driver flaw is very annoying.
2. Often the display flickers and the display adapter fails.
3. The trackpad is next to useless. When clicking buttons / doing fine work there is a lot of play in it making this next to useless as it takes multiple goes to do what you need. Negated by the touchscreen.
4. The speakers are next to useless even in quiet environments,
5. Even on 50% brightness auto dimming I can not get the laptop to last more than 5 hours nowhere near its stated time from Asus but OK for my needs (50% websurfing/50% media consumption.
6. At times the network card speeds just bottom out grinding to a holt
7. Often locks up when loading tabs on browser requiring you to wait for recovery. Or when copying a file in Windows Explorer then wanting to look at another netlow cores of the Intel Core M3 or some ASUS finetuning. Not sure as I have come from i&s in the past where this was not an issue.
Overall very happy with the purchase. For the cost this laptop is great and portability is a big plus. Hopefully fanless implementation means I will get more life out of this unit. This depends on whether a few years down the line replacement batteries are available? I could not find any for sale at the time of purchase but took a punt anyway. Similarly 3rd party chargers did not seem available and this is a concern as they look less strudy due to size / weight considerations,
The positives:
1. Fanless: hopefully this means it will last longer than previous laptops without heat throttling
2. Quick boot with the SSD. Windows takes between 10-20 seconds to load. Quicker than recovering from sleep.
3. Great screen resolution and good screen however the auto adjustment of brightness makes it very hard to see in even moderate sunlight. This can be switched off however results in 2 hr or so battery life instead of 4-5.
3. Touch screen (this is important to negate the downside of the track pad below). Without this the PC would be crippled without external mouse. This is my first laptop with this feature and I surprisingly use/like this a lot.
4. Small charger, however it makes a whirring sound.
5. Good quality construction that feels strudy (albeit with what feels like a little more heft to competing products). I am happy with this trade off as the unit is still overall very light for a laptop.
The negatives:
1. When sleeping the unit then returning the touchscreen device stops working. You need to go into device manager then disable re enable the device. I had an error where doing this did not bring back the touchscreen and even a full factory reset did not recover this. Happened on a Friday. Was to be returned on a Monday. Sunday miraculously the functionality returned. Can be negated by shutting down every time however this driver flaw is very annoying.
2. Often the display flickers and the display adapter fails.
3. The trackpad is next to useless. When clicking buttons / doing fine work there is a lot of play in it making this next to useless as it takes multiple goes to do what you need. Negated by the touchscreen.
4. The speakers are next to useless even in quiet environments,
5. Even on 50% brightness auto dimming I can not get the laptop to last more than 5 hours nowhere near its stated time from Asus but OK for my needs (50% websurfing/50% media consumption.
6. At times the network card speeds just bottom out grinding to a holt
7. Often locks up when loading tabs on browser requiring you to wait for recovery. Or when copying a file in Windows Explorer then wanting to look at another netlow cores of the Intel Core M3 or some ASUS finetuning. Not sure as I have come from i&s in the past where this was not an issue.
Overall very happy with the purchase. For the cost this laptop is great and portability is a big plus. Hopefully fanless implementation means I will get more life out of this unit. This depends on whether a few years down the line replacement batteries are available? I could not find any for sale at the time of purchase but took a punt anyway. Similarly 3rd party chargers did not seem available and this is a concern as they look less strudy due to size / weight considerations,
Date Purchased: Jun 2016
UX305CA
I bought the Asus zenbook ux305ca in June 2016. I had been using a macbook for the last few years and wanted to get a laptop that had better Linux support so that I could move away from osx.
The first time I opened the box I realised how well constructed this product was. It was flawless and when taking the price into account it shoots well above its station. Switching it in the system boots quickly and runs windows 10. It performs better than my wife's surface pro 3 despite being half the price. The only let down after the product for a d ay was the track pad felt cheap. Otherwise flawless.
Now that I have owned and operated it every day for a few months I am very happy with the purchase. It runs Ubuntu perfectly even when running qhd resolution screen. I get amazing battery life. Easily getting 2 to 3 days in up to 3hrs daily use.
The first time I opened the box I realised how well constructed this product was. It was flawless and when taking the price into account it shoots well above its station. Switching it in the system boots quickly and runs windows 10. It performs better than my wife's surface pro 3 despite being half the price. The only let down after the product for a d ay was the track pad felt cheap. Otherwise flawless.
Now that I have owned and operated it every day for a few months I am very happy with the purchase. It runs Ubuntu perfectly even when running qhd resolution screen. I get amazing battery life. Easily getting 2 to 3 days in up to 3hrs daily use.
Great Laptop
I bought this laptop for uni after reading many reviews and comparing it to other models. It's perfect for students as it is slim and light and very fast and powerful. It's extremely responsive and takes no time at all to perform tasks. On the Asus website it talks about how it's thinner than a macbook air, but having compared it in person this doesn't seem to be the case. Regardless, it is still beautifully designed with the only issue I have found is being that it seems to trap fingerprints like crazy. It's also quite hard to clean them off, which gets annoying. Sometimes it has trouble connecting to wifi networks, even ones that I use regularly. Overall a great product. If it weren't for the fact that fingerprints show up so clearly and don't wipe off well I'd give it 5 stars.