Asus Zenbook Review!

The popular Zenbook, yay or nay?

http://www.centrecom.com.au/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=zenbook

In my hands today is not the newest piece of tech, but definitely something sweeping the international markets, the Ultrabook that is the Asus Zenbook.

Let’s take a look at the specs.

Model: Zenbook UX21E-KX013X
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64bit
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-2467M (1.6GHz)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 (1333MHz)
Hard Drive(s): 256GB SSD
Optical Drive(s): None
Networking: 802.11b/g/n Wireless
Graphics: Intel HD3000
Display: 11.6” HD LED (1366x768 Resolution)
Audio: Bang & Olufsen ICEpower®
Coms: Bluetooth 4.0
Camera: Built-in
Inputs: 1x USB2.0, 1x USB3.0, Microphone Built-in, SD Card Reader
Outputs: 1x Headphone Out, 1x micro HDMI, 1x Mini-VGA
Battery: 35Whrs Polymer Battery

 

From the outside of the box to all its internals, the Zenbook oozes with the style and simplicity that is associated with the Ultrabook family. The packaging however does resemble the Transformer Prime tablet box with similar colour and layout design. Once in your hands you can’t help but feel an absolute love for it in your hands. It just feels beautiful and extremely elegant. The looks of it is equally glorious with the brushed purple aluminium on the lid making this unit stand out. Looking at it from the sides you see its pure slickness and just how thin the unit is. With equal number of ports on either side of the unit it gives it a nice balance to the look of the unit.

Opening the lid revealed the Zenbook’s true beauty. The brushed silver aluminium with silver keys and simple design make this stand out. It’s hard to argue against its beauty. It’s hard to counter argue this units looks as it clearly stands out from the rest of the competition.

With an SSD under its belt, the unit booted up and was ready without me even realizing. My PCMark benchmark came in at an impressive 1904 points, blitzing even the full sized Lenovo Y570. However it is worthy to know that it achieved significant performance while plugged in to a power outlet. Once you unplug the unit from the power, something must happen inside that drastically decreases the performance because it was extremely noticeable. Mostly on watching videos, a full HD MKV video struggled playing smoothly with regular freezes and blotched pixels.

Typing on the keyboard was a bit of a hit-and-miss. The problem I had was the key press is so smaller than usual, meaning it takes a lot less force to press the key than usual, so I found myself accidently brushing over several keys before pressing the one I actually intended on, however this can be a bit of a personal issue as light fingered people may find the keyboard to their exact liking.

The battery on the Zenbook was more than impressive and clearly outshines. On a full charge I was able to watch a full HD MKV video for about 2 hours with a good 40% or so remaining. The next 2-2.5 hours went on general browsing and YouTube videos so it gave a solid 5 hours of heavy use which is absolutely fantastic. Exactly what you’d expect from an Ultrabook.

By Sahin Selvi
sahin.s@centrecom.com.au

The benchmark results may differ from user to user depending on what background software you are running and versions of benchmark software. These results aren’t portrayed to be seen as exact performance figures but merely as a rough estimate on the performance of the machine. These results are in no way bias to any company or person and are here to provide the end user in depth details and to provide extra assistance of potential purchases. All information on this page is subject to copyright. Please do not copy any parts of this article. This includes and is not limited to Photos and Data Graphs. The photos and data graphs shown on this blog are subject to copyright to Centre Com. Any unauthorized copying, modifying or using for other purposes are forbidden. Centre Com reserves the right to take legal action against those found breaking these terms.

Notebook Cooling Super Roundup!

A Bunch of notebook coolers, useful or just a bunch of hokem?

On my desk is 10 notebook coolers ranging from the best, to the worst, so what else is there to do but put them under a heat producing power laptop and see if they actually have any benefit.

Now before we start I should mention the laptop I am using this for is an Intel Core i7 2720QM which features dual intakes on the underside of the laptop, so it is an ideal unit for testing laptop coolers with. So, let’s actually take a look at what models we have lined up:

Thermaltake Massive23 LX
Thermaltake Massive23 GT
Cooler Master Notepal Colour Infinite
Cooler Master Notepal U3
Cooler Master Notepal U2 (Fan Edition)
Cooler Master Notepal E1
Cooler Master Notepal ErgoStand
Cooler Master Notepal X-Lite
Deep Cool N2000
Deep Cool Wind Shaper

That’s a fairly big line up there and it seems Cooler Master has this market dominated with quite a large range of products. I’m not going to go into each product because let’s face it, you don’t want to read pages of words about notebook coolers, you just want to see how it performs. The coloumn on the right shows us the difference in temperature achieved from the average idle temp of 55 degrees.

Model	Cooler Difference (In Degrees Celcius)
Thermaltake Massive23 LX	-7 degrees
Thermaltake Massive23 GT	-11 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal Colour Infinite	-4 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal U3	-8 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal U2 (Fan Edition)	-7 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal E1	-2 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal ErgoStand	-3 degrees
Cooler Master Notepal X-Lite	-3 degrees
Deep Cool N2000	-4 degrees
Deep Cool Wind Shaper	-5 degrees

 In our tests, the Thermaltake GT seemed to be the most effective followed by the Cooler Master U3. The Thermaltake’s huge 23cm fan and Cooler Master’s clever use of modular fans allowing you to plug them in wherever your intake is, proves to be a winning combination. Some of the other Cooler Master’s just did not have enough fan power to create any benefit of having a cooler there in the first place. Which leads to one of my biggest riffs with these coolers; there just isn’t enough airflow coming out of these fans. A massive 23cm fan should produce well over 100cfm but these barely feel like they are putting out anything.  I’d like to see manufacturers put thicker and more powerful fans on their coolers to create something a bit more powerful.

By Sahin Selvi
sahin.s@centrecom.com.au

The benchmark results may differ from user to user depending on what background software you are running and versions of benchmark software. These results aren’t portrayed to be seen as exact performance figures but merely as a rough estimate on the performance of the machine. These results are in no way bias to any company or person and are here to provide the end user in depth details and to provide extra assistance of potential purchases. All information on this page is subject to copyright. Please do not copy any parts of this article. This includes and is not limited to Photos and Data Graphs. The photos and data graphs shown on this blog are subject to copyright to Centre Com. Any unauthorized copying, modifying or using for other purposes are forbidden. Centre Com reserves the right to take legal action against those found breaking these terms.

Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook Review!

Acer’s not so ultra Ultrabook

Today’s brand new unit from Acer is the base model from its Ultrabook Aspire S Series. Although it looks like an Ultrabook, the internals of it doesn’t resemble one. So let’s take a look at what it is capable of.

Let’s take a look at the specs.

Model: Aspire S3-951-2364G34
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
CPU: Intel® Core™ i3-2367M (1.4GHz)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 (1333MHz)
Hard Drive(s): 320GB 5400RPM (20GB SSD Cache)
Optical Drive(s): None
Networking: 802.11b/g/n Wireless
Graphics: Intel HD3000
Display: 13.3” HD LCD (1366x768 Resolution)
Audio: Dolby Advanced
Coms: Bluetooth 4.0
Camera: Built-in
Inputs: 2x USB2.0,  Microphone Built-in, SD Card Reader
Outputs: 1x Headphone Out, 1x HDMI
Battery: 3-cell

Packaging on the A3 was very pretty and neat. The unit comes wrapped in a soft white cotton sleave and when revealed shows its true beauty. The silver brushed finish looks and feels fantastic. Looking back in the box you’ll find the usual accessories including manuals and warranty cards all packaged up underneath the laptops housing. Admiring the unit you’ll notice the rear plate is where the action is featuring standard-laptop-issue black plastic housing the power and connectivity ports and an exhaust. Not something all Ultrabooks would usually feature. You can’t help but feel slightly disappointed that having stretched the same silver lining along the back. The black plastic on Ultrabooks just reminds you of the sluggish notebooks you’ve always been carrying around, and let’s face it, when you have one of these; you want to forget about the past.

Opening the lid reveals the inner beauty of an Ultrabook. Slick, simple and impressive, the power button is featured blow the displays folding edge and sits at an angle which faces you directly. The keyboard is quite compact and features the traditional ‘Fn’ key to perform dual actions on single keys. This is where the beauty kind of lapses a bit. Typing on the keyboard is not as good as I’d expected. I found myself missing a lot of keys and not every key press registering the first time. It just lacked a finesse which one would expect that separates it from the rest of the herd. The track pad was even less impressive. Although it was very responsive with clicking, movement on the unit just was awkward and lacked any smoothness.

Lack of an SSD sees the unit boot up in around the 40sec mark, something most Core i7 processors already do. But once you’re ready to go, using it is not only a breeze but feels good. When in your hands the super light weightiness of it makes it feel like you’re holding a mobile phone or tablet. However, where this unit completely disappointed me was with its battery life. As an Ultrabook, it needs to rate at a minimum of 5 hours, however after 2hrs and 20min later, the unit was off. Now an important thing is what exactly was I doing to kill the battery that quickly? Well, I did things any average person would do. I browsed the internet on non-flash websites, I watched less than a handful of music videos on YouTube, watched parts of a movie by scrubbing through every few minutes, read a few emails, did general Windows tasks, and that was it. With tasks like this, the 2hour mark is what you would expect from standard 15” notebooks which they do, however I think what also contributes to this A3’s performance with its battery is the fact that it is only a 3-cell battery drawing up to 65w of power, compared to a Zenbook drawing only 35w, almost half the rating.

 

EDIT: Since writing the article, Acer has informed me that the laptop features an on board 20GB SSD. Let’s just clarify that, the 20GB is completely unusable and unreachable. It merely acts as a solid state memory module allowing it to resume instantaneously. It does not assist in boot-up or general computer use.

 

Overall, this laptop has quite the specific target market. For those who are after a unit that is extremely portable and stylish with enough features to run basic web applications, this could be of interest to you, however if your someone who multi-tasks a few load-heavy programs or enjoys watching a few movies or TV shows on the go, this is potentially a hit and miss.