ASUS Zenbook (UX21) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 22, 2011 8:00 PM ESTBattery Life
With limited time to test before I board a plane to Nokia World in London I only had time to run through one of our standard PC battery life scripts. I chose the web browsing test which involves frequent opening/closing of web pages until the battery runs out. It's a pretty stressful test that's not just indicative of web browsing but also battery life in general.
As you may have already seen from our UX21 teaser earlier this week, performance here is as expected. The UX21 has a 35Wh integrated (technically non-removable) battery, which just isn't a whole lot of capacity—particularly compared to your more run of the mill 13- and 14-inch notebooks. Battery life is naturally the price you pay for portability and form factor. You're looking at around 4.5 hours of continuous usage on a single charge. Obviously run something more CPU intensive and that number will drop considerably.
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C300fans - Monday, October 24, 2011 - link
a 999$ copycat of AIR.rs2 - Monday, October 24, 2011 - link
Except with better cooling and an infinitely better OS.morousg - Monday, October 24, 2011 - link
Sorry... but you shoul read some OS desing books.Maybe they would help on understand why Microsoft is trying to get rid of Windows legacy OS, by pushing developers ot HTML5.
If they succeed, Windows 9 will only support HTML5 apps, so they can put any sort of OS, more stable and safe, that just loads an HTML5 browser. I think is a very smart move.
And also, I love all the Microsoft Office suit. I only envy Windows for having Visio, Access etc... But windows it self, is a crap, and Microsoft knows it veeeery well.
Kyrandia - Monday, October 24, 2011 - link
The lag is not caused by power saving. If you look into the trackpad configuration, you'll find "ASUS SmartSense" or "ASUS Smart Detector", which is some kind of typing detection. If you enable it, trackpad is disabled while you are typing. However, it won't automatically reactivate in a period of time, but you need to touch the "reactivation area" to reactivate it. To make your life easier, you just need to disable this function or customize the activation area.AdamRS - Monday, October 24, 2011 - link
I'm really looking forward to a review of the UX21's bigger brother....mainly because of the screen. I hope it is an improvement.Ogxite - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Aren't the screen shots on the Intergrated VGA Camera page from OS X?stevenjklein - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 - link
Anand wrote that he "can't quite pinpoint [the] inspiration for the Zenbook UX21's 45W power brick design."Anand, were you being sarcastic?
It is clearly a clone of the Apple's AC adapter, right down to the fold-up prongs.
See for yourself: http://www.power2battery.com/images/A1184acadapter...
Silenus - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - link
Lol yes...he was being sarcastic there.komoornik - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - link
Heat ? Noise?996miami - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - link
Thanks. Well done. Will share with friends.