Mini Laptop Reviews Blog

Sweet machine, very impressed, June 16, 2010

By 

Suman Chakrabarti “Suman Chakrabarti” (Pittsburgh, PA) – See all my reviews

  

I was trying to decide whether I wanted an iPad or a netbook, but neither really fit the bill. I’m a photographer and I need to have a machine that’s fast enough for photography, but something light enough to carry. I never use DVDs to install anything anymore and I need a lot of battery life. This machine is the best choice for me.

Pros:

Battery life: On full power, 4 hrs. On normal use, 9 hours. On power saving, about 11+ hrs. UNBELIEVABLE!

Graphics card: I need a video card that can support Photoshop CS4/5 and Lightroom 3. I don’t play games, but I figure 512MB of RAM would be good for that.

Keyboard: absolutely love the chicklet keyboard. It has Home/End keys which are important to me and don’t exist on HPs similar line.

LED Monitor: unbelievably clear. Still nice to have an HDMI port to output to my 23″ monitor, too, but great for on the road.

Weight: This thing is ~4 lbs. No need to carry the cord, since the battery life is awesome.

Quickboot: It has a nice quickboot option that allows you to boot to a lightweight browser and skype experience. Neat, but Win7 boots so fast, I’m not sure I need it.

Turbo mode/overclocking: Very nice option, not entirely sure I’ll use it, but still, very nice.

500GB Drive: They partition the drive so drive0 is ~120GB and drive1 is ~340GB. The rest is used for the reinstall partition.

Cons:

Facial recognition login: I like the idea, but the camera resolution is too low for it to work well. They’d have done better by not doing it at all.

Touchpad: It’s nice. It does the 2-finger tap to double-click and 3-finger tap to right click, but it’s slightly inaccurate and I have to get used to it. I like using a mouse anyways.

Turbo-mode: you have to reboot to switch to turbo mode. Just doesn’t seem worth it.

Bloatware: DON’T INSTALL CRAPPY SOFTWARE I WON’T USE ON MY MACHINE!!!

I have several machines, and this one is definitely my new favorite!

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ASUS got it right on the second try, June 19, 2010

I was thrilled when I removed the Asus UL30VT-X1K from its box and set it up. For a third of the price, it seemed as good, if not better, than the top-of-the-line 13.3″ Sony Vaio that had died on me after a mere year and a half of use, and no abuse.

Beautiful 13.3″ LED screen, good specs — fast, energy-saving processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, hybrid graphics card, fantastic battery life — and the chiclet keyboard I’d learned to use and love in my Vaio? It seemed perfect. Except for one slight glitch: the Intel graphics chipset failed after 72 hours. Diagnosing the problem was easy enough; fixing it was not. I returned the laptop to Amazon feeling horribly let down and disappointed. I’d come so close to finding a replacement for my Vaio and it had fallen through in such a big way. (One observation: Amazon refunded me with no delays or arguments.)

Call me an idiotic optimist, but I wasn’t about to write ASUS off so easily. In the scant 72 hours I’d fiddled with the UL30VT, I’d really loved it. I also understood that, no matter how rigorous quality control can be (in this case, both ASUS and Intel’s), flukes will happen. And given my history — you don’t want to know –, they will usually happen to me… So what did I do? I got myself an identical replacement.

I received it, set it up and began the countdown to failure. To my delight, it didn’t happen. Two messed up units would have quenched any optimism and blacklisted ASUS to me ’til hell froze over… As the days passed, I rebuilt my trust in the brand and really began to use this little machine for all it is worth.

The problem with me is, not just any laptop will do. What I look for:

* Low weight — I travel a lot and can’t lug lead bricks around. At 3.8 lbs., it’s as good as it gets for a machine with its specs.

* An AC that doesn’t look and weigh like another lead brick. This one is a lot smaller and lighter than similar machines’, and with a long cord.

* Fast processing, with plenty of RAM — I edit photos, same as another satisfied reviewer.

* A big enough screen (over 12.1″), great quality-wise.

* Generous storage space.

* Bluetooth and wireless.

* A comfortable, ergonomic, well laid out keyboard, because besides editing photos I also write a lot.

* Off-board graphics card or a hybrid graphics solution, for obvious reasons.

* As many USB ports as can fit on the laptop. This one has three, not bad at all for its size (the Vaio only had two, hah).

* A machine that is pleasing to the eye and nice to touch is a bonus.

The UL30VT has it all. Plus a webcam + mic, which I may end up using some day. And it is beautifully thin, taking up little space in my backpack.

What I don’t need:

* A trackpad, because I always use a mouse.

* A DVD / CD drive. I can install or back up to an external hard drive or my network.

* Shiny surfaces. Yes, this machine has them all over. They make it sleeker, but not easier to maintain fingerprint-free. I can live with that.

The UL30VT truly is a pleasure to work with. It is responsive, quick, clever and didn’t come with too much brand bloatware — very little, in fact, compared to Sony and HP machines. I have Turbo mode on all the time, and taking no energy-saving measures will give me almost 5 hours of battery time with no noticeable lag in performance. If I make an effort to stretch it by doing all the things ASUS recommends, the battery lasts over 10 hours. I have never had a laptop with such an impressive battery life. The Kindle for PC software was also a nice little touch. I can see myself reading on the computer’s very clear screen, but more than that, being able to carry my bird field guide in the computer’s hard drive and not in my backpack — this is the only Kindle download I’ve made so far — is very, very handy.

The ASUS UL30VT is truly conceived to be portable. It balances heft and resources very well, giving me the best of both worlds for a price that seems more than reasonable. I am very happy that I gave ASUS a second chance.

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A few gripes…*UPDATED* Review…no longer just a few gripes, October 14, 2010

By 

Kelly Coghlan – See all my reviews

  

I’ve had this laptop for two months now.

Pros:

You’ve already read about them! There really isn’t any need for me to repeat what has been said 20 times already.

Cons:

Build quality- OK. After a few days of using this laptop, the computer started restarting itself into the “abnormal shutdown screen.” Once it completely booted into Windows, a window would pop up saying that I had a blue screen error (I think these notifications are new to Windows 7). I never actually saw the blue screen though. It would boot up normally after the shut down. Also, if I moved my laptop, the HD would start clicking. Not clicking once every 30 seconds like in other reviews, but a *click**click**click**click* LOUD, repetitive sound. It would do this until the computer was completely shut off. I called ASUS; they apologized and offered to pay for shipping both ways, but it was going to take them THREE WEEKS to fix. I had the laptop for three weeks and now I had to lose it for three weeks? No way! I’m a student and classes were about to start, so I called up Amazon and told them my sob story. Amazon is AMAZING, so they sent a brand new laptop over night.

So, here I am typing on my second laptop. TWO DAYS into using it, my Alt key fell off. I haven’t called ASUS about it yet because it isn’t really a big deal. But still…two days??! Also, this HD does the same clicking BS as the other one. It frustrates me and I’m afraid it’s going to start doing it during lecture in one of my classes.

I’m torn over how many stars to give this laptop. It has amazing battery life. It doesn’t get ridiculously hot like my old piece of junk. It’s quiet. It works PERFECTLY, except for those issues mentioned above. I’m just afraid that I’m going to continue to have problems as time goes on since I had them so early on!

4/3/11

Today, I went to go use my laptop and I heard that strange clicking sound again. All of a sudden, the blue screen popped up (the actual blue screen!) and my laptop restarted. Now I can’t boot into Windows without getting the blue screen of death. I made the recovery discs, but for some reason it won’t boot. Now I can’t get to any of my files. I haven’t called ASUS yet, but I’m still dropping this review down to one star even though the computer will be repaired since it’s still under warranty. That means I’ve had TWO computers from ASUS that gave me the blue screen of death. TWO. I’m four weeks out from graduation, so losing my laptop for that time is going to hurt. I’m pretty pissed.

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