ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A-DH51 13.3" Ultrabook Silver Aluminum

Pros: Super light. Great screen. Love the keyboard. Touchpad works great.

Cons: No removable battery for when Windows does something stupid.

Other Thoughts: I have no idea why this computer doesn't receive high ratings on this site; I can only assume it's because people who are not happy are more likely to post a review than those who are glad they made the purchase. I have been using this laptop for travel for the last several months and it does everything I could ask. It's super lightweight, I really love the keyboard, and the trackpad is so good good that I rarely use an external mouse. Just a good computer.

Pros: Works well with linux, fantastic screen, very comfortable keyboard, really great trackpad, LIGHT!, and fairly cool.

Cons: The charger plug is right angled and kind of bulky, I can see how this can cause some stress on the charge port and cause problems down the road. Not many ports.

Other Thoughts: I wiped the laptop with Linux immediately, so this review is entirely with respect to the Linux software stack, which may or may not make a difference. Let my start of by saying a few things about the common problems that people have with this laptop. Everyone seems to complain about the trackpad. I find it to be really great. Its large, its sensitive and responsive, and I have never accidentally touched it while typing. I'm not sure if the people having these problems have very bad typing posture and technique or what, but I really have to go out of my way to attempt to trigger the trackpad. The keyboard is also very comfortable for typing, I think some people may call it "spongy", but I personally find it quiet and easy on the finger. The trackpad is absolutely briliant, two finger scroll works very well, the movements are precise, and i like that the whole thing clicks. I tend to use middle finger for moving the cursor and index finger for hitting left/right buttons, and that doesn't seem to be problematic at all... except when my middle finger is very close the button I indent to press, sometimes it processes a two finger scroll right before the press is registered. 99% of the time when this happens it causes no issues, but a few times it might scroll a page and you might miss your target. The trackpad is vastly better than any other laptop I've ever used (I've never used Apple, people tell me those trackpads are the best). The screen is absolutely gorgeous. There is not much to say besides how much I love it. Sometimes text can be tiny and hard to see, but a few tweaks to DPI/font sizes seems to have fixed most of my issues. Can easily zoom in on pages for larger fonts if necessary. Now onto linux issues. With Kubuntu 12.10, it seems to work fairly well. Keyboard backlight doesnt work by default, as well as screen brightness shortcut keys. I've fixed both with a few simple scripts and kernel upgrades. The ambient light sensor does not work, but I usually turn those off anyway (I know how bright I want my screen!). With Kubuntu, under normal everyday use (development, browsing the web, some video, I easily get between 6 and 8 hours of battery life. This was with brightness probably about 50% and some of the time was spent with a powersave scaling governor. I find the display to be plenty bright at 50%, in fact at night I turn it all the way down. Again, the screen is nothing short of amazing. If anyone is looking for a lightweight linux machine, this should be one of your top choices. Also for completeness, a cold boot takes under 10 seconds, and sleeping and resuming is nearly instantaneous. By the time I open the screen and get my hands on the keyboard, I'm presented with login screen. I really wish the charger plug was smaller, when it plugs onto the side of the laptop its rather uncomfortable to have in your lap and i feel like the right angle shape is a little awkward and easy to get caught on things like the edge of the desk.

Pros: Best ultrabook on the market, super thin, super mobile, super light, high quality, its an Asus, really pretty,

Cons: the cons are other people's reviews and ignorance.

Other Thoughts: I'm tired of seeing people give this notebook a bad review because they don't know how to properly deal with a wireless device, and they think customer service has something to do with with how the device performs. First of all, if have your laptop plugged in constantly then yes, after a while the battery gets conditioned and will not hold a charge/won't charge all together, second the touchpad will only register 'taps' as clicking so if you don't do it right, it won't register. A soft tap, you aren't holding your finger on it, you wanna be as quick as you can without having to think about it, which I can tell from some other reviewers they are blowing it way out of proportion. The reason why this isn't rated 4.5 out of 5 like it should, is because people who have had a bad experience are more likely to write a review then those who knew they were getting a good notebook and didn't want to bother writing a review. And yes, sometimes out-of-the-box you can get a bad battery or a dead stick of RAM, a few dead pixels etc. but that does not mean that the laptop is "sh**" it just mean that some one made a tiny mistake in the thousand+ step process it takes for the notebook to arrive onto your desk. Asus makes one of the best, if not the best laptops in the market very high quality, and if you start to have something wrong with it, then you are one of the very tiny percent that have a "bad Asus", because I can guarantee that an HP, Dell, Lenovo, Toshiba etc. is going to be far more prone to problems. This is the lightest ultrabook EVER made, lighter than the Macbook air, and there is no laptop on the market that has a higher resolution than the retna display on the ipad/Macbook, so comparing this notebook to that; is just dumb. And its not like the display is bad, it is just as good if not better than most laptops and when you are in the middle of watching a movie, writing a paper etc. you AREN'T focused on the resolution of the display, you won't even notice the difference if you are sitting the normal operating distance away from the screen. Don't listen to people who say that the Zenbook is bad, its either because they aren't using it right or they happen to be the tiny percent who got unlucky and received a defective device.

Pros: Very fast, thin, light and the screen is phenomenal. The HD4000 with quick-sync technology encodes video VERY fast with applications that support it.

Cons: The keyboard is horrible. Drops about 1% of my key-presses randomly. It feels like a design issue with the tactile touch of the keys.

The touchpad is horrible. By far the worst touchpad I have ever used. You can click mechanically or tap (one-finger or two-finger) for left/right clicks, and about 20% of my clicks are ignored. Even mechanically, I can hear the click and nothing happens. I have to click everything like 3 times. Even using the soft-tap clicks, frequently do nothing.

Other Thoughts: I was saddened that the hard drive is actually a SSD DIM looking thing soldered to the motherboard. Also sad that the SD slot does not allow the memory card to fit in flush. I was planning to use a 128gb sd card as a secondary hard drive, however 2/3 of it sticks out the side of the laptop.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you are having problems with the track pad. If you go to the desktop and click on the white up arrow on the lower right and double click the icon that looks like a track pad, you will open up the asus smart gesture features.

There you will be able to make the necessary changes to fit your preference.

Here is a link below if you need to update the driver as well.
http://support.asus.com/download.aspx?SLanguage=en&m=UX31a&os=8

If you have any questions or comments you can email me again at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Very Thin, 1920x1080 resolution

Cons: Everything else

Other Thoughts: I had very high hopes for this computer. It was beautiful and the screen resolutions was the finest I had ever seen.

It all stops there. 2 weeks after I purchased it, the laptop began failing. First it was occasionally, then constantly where the laptop failed to power on. The first several times it happened you could try your luck at hitting the power button over and over. Sometimes you would get lucky it would power on eventually.

Each time this happened I would lose all of my work. Finally, after multiple service calls to ASUS (whose customer service is absolutely THE WORST I have ever dealt with), the laptop completely failed and would not longer turn on.

After some research on the internet, I found thousands of reports of the same problem.

Don't let the appearance of this device lure you in. You will eventually regret it.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that your unit starting having problems so early within purhcase. If your unit is still under the return policy with newegg you can return the unit for an exchange.

If your unit is past the return policy, you can send it in for service to have our technicians for the problem.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Nice screen (-backlight bleed)

Cons: read below

Other Thoughts: After more than 10 years of reading on-line reviews to make purchase decisions, the time has finally come for me to write one.

While the Asus Zenbook Prime looks attractive and has some good features on paper, the physical construction of the computer is absolutely horrible. If you are looking for a reliable notebook, do not buy this computer!

Right out of the box, I was disappointed by the usual complaints: backlight bleed and a s#1tty touchpad. An additional bonus was the embarrassingly squeaky keyboard. When you are using your new laptop to write a university final exam in room with 100 people, and your keyboard sounds like a sack full of chipmunks – you have a problem.

Despite the disappointed, I could live with the cosmetic flaws. What I couldn’t tolerate was when 3 months in my computer would no longer charge. The little LED on the DC Jack would sporadically blink and the computer simply would not charge. I finally had to send it in for service. This is where the real fun begins.

The ASUS tech support guys are completely incompetent (or their system sucks so bad that they can’t actually do anything other than continuously repeat their prepared script). After numerous calls and wasted hours, I finally get “Rodel L. Roque” to send me the credit card authorization form so that I can pay ASUS an extra $35 to ship my computer back via priority mail. I promptly fill out and return the form. After several days go by without confirmation, I call to make sure everything is in order. The guy on the phone is clueless... it takes him a better part of an hour to track down the form I sent. He convinces me that it’s all sorted and that my laptop will be shipped priority mail overnight as soon as the repair is complete.

Once I noticed the on-line RMA status changed to “fixed, ready for shipping”, I call again to verify that it’s going out air. All good.

Needless to say, after following up with Purolator a few days later, I’m informed that my laptop is currently on some truck in Saskatchewan, making the long journey to Vancouver. Ironically, 30 minutes after getting off the phone with Purolator, I get the email from ASUS thanking me for my CC authorization form and informing me that the additional charge for air shipping my laptop will be processed shortly.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you have back light bleed symptoms with your laptop and you were given false information.

If you are still having problems with your repair unit just give us a call and we will be happy to assist you again.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: First, the heat problem people always complain can be alleviated very easily. Turn the power setting from full performance to energy saver. I was surprise how much cooler now my Ultrabook is. Wii is still erratic. Turn off the energy management of the wifi adapter. IT helps some. Nothing you can do to strengthen the reception. The ports are flimsy. SO treat them like virgins. The tracking pad is still not as good as Macbook Air but I dislike Macbook Air'screen. Nice escreen

Cons: weak wifi, oversensitive mouse pad, require some tweaking s to keep the PC nice and cool. Colors don't look as vibrant as iPad.

Pros: Gorgeous display, lightweight, nice keyboard.

Cons: Asus's engineers must really not realize what their products go through. I sent my zenbook back for repair of the micro HDMI port, got it back, and it's intermittent. At least it kind of works now. Come on, guys. Get the with the program. If you're going to provide ports, PLEASE make sure that they are sturdy enough to stand up to use. If you can't do that, then don't bother putting them on. Motorola managed to find a way to make a micro port that doesn't fail. Why can't you, Asus?

Other Thoughts: As long as you, the user, don't plan on using the Micro HDMI or Micro VGA ports on this, it's a nice ultrabook. However, definitely pass on this one if you ever plan on using the micro ports.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that you are still having issues with the HDMI port. you can always send it back in to have it repaired. Usually because it takes longer replacing the port we usually just change out the whole motherboard.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Screen, light, portable

Cons: Apparently some ux31a's come with the decent ADATA ssd's, and some come with old, slow SanDisk ssd's. I got a SanDisk. It is complete garbage. And you don't know what hard drive you're getting before buying. You might get lucky, but if you're like me and you got unlucky, all you can do is resent the fact that you bought a product from an irresponsible manufacturer like ASUS -- a company that disregards quality control and has no problem deceiving the consumer.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

The reason why we do not list the brand hard drive is because we work with many different vendors and which ever can fulfill our needs will be the vendor we choose for that build order.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Gorgeous screen, lightning fast boot times, nice keyboard, long battery life.

Cons: I didn't really like windows 8. But I'm just using Linux anyway, so this didn't really matter. I'm also weary about the durability of the computer as mentioned by others. So far, however, I have had no issues with broken inputs or anything.