ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A-DH51 Ultrabook Intel Core i5 4GB 128GB SSD 13.3" FHD IPS Display Silver Aluminum

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.

Overall Review: 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: + Full HD Panel (1920x1080) on a 13" screen makes for nearly invisible almost retina-like pixels. Yes, text is smallish, but you can increase font size to compensate. + Touchpad works well, I have no complaints. I turned off the stupid charms bar edge swipe and use StartIsBack. Nice, Windows 7-ish goodness. + Laptop boots up plenty fast, even a cold boot. I get impatient waiting for a laptop to boot-up just to check something, but this is fast enough that I'm happy. + Doesn't generate much heat, so battery last for hours -- especially if you dim the screen some. Backlit keyboard spoils me, I'll never own another laptop without it. Just love it. + Keyboard is spacious enough for me to touch type, but understand there is no 10-key and the inverted cursor t-pad is smallish. The island style keyboard reduces typing errors and the key throw and tension is good. But YMMV as keyboards are very personal.

Cons: + Text is pretty tiny. But this is a 1920x1080 13" screen, what do you expect? Because an ultra-book like this strives to squeeze max life from a charge, it's not as fast as as desktop i5 would be. But that's to be expected. + The included USB to Ethernet dongle is only 100Mbit -- pathetic. For around $40 here on NewEgg, you can buy a gigabit adapter that's also a USB3 hub. Search for "USB303HE". I use it instead of the included dongle. + There's no included mini-HDMI adapter, but there is a mini-VGA adapter.

Overall Review: Bear in mind, this is an ultra-book. A laptop designed first and foremost to be highly portable and run a long time on a charge. It's not a gaming rig so it's not going to be as fast as a larger laptop or desktop. But it's plenty fast enough. I use this in client offices for programming routers and doing research while fixing a client's workstations, server, or networks. RAM and SSD I've been inside this thing: You cannot upgrade the 4GB of RAM, it's soldered to the mobo. Tis a shame, I would have liked 8GB. But really, for what I do, 4GB is plenty. The 128GB SSD is a plug-in, but it's not in the traditional 2.5" laptop drive form factor. It's an open circuit board with an edge connector. You can swap in a 256GB, but why? Unless you store movies or a ton of photos and music, the 128GB is enough. I have 75GB *free* after loading my stuff, creating an image, then whacking the 20GB recovery partition and some other useless partitions. I bought mine at a competitor for $850. Sorry, NewEgg, they beat your tail on that.

Pros: Excellent construction. Screen is amazing (and matte); it is crisp and bright. The keyboard is very responsive. Touch gestures mostly work well. The sleeve provided is classy and robust. Very quiet when doing basic tasks like word processing. Fan is barely audible when doing more intensive tasks. Super portable. The battery gets me about 5 hours of normal use on high performance mode (65% brightness - for a room with lights). I was worried about performance, but I needed not worry. It handles MATLAB and Visual Studio just fine. Simulink loads in about 13 seconds, where as my desktop (SATA III, Agility 3 240GB, 4Ghz i5) loads in 7 seconds. So the transfer speeds on the SSD might be a bit lower, but that could also be processing overhead. I can't tell if processing time is longer, but I usually only work with smaller systems <10 ODEs. 'rlocus' plots do take a second or two longer. There are a few Windows 8 games, and they run great and are pretty fun.

Cons: The touchpad seems a little unresponsive on occasion. Not really a big deal. Have to redo a gesture every once and a while. The power plug is a largish 'L' connector. Seems a bit bulkier than it should. Only 4 GB or RAM. This is the biggest complaint I have. Windows 8 does run light at only 1GB, but that doesn't leave a lot of memory for MATLAB (which can use a LOT of memory for more complex things). I know a friend who runs out of memory using MATLAB on a 12GB MAC. He does a lot of stuff with regression models and it IS a MAC.

Overall Review: MATLAB and Visual Studio aren't that processor intensive compared to encoding and video editing. Reviews say there is a noticeable processing time increase for that stuff. It's great for me though.

Pros: Beautiful Design, exquisitely built and very good solid unit. Enjoyed the feel of using it and the keyboard is second to none.

Cons: All components are soldered to the board and irreplacable. Don't make the mistake I did thinking you can upgrade "anything"!

Overall Review: Not really the fault of the manufacturer but a $92 re-stocking fee, plus $32 handling, PLUS I have to pay for the shipping back! I've been a loyal customer for the past 5 years but this really put you folks down a few notches...

Pros: Very Thin, 1920x1080 resolution

Cons: Everything else

Overall Review: 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.

Pros: This ultrabook packs an AMAZING screen in a lightweight package with a great keyboard and solid specs. It's not the fasted on the block, but it was never designed to be. It's great for light gaming: just don't expect max specs on the latest games. The battery life seems to top out at about 5-6 hours, which is quite acceptable for a laptop this size.

Cons: The external ports ARE EXTREMELY FRAGILE. I had it hooked up to my TV via the micro HDMI jack, and it wore out after a MONTH!!. It no longer works unless you position the cable exactly right, and it's extremely annoying. I looked up some pictures online of the internals, and the jacks aren't supported in the least. They're just some razor thin sheet metal hanging off the edge of the PCB. The USB and SD slots look like they're sturdy enough to stand up to every day use, but the Micro HDMI port and VGA port are far too thin and fragile to stand up to any use.

Overall Review: If you don't need the VGA or HDMI outs, then this ultrabook is a great buy. But if you plan on occasionally hooking this up to a TV or monitor, it would be better to pass this one up.

Pros: 1. Very quiet. I mean, it's really quiet. Even when the fan is on for medium tasks, I still barely hear it. For the most part, it cannot be heard. 2. The build looks quite awesome, even the bottom metallic panel looks like. 3. SSD is quite fast. 4. The included ASUS bag/envelope is just outright awesome. Brought this notebook to a business meeting and the client commented on it's beauty.

Cons: 1. Not really, the notebook's fault, but Windows 8 tiles are kind of a nuisance on a non-touchscreen notebook. Moreover, I think those "live" tiles makes the computer a little slow. Turned them all off, and it behaved like Win 7, and is fantastic. No egg deduction here. The top does attract fingerprints, but that's covered in other reviews.

Overall Review: Definitely worth the buy. Some complained about the battery life, but not a concern for me, as I never had to use it for past 3-4 hours non-stop without an outlet.

Pros: I think for the price you cant beat it. Current promo at $719 shipped NEW, not referb or open. I paid $799 for mine and love it. The i5 3317u @1.7ghz is the same performance as 1.7ghz i7m cpu's. 4gb of DDR3 seems to be good on WIN8. I run many tabs on firefox and ms office apps, java, and virtual desktop no problem, including anti virus ON. Very fast boot and awake from sleep. Construction as good as 2013 macbook air. I would buy air but I need win8 for work applications. battery is very long if running linux or ubunto vs win8. win8 about 8 hrs. Very cool, very quiet. Better than the sony ultrabook I returned at $1099. I like the keyboard feel better than the air too. Trackpad not AS good but good

Cons: Not touchscreen, but hardly a con more a lack of option. The i7, 8g, SSD touch is $2100 Screen could be a litter brighter. speakers a bit louder for movies, but VLC app plays at 200% which fixes the low volume. Will require larger external drive for users with large media, I have about 50gb free and only have apps 1 movie. Comes with 32gb ASUS cloud storage free