Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A Ultrabook Review

Specs & Benchmarks

PCMark 7

PCMark 7 gives us a quick overview of a system’s performance in everyday tasks. While the 3D performance was nothing remarkable, the video playback and encoding test provided surprisingly good results: 23.15 fps encoding, while maintaining full 24fps playback. This means that the system can, if set up properly, encode video in nearly realtime, while playing another stream back.

Windows 8: PCMark 7 failed to complete under Windows 8. This is a problem of support within the program and not with the Zenbook.

CineBench 11.5

Windows 7 Performance	Windows 8 Performance

CineBench is a free program that uses the same rendering engine as Maxon’s Cinema4D CGI software. It gives us a look at raw number-crunching ability on a per-core basis, as well as the multiplicative effect of multiple CPU cores. On a per-core basis, the Ivy Bridge CPU slightly outperforms the Xeon W5590, despite being almost 1ghz slower. That said, the I7-3517U CPU is only a dual-core chip, so don’t expect workstation-beating miracles. As you can see the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8 is marginal.

AS SSD

Windows 7 Performance	Windows 8 Performance

AS SSD gives us a simple, straightforward look at SSD performance. The Sandisk U100 256GB SSD included with our test unit provided very respectable results, with 442.33 MB/sec sequential read and 236.56 MB/sec sequential write. The 4k random tests, ever the bane of all storage devices, still came up with respectable results: 9.70 MB/sec read and 8.61 MB/sec write.

Battery Life and Wireless Performance

Centrino 802.11 N works flawlessly, battery got me 6.5 hours of web browsing with WiFi on.

Battery life is one of the more important points in the Ultrabook specification; Intel specifies that any machine must provide at least 6 hours of battery life with wireless connections up and in use. In practice, the Zenbook Prime UX31A lives up to this; with screen brightness at half, it gave me an average of 6.5 hours from full charge to the first low battery warning at 10%.

The Intel Centrino 802.11N adapter turned in a solid performance: an average of 135Mbit/sec over single channel 802.11N (theoretical 150Mbit/sec max). The system had no trouble connecting to marginal networks, though throughput was obviously limited by signal strength.

Thoughts & Conclusion

The Zenbook Prime UX31A is a very solid machine. The fit and finish are top notch, the included software has only minimal annoyances, and the performance is extremely solid. The 1080p IPS display provides fantastic color and contrast, even in environments filled with glare and harsh lighting. While there are necessarily some compromises, most notably in graphics performance, the machine never felt sluggish or underpowered. The major tradeoff with this machine is upgradeability; the soldered-on RAM and proprietary SSD form factor mean that what you buy is what you’re going to be stuck with, for the most part. That said, what you buy for $1399 is a fairly punchy, very slim, very attractive machine that is well suited for those who need to get serious work done on the go. Those in need of truly heavy-duty computing muscle aren’t going to be tossing out their desktop machines any time soon, but if your work mostly consists of working with documents and web apps, this machine is more than ready to handle it.

Pros:

• Slim and light
• Spectacular, high resolution display
• Solid construction
• Pleasing aesthetics

Cons:

• Pack in software somewhat lackluster
• Speakers are underwhelming
• Webcam needs improvement

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