ASUS Vivobook U38N

Asus VivoBook U38N 13.3-inch Touchscreen Laptop (Silver) - (AMD A8 4555M 1.6GHz Processor, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, WLAN, Webcam, BT, Integrated Graphics, Windows 8): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

A8 version is available in UK, but way overpriced

Also in France, not sure how long it's been there.

 

If anyone wants a low price on a U38N with an A10, I've found a way.

Order from Amazon Japan for ~75,000 yen ($800). The Yen is very, very weak right now, making it a perfect time to order
Amazon.co.jpF ASUS U38N-C40A10 NB / Silver ( 13.3inch FHD touch / A10-4655M / 4G / 500G / 802.11BGN / BT / Microsoft WIN8.64B.JP / kingsoft licence ) U38N-C40A10: ƒpƒ\ƒRƒ“EŽü•Ó‹@Ší

It's 1.9kg shipped according to them. Ship it to Tenso (for free). It seems to be the most popular site.
Usage Fee [ Tenso.com ]｜Forwarding service connecting overseas customers and Japanese online stores.
Depending on where you live (US, Europe, South America/Africa), shipping will be 5,000 - 8,000 yen.

This brings the price after shipping to about $850 USD, a bit more for outside the US.

I just spoke to Asus tech support, and as long as the product is covered by an international warranty, notebooks will be servicable by Asus outside Japan.
ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Warranty Policy U38N

In other words, you shouldn't have to ship it back to Asus Japan.



Yes, I'm obsessed with this thing

 

Hey guys, quick update, I upgraded mine with a Samsung 840 basic 250 gb and 8 gb Corsair 1600 mhz ram. Running a lot smoother now. Still waiting on some OC-geeks to get this laptop and improve the gaming performance Working performance is already perfect with the SSD. Sorry I blacked out everything but I actually have no idea what all those bars/numbers mean and I guess my Windows 8 serial is somewhere in there.

 

Nice looking notebook, how would its gaming capabilities compare to the New Samsung Series 7 Ultra
that one has a Radeon HD 8570M

 

Not as good, but the U38N is a cheaper device than the Series 7 Ultra.

 

Had to register since I'm now a prou... well, owner of Vivobook U38N-C4010H.
After six hours of use touchscreen just stopped working.

Didn't do much. Just installed Office and Firefox and unistalled couple of Asus bloadwares.
Very dissapointing of course since I truly waited for this device. 99% sure it's a hardware issue but still bit weird.
No errors with USB-devices are reported.
Just all the sudden touchsceen was not workin and Windows now says there's "no pen or touch input is available for this display."

Already did a complete system restore with no effect. Going to contact ASUS support tomorrow too but still I'd like to hear if anyone experienced something like this.

 

I've had two U38N's now that I've had to turn back because of this (and another one for another reason) - and trust me, I've tried a lot of stuff to get it to work, without success. The quality control for this particular device is beyond incongruous really...

However, one guy around here managed to get it to work again, which seems a bit "odd" perhaps.

The solution he used to fix it was to put the laptop into sleep mode and wake it up again. Press Alt+F2 to put it sleep and the power button to wake it up. Don't have high hopes though. There's no official fix for this as far as I know.

You'll most likely have to replace it or just return it. If you however manage to get it to work in one way or another, please report it in this thread!

P.S. Has anyone heard anything from ASUS regarding this?

 

I've tried tons of ways to solve the issue too, without no success of course.
This online shop (which in fact promises answer in 24H) has not yet said anything. And I informed them at Tuesday. Normally they have been as fast as they claim.
I guess I give ASUS another call.

If I were a millionaire, I'd allready dismantled this in to atoms and see if there's something wrong.
I might just return this and order it on a another shop that gives 3-year warranty instead of two years. Might be useful with this thing.

 

Hello Trinity Asus,

What model is that? I have the Japanese U38N C40A10, and according to the japanese site the largest ram expansion is 6GB ASUS -

 

It is a Asus U38N-C4010H 33,8 cm (13,3 Zoll) Notebook (AMD A8 4555M, 1,6GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, AMD HD 7600M, Touchscreen, Win 8). I build in the SSD and the RAM myself incase that is your question. Sorry but I can't read japanese, do you mean that they tell on the site that you can not build anything larger than 6 GB of RAM inside or that it is sold with 6 GB total?

 

it seems to say that the largest expansion is 6GB. maybe that is 2 ob board and 4 in the slot.

 

The largest store bought upgrade? Because I can certainly say that 8 GB in the slot is ok and you will have 10 GB in total.

 

Hello,

After watching this thread for a (too) long time, i've a question. Do you guys think this problem with the touchscreen will be fixed? The c4011h looks very interesting to me... (btw, It's in france webshops already...)

Thanks

 

Interesting, thanks.

How did you go about moving the install to the SSD? Did you clone the original? Do you have a link to a guide i could follow?

Thanks

 

Nope, I just took out the old one, put Windows 8 (which I already had from my work before) on a thumb drive and installed it on the new drive. It automatically detected the serial number of the laptop though so I did not have to enter a serial for windows, magic to me. Then I installed some of the drivers from the Asus and AMD site (not all because I don't need most of the Asus programs) and everything is running perfect. Never had any issues with the touchscreen.

I didn't want to clone because of the bloatware and because of the strange autostart issue I talked about earlier in this thread. Something about the OEM windows installation was not right. My friend (with the same notebook but he put different RAM and a different SSD inside) did not have the issues with the autostart and just cloned it though.

 

Hi Trinity
it seems (at least to me) that this is the only forum/discussion open on the subject (U38n ) on the net.
I'll take profit of your courtesy to ask some feeling of the reproduction of HD video and on the colour reproduction of th FHD touch display.

I'm in Italy and here now the A8-4555 (the only model available) is at around 650€ so I'm very oriented toward this laptop.
Thanks in Advance for any reply
S

PS. perhaps you can have information on other discussions open so in this case....thanks

 

Yes, strangely enough I also did not find any additional discussion on this laptop so I think not a lot of people own it. I hope this gets better because I have no knowledge of overclocking and I would like for someone to find out how to get the maximum gaming performance out of this laptop

For the display I can only say that I do not stop to be amazed by it. At home I have my laptop standing next to a HP 23" TN-panel (but not a bad monitor at all) and have the same photo as a background and the difference is crazy. The colors seem a lot more "alive" in the U38N. Of course the sharpness of FullHD on 13.3" and 23" is also a huge difference. I watched some FullHD movies on this laptop and it is a very nice experience because of the colors which are a lot better than on my monitor and tv. I have to do some research if TVs today also use IPS displays because this will be the biggest factor in my next TV-buying decision (my TV is 5 years old now, some FullHD Samsung).

I also like the display better than the one of UX32VD (of which I had quite a few last year but I had to send them all back because of different quality issues) because its glossy. Call me crazy but I just like glossy better. For working outside it is not optimal but it works.

650€ is an absolutely insane deal, I paid 800€. Add more RAM and a SSD and you have got a beast of a laptop for ~850€.

 

Wow! 650 is damn cheap. Mine cost 850€ur here in Finland. No suprise there though, Finland is the most expensive country in EU...
I'd bought two in that price.

Anyway, about the display in my eyes...
It's pretty glare and instantly full of fingerprints. Pretty normal when there is touchscreen involved.
The colours are fine if not very good. My Samsung PLS-display does not put this thing in shame.
Even the black is fine (not outstanding). Every other IPS-display I've seen had terrible dark colours.
It's not the brightest display either but I'm pleased with it.

I'm now waiting for UPS to collect this thing for the service.
Almost returned it but I'm not in the mood for fighting with this particular shop. They never been easy to deal with.

 

Thanks for your reply Trinity. I'll take it asap.

Interesting the idea to search for a way to optimize/improve the performances (overclocking or in some other way...).

Yes add memory +SSD should be the next steps when I will have the lap in hands.

See you ...
S

 

I'm not Trinity but your welcome anyway.

I'm adding more memory and SSD too when(if) I get the laptop back.
Can't really live without SSD these days. It's a shame ASUS didn't put one inside in the first place.

 

We both replied thats why he said my name

Glad to see there are some more people using this thing, maybe we get a larger userbase going. One issue I have is that since changing the HDD for an SSD I can not set the BIOS back to "Fast boot" because the laptop will not boot then. Now the Bios time is about 8 seconds where before it was 2 seconds. Valuable time for a booting pc with SSD Maybe they will fix this in an Update soon, I should write them an Email.

 

Well didn't first see that. :thumbsup:

What does ASUS say about warranty when opening the case for swiching HDD to SSD?
Some say warranty will void some say not. Is there a seal or something that will indicate if the case has been opened?
In some store an ASUS spokesman told me, the warranty will be void in this case.

Boot issue sounds weird. My sister has another Vivobook, X202, which to I allready installed a SSD. No problems there. Neither seals in it if I'm correct.
The X202 is easier to open. There are no tiny torx bults but normal cross-head screws.
then again, it's just about tools. I'll have to buy screwdriver for this case it seems.

 

I did not find any seals and also there was no glue on the case like there seems to be in some Zenbooks. Only the battery was glued with "foamy tape" to give some soft spacing to the rest of the chassis. I had to take it of and lift the battery a bit to get to all the HDD screws but it attached well afterwards still. It is really easy if you are careful with the speaker cables which are very thin and connected to the battery. As far as I know no warranty is voided except for the parts that you took out, I guess there the warranty is void but Idk.

 

Is this available anywhere in the US yet? My spouse is going to the US next week.

Also, is it not possible to order the one someone posted in Italy for 650 euro and have it shipped within the EU (Amsterdam)? Thanks...

 

No, and since AMD is supposed to announce/launch piledriver (trinity's successor) in a week or two, I don't think it's ever coming here.

I made a post earlier about ordering one from Amazon Japan and using a popular 3rd party shipping company. For me, the A10 version was ~$850 USD shipped (so probably 650 to 700 euros). I'm not sure if ordering it from Italy in Amsterdam is possible.

 

Hi everyone,
I am really intrigued by this model and eagerly await the first price drop. (It's been available for €840 since late September here in Sweden, and will hopefully drop a bit soon).

Reading this post, http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=9102626, it seems that the Trinity APU might be upgradable to the upcoming Richland generation.

Would you guys, currently owning this beauty or being more knowledgable than me, say that it's worth to get your hopes up about this?

I have no experience in upgrading the CPU of a laptop and was really suprised by this information. Seems to good to be true. I mean, being able to upgrade the RAM to 10 GB and the CPU/APU to the next gen must be considered unique for an ultrabookish laptop, right?

 

With these small laptops and especially ULV parts, the APUs/CPUs are usually soldered to the mainboard. So the non-ULV, normal sized APUs/CPUs might be replaceable, but I doubt this is the case for this laptop.

 

Thanks. I think I'm better off saving my money to the summer and the coming releases from Intel and AMD.

My "dream config" would be a U38N with a Kabini APU. That would really be something.

 

I think I'm in the same boat. Personally, as I like to do some light gaming and have an interest in HSA programming, I'm holding out for a U38N with a Kaveri APU. For everything but gaming, a kabini APU in this platform would literally be perfect for the money.

 

Hi ,
just bought U38n-C4010H at 608 € (including shipping).

I'll post my first impressions asap it will be in my hands..

In the meanwhile please you can give look to this review (very few existing up to now)

Ciao

 

Hi guys!

I ordered this laptop from Italy: 623 euro, including shipping, for the a8-4555m/ 4GB/ 500 HD configuration. I hope that the beast arrives on Monday, I'm waiting for a week now...
I've ordered also 4gb/1600 cl9 more ram and want to change the hdd drive with a ssd 128gb (830 - samsung).
As soon I can put my hands on the machine I will share my opinion/experience with you

 

If I was you I would go with 8 gb RAM and 256 gb SSD. 128 gb really isn't a lot of space and you will run out very quickly, annoying to always carry around an external drive. The RAM is personal preference but the price difference (at least in germany) was minimal. I wasn't able to find any 1800 mhz RAM, maybe you can find some, it might give the laptop a better performance but I don't know.

Especially considering that you saved a lot of money with this deal. Really crazy amount of bang for the buck!

 

Two questions arise:
Where do you live? Not Italy, I assume?

Which web site did you order from?

Looking foward to reading your review!

 

I live in Italy; I ordered the laptop from apmshop.it. The best price among all the italian stores, but their shipping system works not so well...The call center assured me that on Monday the package will arrive at my home. Do you have bought the notebook from the the same place? (I assume so because you spent an amount of money almost like mine).

@TrinityAsus:
For the ram and ssd question the fact is that I already own a 128gb ssd and the difference of price to get 4 or 8 gb Vengeance/1600/cl9 is too high at the moment (A reasonable offer is only the one for 16gb kit 2x8GB cl9 - but I didn't found anyone who want buy an 8GB module).

Do you have used some games on this machine? I'm very curious about gaming performance. There are some (non ancient)playable games at low/medium settings?
I hope that this apu is useful to do little experiments with opengl (I have to write and test a little rendering engine).

 

Yes, I played Anno 1404 on it in FullHD and some settings on medium and it runs very good and looks beatiful, I never had a chance to play it before but I love it now for relaxing. Also I just bought Starcraft 2 HOTS and it runs pretty decent as well, actually better then without the Addon so maybe they increased the multi core performance (not sure though). Big multiplayergames will still be too much on this laptop I think but for singleplayer it is okay.

 

I had previously written about buying this laptop and having received 3, all with faults servere enough that I couldn't ignore.. So I returned all of them and actually dropped the idea of getting a working U38N.
I then ordered an HP Envy X2 that also turned out to have some problems, so I then took he chance of ordering the U38N again.

This time it seems I've hit the jackpot. I "blame" this on being from another batch where they hopefully had some time to straighten these things out.
Screen is great; no dead pixels, no backlight bleed and no IPS bloom.
Keyboard backlight is good; it's the same all around the laptop.
Clickpad is fine too where as some of the others had it mounted wrong.
Touchscreen is also working fine and this time it actually registers all my touches.

So people who tried this laptop earlier this year might want to try again if they are still in the marked.
I fitted my Crucial M4 ssd and re-installed Windows 8 from a USB stick and everything is working fine and it's, of course, much snappier than the regular HDD the laptop came with.

 

if you have time, could you run 3dmark06 or 3dmark11 and tell me the scores you get from this model?

 

Sure.. anything else you want me to run?

The version being sold in Scandinavia is the A8 version. You can see all the specs here: Komplett.dk - ASUS VivoBook U38N 13,3" FHD IPS touch
The only difference is that I put my Crucial M4 128GB in the machine.

 

Hi,

I received the machine. There is a scratch on the right side of the asus logo in the bottom part of the glass protection screen and in the upper part it is ) an evident non uniform light in the upper part of the screen (under the webcam).
What should I make? Contact the store for a substitution or it is normal (the light "problem") on this ips panel?
It is a pitty, the overall build quality is very good.

David

Edit: I will contact the store, the light is too annoyng.

 

If it's anything you can't live with then return it and get another one. The 3 other laptops I had of this kind all had severe problems.. don't stop until you get one that you are satisfied with

 

I did a couple of runs in 3DMark11 for those who want numbers from that application.

The first run:
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - AMD A8-4555M,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. U38N score: P896 3DMarks

The second run:
Generic VGA video card benchmark result - AMD A8-4555M,ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. U38N score: P881 3DMarks

That is with a Crucial M4 128GB SSD instead of the standard 500GB HDD, so keep that in mind in case 3DMark favors SSD's.

If there's anything else people want me to run I'll be happy to do it

 

Did it make a lot of noise?

 

No, neither of those I've had (4 in total, the last one I kept) made a lot of noise.

When just doing Office work I can't hear the laptop unless I put mear ear all the way to the metal exhaut (and I mean litterally put my ear to it). And even then it's barely noticeable.

The fans themselves made very little noise when running 3DMark11 so the only thing you could hear was the airflow. And it wasn't really audioable beyond what is expected, so noise isn't a huge concern for me.
There are two fans inside, so that might be why it isn't making a lot of noise under load. This allow for the fans to run at a lower RPM.
But it is definitely passable regarding noise.

Also the chassis is made if metal so it is slighty cold to the touch. That might also contribute to keeping the unit cool.

 

if its not too much could you do 3dmark06 too?
sorry for my requests.. but greatly appreciate your time

 

3DMark06 will not let me submit my score so I can't see it.

I did a SuperPI though..

Super PI 1M : 52,276 sec.

 

just curious, are all your drivers updated?

 

Yes, of course

 

just wondering because your link says:

Graphics card is not recognized (What is this?)
Graphics driver is not approved (What is this?)

 

I know, I wondered about that too. But I have the latest AMD driver, I'm absolutely sure about that
Even the AMD tool in the control panel says it's up to date.

 

Hi, my U38n_C4010H is arrived since a couple of days now and I'm very satisfied.

The performances appear as expected and then it's confirmed for me the fantastic bargain associated to this lap.

The display is bright and fine and the reproduction of hd movie is very good. I'm working with the brightness level at <40% and it is enough for me.
The touchpad seems precise but i've some personal problem with W8 for the moment. The touchscreen works well and it is very usefull.
Battery life is in the range of 3 and 4 h but could be optimized I believe.
Fans works quitely and not annoyng at all. Some impressions of hot from the bottom but just just after more of 4/5 h of work.

Speed of operation seems good with some delay in the opening of some heavy apps. An SSD should improve highly the performances but I've no idea now how to organize the swap. Could be very and usefull if some of the friends that have already made the swap could post a little guide as a reference for us.
However to give an idea of the operational performances I can say the I've operated the following contemporary operations
-transfer and store on the lap hdd wia wifi of a big file at a rate of 20 Mbit/s;
-transfer and store on the lap hdd wia usb 3.0 from an exteral HDD at around 150/160 Mbit/s
- reproduction of an hd movie( "green hornet") via wifi from my desktop connected to the domestic net

and with only few blocking and stuttering on the hd reproduction (but the wifi router was clearly very under stress too).

See you after for other impressions.