ASUS Zenbook Infinity UX301LA - just announced at Computex

where online did you find a UX301LA-DH71T for $1866?

 

Amazon.com - Amazon.com: ASUS Zenbook UX301LA-DH71T 13.3-Inch Touchscreen Laptop (Blue): Computers & Accessories

Considering that this has a 28w CPU, I have to say the laptop runs cool. The fans spin up when installing many updates (haven't gotten to try out anything else yet) but they are very tolerable and don't have a high pitched whine like some other notebooks (Sony for example).

 

I've read reviews that say the fan stays off for the less intensive operations, like web browsing. This is true?

 

good to know thank you, Sony had a bad experience.

 

Yes, this is true. It only turns on during the more intensive tasks.

 

100% silent.

 

ASUS UX301LA models (aka Zenbook Infinity) Ultrabook

UX301LA-DH51T
Corning Gorilla Glass 3 lid
12.8" x 8.8" x 0.0" ~ 0.6"
2.6 lbs
13.3” Quad HD IPS Touchscreen Display (2560 x 1440)
Intel® Core™ i5-4200U 1.6GHz (Turbo 2.6GHz)
Intel® HD Graphics
8GB Memory
128GB SSD + 128GB SSD RAID 0
32GB ASUS WebStorage
802.11 ac
BT 4.0
1 Yr International Warranty
30-day Zero Bright Dot Guarantee
1 Yr Accidental Damage Protection

UX301LA-DH71T
Corning Gorilla Glass 3 lid
12.8" x 8.8" x 0.0" ~ 0.6"
2.6 lbs
13.3” Quad HD IPS Touchscreen Display (2560 x 1440)
Intel Core i7-4558U 2.8Ghz (Turbo 3.3GHz) Haswell
Intel® HD5100
8GB Memory
128GB SSD + 128GB SSD RAID 0
32GB ASUS WebStorage
802.11 ac
BT 4.0
1 Yr International Warranty
30-day Zero Bright Dot Guarantee
1 Yr Accidental Damage Protection

UX301LA-XH72T
Corning Gorilla Glass 3 lid
12.8" x 8.8" x 0.0" ~ 0.6"
2.6 lbs
13.3” Quad HD IPS Touchscreen Display (2560 x 1440)
Intel Core i7-4558U 2.8Ghz (Turbo 3.3GHz) Haswell
Intel® HD5100
8GB Memory
256GB SSD + 256GB SSD RAID 0
32GB ASUS WebStorage
802.11 ac
BT 4.0
1 Yr International Warranty
30-day Zero Bright Dot Guarantee
1 Yr Accidental Damage Protection

 

ASUS UX301LA models (aka Zenbook Infinity) Ultrabook
They all have the same core specs such as

Corning Gorilla Glass 3 lid
12.8" x 8.8" x 0.0" ~ 0.6"
2.6 lbs
13.3” Quad HD IPS Touchscreen Display (2560 x 1440)
Intel® CPU
Intel® Graphics
8GB Memory
2X SSD drives in RAID 0
32GB ASUS WebStorage
802.11 ac
BT 4.0
1 Yr International Warranty
30-day Zero Bright Dot Guarantee
1 Yr Accidental Damage Protection

UX301LA-DH51T
Intel® Core™ i5-4200U 1.6GHz (Turbo 2.6GHz)
Intel® HD Graphics
128GB SSD + 128GB SSD RAID 0
UX301LA-DH71T
Intel Core i7-4558U 2.8Ghz (Turbo 3.3GHz) Haswell
Intel® HD5100
128GB SSD + 128GB SSD RAID 0
UX301LA-XH72T
Intel Core i7-4558U 2.8Ghz (Turbo 3.3GHz) Haswell
Intel® HD5100
256GB SSD + 256GB SSD RAID 0

 

I saw the weight being higher here:

Asus UX301 - Notebookcheck.net External Reviews

(1.4kg = 3.09lbs)

Anyone know which is correct?

 

The DH71T weighs 3 lbs 3.4 oz (3.2125 lbs) according to my shipping scale.

 

Can you comment on heat and noise when playing games? I know that this is not for hardcore gaming, but for playing World of Warcraft, Skyrm, and others on decent settings, how hot and loud is it? Would it be a distraction if someone were watching TV in the same room? Thanks.

 

Hi all

Does anybody know the exact weight of this laptop? Some say 2.6lb some say 3.1lb. It's really confusing.

Thanks

 

Asus Zenbook "Infinity" UX301 - Test / Recension - Bärbara datorer - SweClockers.com

1426g = ~ 3.1lb

 

Glass is heavy!

 

The build quality is the same as this: Asus ZENBOOK 13.3" TouchScreen Laptop 4GB Memory 500GB Hard Drive UX302LA-BHI5T08 - Best Buy

How do you say, with a straight face, that this $999 laptop with the same Gorilla Glass and same lid as UX301 has a better build quality than Macbook Pro....Quite laughable indeed. I dislike Mac and even I can see the truth behind build quality. But, I'm sure we'll here from the Amazon review guy, who gave his 5-star review within minutes of having UX301 in-hands and how the $2200 UX301 has different Gorilla Glass and lid that's less flimsy, but yet same ingredients lol.

I'd rather have the UX31LA being shown on Best Buys Business website than the flimsy lid gimmick on UX301LA and it's little $999 brother the UX302LA. Being you can get SAME flimsy quality for a lot less just cheapens up the UX301LA.

I like the specs of the UX301LA but the build quality is a complete joke.

And, I seen the video comparing the two ultrabooks and that doesn't change the fact that it's the SAME lid any way you slice-it.

 

Not sure if this has been posted, but here is a glimps of the white one with some good internal pictures also (10 pages).
»ç¶÷³¿»õ ³ª´Â ³ëÆ®ºÏ Àü¹®À¥Áø - ³ëÆ®±â¾î

 

hey guys i plan to use this laptop as long as it will last, will the build quality affect this in a significant way?

 

How are the speakers on this laptop? I don't really expect much from an ultrabook, but after hearing the speakers on the AB9+, my expectations has gone up a bit.

 

Wow, you come off as extremely ignorant. You are entirely incorrect as well. I just got my UX201 DH71 in last night. It has a significantly more sturdy lid than the UX302 at Best Buy(which I have spent about 2 hours total on two occasions testing out in store). There is some flex still but only when you put some real pressure on it. It feels completely different than the UX302 too mostly due to the GG3 on the body. I haven't been able to run any benchmarks yet as I just installed 8.1 this morning and am still setting up the machine. I will update when I can. I will say that I instantly like this machine more in terms of screen quality, overall build quality, and design than the Ativ Book 9+ and the Vaio Pro that I have had.

 

Surprisingly good actually. I had a Sony Vaio Z (2011) before this and the sound was almost non-existent on that notebook. This one has great speakers for an ultrabook I'd say. No distortion even at higher volumes.

Can't comment on that yet, but I'll try to throw on a game or two and see how the UX301 behaves.

 

Has anyone tried to install, or at least boot, Ubuntu on this Laptop? If so, are there issues?

I intend to get one soon enough, but the ability to get a proper Windows 8.1/Ubuntu Dualboot working without major issues is very important to me.

Thanks anyone who might have feedback on that !

 

I haven't gotten my UX301 yet, but I might be able to respond to help a little:

First of all, Asus laptops *generally* fare very well with Linux. Asus kinda sits in that "second tier" of Linux laptops: not as easy as Dell (because they sell Ubuntu computers), but still definitely usable. I haven't heard anything specific about this one, but I don't see any reason to think it would be any different.

Second thing of note: I recently read a couple of great blog posts about Linux in new Windows 8 touchscreen laptops (specifically the Yoga 2 Pro - a very different computer, but a lot of the same issues - touchscreen, super-high res, etc), which I found both very promising and interesting.

Kevin's musings » Fun with touchscreens and Linux
Kevin's musings » Lenovo yoga 2 pro and Fedora review

 

I just ordered my UX301LA DH71T from Amazon 2 days ago when it was $1906 but today I see that Amazon has changed it to this:
Amazon.com: ASUS Zenbook UX301LA-DH71T 13.3-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook (Blue): Computers & Accessories

Anyone know what is going on and when I might be receiving my unit?

 

I ordered mine last week and just got a estimate arrival of 11/21-26 like 4 days later. My guess is they sold out their projected shipments, but you got yours in. Hopefully you'll get a update on estimated arrival soon

 

Can you give us your input on build quality compared to macbook air/pro?

Thanks!

 

I have worked with my ux301 for more than a month now (I have the German 8gb, i7, Iris, 256gbSSD model in blue).

its certainly the most beautiful laptop I ever had, very slim but not particularly light (feels rather heavy compared to my wifes Samsung series 9 - 2010 model, my previous laptop was a Lenovo T410s).
No complaints about built quality - seem very sturdy, robust and nothing is loose etc.
Its very quiet and fast - but I only do office applications no heavy gaming or video etc.

However: I must say it is the most unproductive working platform I had in a long time! Not sure if its Windows 8.1 or the ASUS drivers - surely the two don't work together well. I have about 10-20 freezes every day. It happens randomly (often after pressing the right mouse button), it can be triggered from Outlook, IE11, Word etc. Sometimes the freeze recovers after a few minutes but often not. No other programs usually work when one freezes (not responding). Sometimes I just copy some text from one word file to another and the computer freezes and does not recover and I am losing changes to my document! I have the latest office 356. I really cannot work like that!! Its totally unproductive. Btw, the win 8.1 scaling is less than impressive, too many programs that I worked with forever don_t work anymore (SnagIt 8, File commander etc).

For those who have the laptop already - can you share this experience or did I just get a lemon? Any ideas or recommendation how to troubleshoot? I find lots of errors in the event logs (particularly the admin events).

Also, if you want to know something about the laptop perhaps I can help and give you my impressions/infos.
Many thanks - Chris

 

When i had similar problem, it was on a acer s7, in the end it was a bad RAID 0 SSD. The SSD passed all the tests at acer services, but they can't deny the freeze is there, acer first replaced the mainboard to no avail, then replaced the SSD, problem fixed. Maybe you should contact asus.

 

Thanks for the answer.
Never had an Asus laptop before, so I didn't know, but that's encouraging. Coming from Sony, I can only hope that Linux support will be better on the UX301, that wouldn't be too hard !

One of my concerns, though, lies in the fact that Asus chose to go with a Dual-SSD Raid-0 config for the Storage. I get the feeling that it isn't gonna help me get a working dualboot on this machine...

 

You can always break the array and just switch to AHCI mode and you can do a dual boot configuration afterwards.
If you cannot get it to work then just let us know here on the forum and everyone will try to help you out later.
Be sure to make the original Recovery discs first before breaking the array.

 

There shouldn't be any hiccups running Win8.1 on your system and there are possibly some culprits that can contribute to this behavior.
What software have you loaded onto the system after you've initialized? Anti virus?
Did you alter anything, etc?

 

Turbocharged and Kevin, many thanks for your thoughts! Asus also got back to me and suggested to start from scratch - do a complete factory reset. not happy about this but after another bad day with the latop I will bite the bullet and do it over the weekend. will report back about progress.

Kevin - no special software, I have Malwarebytes and AVG Antivirus running all the time. Main software is office 356 suite, Endnote and Bluebeam pdf Revu. I deleted most Windows apps that came with 8.1. Like to have a clean, slim system. Hope to be able to fix it - my good old Lenovo T410s is out of reach currently....(sitting in Oxford, UK right now)
thanks again. btw - I really like the super silence operation, the fans never turn on and it never gets hot (at my very moderate use level).

 

Does the lid seem flimsy? I've read things that said it's not as sturdy as a macbook or even the older zenbooks. Flimsy where you can press on it and bend it.

 

Do you guys know when the UX301LA-DH71T gonna be available for Amazon??

 

the lid is just two glass plates, thin and you can bend it slightly however, this seems normal to me, no concern at all. I do not know how a macbook feels, will compare when I see one.
really, there is nothing flimsy about the lid.

 

one thing I wanted to share that I forgot to consider when I bought the laptop: it has no fingerprint scanner! I did not even think about this, thought that this was standard in professional laptops, particulalry at this price point.
I got so used to the combination of Roboform and my fingerprint scanner, now I need to type a long complicated password all the time...honestly, the absence of this feature would have been a deal breaker for me had I considered this prior to buying it.

 

Althouogh the UX301 is indeed expensive, I don't believe it's marketed as a professional laptop.

For those interested, I think the only 13-14" Haswell notebooks with fingerprint readers currently (or soon) available are:

Acer Travelmate P645
HP Zbook 14 / Elitebook 840 G1
Lenovo T440s
Lenovo X240
Toshiba Portege Z30 / Z40
Fujitsu Lifebook U904

Might be a couple new models coming out in the next few months.

 

I bought the UX301 from amazon germany about 2 weeks ago. I have since decided to return it. I've been having display scaling issues since upgrading to windows 8.1.

When i boot up the computer, the apps in modern mode look fine and tex is legible. Text and app size is set to default. But when ever i put the laptop to sleep or it goes to sleep, the display scaling changes automatically. When i log back in all the modern apps have reduced in size and the app text is barely legible. In settings the text and app size is still default-- and changing it to larger does not help.

In the standard windows mode, I set the display scaling to 175 percent, but that changed automatically to 100 percent. I have installed all possible drivers, beta, release and asus versions without any luck.

It might be that the smaller size is the default due to the high res screen, but then nobody, asus and MS support, has been able to explain the larger app size at bootup.

Maybe i just got a faulty machine. Any body experiencing similar issues ?

 

I used this laptop for a week while getting it set up for a colleague. When I was using 100% scaling, which was pushing my 20-20 vision, everything was great.

But when I tried scaling, many things start to come apart. I saw all the issues you mention intermittently, as well as countless other issues with apps that don't scale right. I'm sure there are setting tweaks and hacks. I managed to resolve some of the problems with a bit of Googling...

I'd heard 8.1 was supposed to be good with scaling, but I'm just not seeing it. It seems like more laptops are going to have to come out with high resolution displays to drive Microsoft and other companies to get this right.

I'm sure it will get better with driver support and Microsoft patches, but it's a bit of a pain right now. Personally, I think I'll still spring for the UX301LA once the i7, 512GB version is available.

The great keyboard, solid build, and excellent speakers all help push me toward this laptop. I have a 2011 Vaio Z now and it lacks in all these areas, so even with some scaling issues, I think it will still be a great upgrade for me.

 

Johnmcx, I, myself, am in the same boat. I bought the Vazio Z12 back in 2010 and now looking to upgrade. One of the great features on the Vaio Z was the comfort and travel for the keyboard. How would you compare typing on the UX301LA to the Z? Better or worse?

Thanks.

 

Personally, I'm really uncomfortable using a fingerprint as a password. If someone steals my password, I can just change it - if someone steals my fingerprint, well, I've only got 10 to last me my whole life! I would much rather use a fingerprint as a username, rather than a password.

 

Not sure about Amazon but Adorama.com is now listing both the DH71T and XH72T models.

asus ux301 : Buy or Learn at Adorama

B&H is also listing the DH71T, looks like both of these companies just got a shipment.

asus ux301| B&H Photo Video

I'm about to buy one of those but I'm having trouble deciding whether I need the extra storage capacity in the 512 model. I feel like this is a good problem to have

 

Folks,

Much to my shock and my wallet's horror, I found the DH71T at my local brick-and-mortar Microcenter tonight in Marietta, GA.

I did some quick inventory searching and it looks like they have at least one and sometimes up to 4 in stock at the local stores. You can also order online. Price is $1,999.99.

For those of you not familiar with Microcenter, it's a great chain. I've been buying from them since I first stumbled across their Philadelphia/St. Davids store in 1998.

 

Microcenter is fantastic, I'm glad to hear they're selling this laptop. I'll have to check my local store tomorrow to see if they're stocking the DH71T.

 

Better, for sure. More key travel and a much better and more solid feel IMO than the Z. I also like the touchpad better on the UX301.

 

The difference between the i7 and i5 is only $100.00?

 

One trip to Micro Center and $2500 later, I'm now typing this comment using the DH71T version of the Infinity. I'll post a full review later but for now I'll just offer some initial impressions:

-So far almost everything about this laptop screams top notch quality. Up until now, I think the nicest Ultrabook I've held in my hands was the Samsung ATIV Book 9+. However the Infinity is just as good, if not better looks and build quality wise. You really have to hold this thing in your hands to get a sense for that, videos do not do this laptop justice.

-The keyboard is ALMOST perfect however there is one annoying thing I've come across in my limited use with this laptop. The backspace key, if you tap on the leftmost edge, does not register unless you hit it really hard. This has been admittedly annoying and I'm a little disappointed in this issue after the huge price I just paid for this thing but it's by no means a deal breaker. Aside from that the keyboard maintains the same level of build quality present on the rest of this laptop.

-The Trackpad is probably one of the best I've ever used on a Windows machine, definitely comparable to the trackpad of the MacBook Pro I use for work.
-Speakers are surprisingly loud and good.
-Screens is amazing.
-Performance is fantastic so far.

That's it for now, I'll post some more detailed impressions and a review later.

 

phil917,

I updated all my software last night, upgraded to 8.1, and installed office 2013 and I've been writing year-end reviews (work stuff) all afternoon. I have hit the backspace key plenty of times and have not had the issue you're describing. You may have an unfortunate defect, hopefully one that could be easily corrected...

I agree with the rest of your assessments so far. I haven't bought a $2K laptop since near Y2K but so far I'm not regretting this purchase at all. This is my first Win8 machine, though, so there's a bit of a learning curve that otherwise wouldn't apply. Still, I'm learning my way around and picking up the navigation shortcuts well enough.

Gotta say I'm very happy overall with the keyboard. It feels very, very natural and it has just enough feedback to be really efficient.

Later this week I'll start doing to stuff that will tax the CPU... today is just light productivity work.

Regarding the display - while it's excellent, I did find I had to turn off the dynamic brightness setting. With that on,in low light conditions the display insisted on staying too dim to be comfortable given the high res and relatively inconsistent scaling. Small dim letter are hard to read... small bright letters are actually pleasant.

No atypical stutters or pausing to report.

Oh for those who want to upgrade all the software out of the gate - budget 2-3 hours for the process. You have to download something like 74 windows updates on 8.0 before you can upgrade to 8.1, which is a 3GB download in itself.

More props to Micro Center for getting these puppies in stock. Guess they're becoming more than just The place to buy BYOPC components.

 

Could any of you new owners of the i7 version answer this please?

Can you comment on heat and noise when playing games? I know that this is not for hardcore gaming, but for playing World of Warcraft, Skyrm, and others on decent settings, how hot and loud is it? Would it be a distraction if someone were watching TV in the same room? Thanks.

On another note, does anyone know if the places that stock this typically have Black Friday / cyber Monday specials? I'd hate to buy it this week and see a big sale next week!

 

I ran 3DMark earlier today just for fun and the fan was a very quiet whoosh that most certainly wouldn't be a distraction. It would probably be completely ignored.

 

Ok quick update on the backspace key not being registered issue. After seeing sjw985's reply, I decided to take off and re-seat the key. This seems to have almost completely fixed my issue. I say almost completely because I actually notice it now a very tiny little bit on the right edge of the key, but honestly it only happens if I go out of my way to reproduce the issue (i.e. delicately pressing the rightmost edge very slowly ), in normal typing the backspace key now always depresses in the manner I expect it to.

Micro Center does have a policy of letting me swap for a new replacement if there are issues with this one within the first 30 days, so I'll have to consider whether this now nearly imperceptible issue is worth getting a replacement for.

Aside from that however, this laptop continues to wow and impress although at this point I haven't done much besides browse the web and install Windows 8.1 (which makes the touchpad even better and more responsive imo). I'm curious to see how the Infinity will handle some programming and light gaming.