ASUS Zenbook UX303 (Nvidia GT 840M)

Depite what Cyberport.de or Amazon.de state, today I stumbled upon 2 different versions of the UX303LA (the 5094H for 699 euros and the 5098H for 1099 euros) in MediaMarkt Freiburg. They seemed ok, no significant keyboard flex but the HD+ 1600x900 matt screen is a little meh to be honest.

 

Its a problem with the technology used in the screen, not a defect, so an RMA won't fix the issue. It can be helped significantly with a firmware update, which my correspondent said would be coming out around December.

 

I have read way too many horror stories about sending laptops to Asus, so much that I would never even consider doing it unless it was a last resort. If you have a backup laptop go for it, but if it's your primary, be prepared to be without it for a month or two. You might fare better than the people writing complaints - just thought I'd warn you.

On top of that, I really doubt Asus will even be able to fix it unless they realize its a problem with the technology itself and starts working on a bios fix like Lenovo did. Sending your unit may trigger them to do that or they might just replace your screen with a new one and send it back to you the same as it was before. Who knows

 

From what I have read about the Lenovo firmware fix, all they did was change the power management to give a higher power input. It apparently kills battery life. You guys with the LN screen might want to try running with the AC adapter plugged in and see if the crappy yellow gets any better.

Good luck, Jim

 

The second fan on the LN model if for cooling the dedicated graphics chip. The LA does not have dedicated graphics, so there is only one fan, which is all it needs.

 

Has anyone else tried Windows 10 Tech Preview on their LN?

I have an issue with the NVIDIA drivers (v340 and v344).

As soon as the driver is installed I get hangs and stutters in the GUI. Everything locks up for half a second or so when certain apps are loaded for the first time.

As soon as I remove the driver everything is smooth again.

Anyone else experience the issue?

 

It occurred to me that the UX303 doesn't appear, from the pictures I've seen, to have any markings on the keyboard letter keys for a number pad, activated by the Fn key. Most of the laptops I've used in the past had this functionality, so I'd not thought to check before now. Can anyone confirm that this is the case, and that none of the keys can function as a number pad on the UX303? I rarely use a number pad, but it's sometimes nice to have for inputting special characters with Alt codes, as the number row keys don't seem to work for this.

 

Plugging in and going full bright won't help us =( It would brighten the yellow, but also brighten the white just as much, leaving the relative darkness of yellow the same.

Im guessing lenovos fix was to dim the extra white sub pixel, then boost the back-light when in full power mode. This would brighten up the colors, providing a fix for the yellows, but it would lower your battery life (and maybe even bring down the screens max brightness a little)

 

So just an FYI to anyone that picks up the US LA with a 128 GB SSD. Out of the box I had 69 GB free. After merging all partitions, doing a clean install of Windows 8.1, and installing the essentials (no major programs/games yet just drivers and the such) I have 95 GB free. So if you have no need for their backup utility and other junk, you can get an extra 26 GB,which is a big difference to me.

 

Nope, no numbers on the letter keys.

Jim

 

Thanks guys for your feedback ... I will certainly wait for a firmware update and will forget about RMA !! Lets hope it comes out soon.

 

Sure it was hd+ not 1080? What didn't you like about it? The UX32 supposedly had a great matte screen which is why I'm holding out to buy the German ux303ln

 

It took me about a day or two to get used to this thing but I am loving it. Great keyboard, great track pad (probably obvious, but installing the drivers is a MUST). Can run low end games at medium to keep me entertained when need be but is primarily a work horse. So glad I went with this model. I would have preferred a matte screen but not being grainy is a plus and it looks great regardless. This thing is just insanely fast, the sound is great, and it's really light. I really can't sing its praises enough and I'm really glad I didn't go with something larger.

The machine defaults to 150% DPI scaling out of the box which seemed a bit too big. 125% seems to be the sweet spot for me, gives some nice screen real estate without being too small (but it is a little on the small side at that point). And nothing I have seems to scale poorly. One happy camper here despite how terrible ASUS is about actually getting product out and communicating with their customers. I didn't get it in time for my trip, but that was my fault, the laptop was available I was just shopping around. I have another trip coming up in a few weeks here and I'm looking forward to having this beast with me. I don't think I've heard the laptop make a single sound, it's dead quiet, at least for normal usage (streaming music, doing work, web browsing, etc.)

Well that's the little mini-review I promised. I'll still be hanging around seeing what people say and will post if I have any issues I can't figure out.

 

What configuration did you get?

 

My impressions match yours. I think this is probably the best laptop I have ever owned.

Jim

 

Same here also.

 

where did you guys bought those laptops?
what countries?

 

Just a FYI for people thinking of trying the Windows 10 TP on their LN - I could not get any NVIDIA drivers to play properly.

The drivers would cause stuttering and pauses when opening apps, I didn't even get as far as gaming.

I've now gone back to Win 8.1.

 

I got the US LA. It's an i5 with 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD.

 

This is my first laptop and I was having Wi-Fi issues. I think it's because when on battery it was set to medium power saving. I've set it to low power saving, and if that doesn't work I'll just set it to maximum performance. But so far it seems to have resolved the issue.

 

Yeah, I got mine at US Amazon. I upgraded the SSD to a 250 GB Samsung EVO 840. I took mine to an Asus repair/warranty center about 25 miles away for the SSD swap. I did the clone operation prior to the swap and I moved the Recovery partition to the end of the free space and then expanded C partition to use the free space after the swap. I used the Asus shop to swap the SSDs to make sure there were no warranty issues.

Jim

 

I always run wifi at maximum performance. I haven't had any wifi issues. I get the same performance as my wired desktop. Battery life is pretty good. I get 7 to 7 1/2 hours on a modified Balanced Power Plan. My use profile is light to moderate use, no heavy gaming or video editing. Mostly light games such as Angry Birds and Spider Solitaire, Email, Web, etc.

Jim

 

1. Since I'm new to laptops I'd love to hear what you tweaked in regards to the power settings. I currently run on the default balanced and the only thing I've done is bump WiFi up and turned off adaptive brightness.

2. I plan on gaming occasionally when it's plugged in. Should I leave it on balanced or set to maximum performance? How can I be sure I don't overheat or over tax the machine? I've only used desktops with dedicated cards in the past, never on board. I plan on keeping the graphics on medium and playing with the resolution.

 

Hi everyone

I'm looking into buying this laptop but I'm concerned about this yellow colouring issue. I'm a bit confused with all the different models and everything. From searching this thread it sounds like the QHD touch has a problem but the FHD non-touch doesn't have the problem?

The one I'm looking at says it is "13.3" Ultra Slim LED FHD Touch Display". Will it have the colour issue because it is touch screen? ( Buy ASUS 13.3" UX303LN-C4147H W8.1 Ultrabook | Read Reviews | Dick Smith Online Shopping)

Also, how many hours of battery life do you generally get in real world use?

 

I will try to upload my Power Plan settings in the near future.

If I was gaming on anything "intense" I would use Maximum Performance.

If the internals are getting hot, the fan will kick in and go to max speed if the temps don't come down. I don't think you will over tax it if you back off when the fan noise becomes noticeable. On light to moderate performance, I never notice the fan.

Jim

 

Only the QHD+ screen has the yellow issue, not the FHD.

Roughly 6 hours.

 

The only screen with yellow color issues is the 1800p screen (QHD+). Touch screen has nothing to do with the yellow color problem. It is a design problem with the 3200x1800 resolution screen.

Battery life will depend on what your "real world" is. Mine is very light games such a Angry Birds, Mine Sweeper, Spider Solitaire, etc. and Email, Web, Updates, Upgrades, etc. I get 7 to 7 1/2 hours of battery life.

Congratulations on your choice, the C4147H is the only other UX303 that I would consider.

Good luck, Jim

 

Thanks very much for the help iaTa and hawkeye62 That's my mind made up then, this laptop sounds great!

 

I tried to attach a pdf file with my Power Plan info. Don't know if it worked. If not, I will try again.

Jim

 

New printer. Here is a better view.

Jim

 

Strangely I'm still having issues with WiFi connectivity on my laptop that other devices aren't, even when set to maximum performance and near my router. Could definitely be a configuration issue on my router, it works well most of the time but occasionally drops, sometimes instantly reconnecting, sometimes refusing to reconnect. The Windows troubleshooter actually resolved the issue apparently rebooting the network card or something.

 

Intel PROSet/Wireless WiFi Software Version 17.12.0.5 WHQL

Try the latest Intel driver, might help.

 

Thanks iaTa, looks like I was indeed missing that or out-of-date. Hopefully that does it!

 

I ended up buying the laptop! I'm so happy with it and I'm glad I chose this instead of my other choice. So thanks for the help

My only complaint/issue is that the battery indicator is a little crazy. It's been fully charged since I got the laptop and now that I've unplugged it the hours remaining indicator is jumping all over the place. In the last hour it's jumped up and down from 2 hours, 6 hours, 10 hours, 7 hours, 9 hours, etc. and none of it seems accurate (e.g. it says 3hours 06minutes and after 15 minutes it still says the same). And it still hasn't stabilised to one time frame, it continuously changes.

Is there a reason for this and can I fix it? I know I can use the battery % indicator but I like to have an approximate time frame to plan around.

 

Try letting the battery run down to 5%, then charge to 100%, then back down to 5% a couple of times. If it doesn't stabilize, contact Asus Tech Support or exchange it.

Good luck, Jim

 

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the estimated time left is done by Windows and it being horribly inaccurate is common. Isn't it basically saying "if I was doing exactly what I'm doing now, your laptop would last X more hours", but the problem is when it's doing nothing, that number is huge, but when you're actually performing tasks it drops quite a bit, so you'll see it vary based on what you're doing.

 

Yes, but not to the extremes that Sammii describes.

Jim

 

Ah, I see! Thanks I'll give the battery drain+recharge a try. Hopefully it'll stabilise because I do love everything else about this laptop.

 

Interesting, mine has the same issue.

 

My last laptop had fairly accurate hour estimates - yes they changed when I go from intensive to non-intensive tasks and vice versa but I can usually guesstimate whether I can leave the house without a charger.

My problem with this new one is that I am leaving it on my desk and literally not using it at all (so it's only running background tasks) and the jumps are huge. It has gone from 2 hours to 9 hours then 10 hours and back down to 4 hours and up to 6 hours in the last 20 minutes or so that I've checked. I would expect it to be quite stable when I'm not doing anything on it.

Is yours a bit crazy as well ShadowXOR?

 

Well I have had a similar bettery "behavior" with every Windows Laptop....
If I dont do anything for abour 3,4 minutes it increases to 6,7,8 hours... then if you do something power consuming for another 3,4 minutes it changes to 2 hours... as I know Windows is acting here like the "actual fuel consumption" in a car via the boardcomputer... also there if I drive 5 KM hill upwards it goeas down to only xy km until empty...when I then drive downwards another 5 km it changes immediately by some 100KMs more to go.... So to me this sounds normal... (If ist not changing every few seconds - my experience is that ist only some minutes Windows is remeassuring...

Sent from my UX302LG using Tapatalk

 

Mine is similar but the PC does stuff in the background from time to time. This is my first laptop so I don't have a lot of experience with them, but my wife says hers does similar things and she has a totally different laptop.

 

So since I'm new to laptops does anyone have a good recommendation regarding gaming? I was planning on getting a dock so that I only had to connect my laptop to the dock and the power cable rather than two monitors, mouse, keyboard, and power cable. But doing research it looks like gaming doesn't work through docks, so the dock would only work for general usage. I don't game a ton but find it irritating I would have to unplug everything from the dock and plug it directly into my computer to get it to work when I want to game. Any easy way to handle this?

A wireless mouse and keyboard that automatically connect would help, but as far as I can tell wireless mechanical keyboards are borderline non-existent (can they be left on or did they need to be manually turned off every time).

 

There are a couple of battery utilities that you guys might want to check out.

BatteryInfoView and BatteryBar.

Both give a lot of battery information. BatteryBar is my favorite. It has an icon on the system bar and on the upgrade version, current power consumption in watts can be displayed in the icon.

Good luck, Jim

 

I used to use a laptop on a desk with dual monitors. Unless it's built for real docks(which a zenbook is not), it will always be a little tedious. That said, the best solution I had was to hook all my usb stuff to a single usb hub. Then you just put your laptop in its spot and plug in power, 2x display and usb. Asus was nice enough to put it all on one side, so the wires can be tidied up. It only takes a few seconds one you're used to it.

If you're really picky and have the patience and ability, you could make a bracket that holds all those wires to plug in at once. You'd probably need access to a 3d printer to work it all out though.

I assume the docks you were looking into involved displaylink? I've never used one but they might be ok for your needs. I assume they might not get 60 Hz over usb, but the zenbook isn't going to get that high of frame rates on that many titles anyways.

 

That's exactly how you stress your battery to reduce its lifespan

 

It's also how you calibrate a battery.

 

about:blank

 

I doubt touch consumes much more if any more power. I think it's neat to have but don't use it. I'd be more concerned with resolution and whether you prefer matte or glossy.

 

I've disabled the touch facility via device manager.

I kept touching the screen accidentally whilst typing.