ASUS Zenbook UX303 (Nvidia GT 840M)

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From my own experience with my first laptop WITH touch I can tell you that you will use this feature the first weeks.. But then you will realize that it's much easier to control your device with a mice or the touchpad and that you have to clean your screen every time you have used the touch feature..
I read an article some days ago which said that at the end of 2014 the most of the touch screen laptops will vanish from the market because no one wants them.. And windows 10 will support the mice and touchpad more then windows 8.1 again
My next laptop will definitely not have a touch screen but a matte one! You cant read anything on that glossy things when the sun is shining..

 

Yes they indeed had the HD+ resolution, but the 2 models on display were the "small" ones with i5 processors (303 LA). I havent seen the LN variety yet, but specs wise the should have the FHD resolution. One other thing that I didnt quite like was the bezel on the LA which is silver and not black, and that messes with my eyes a bit

 

HI all,

Thinking of buying the following unit:

Asus UX303LN-R4116H Brown Intel Core i7-4510U/8GB DDR3/500GB+8GB SSD/13.3" FHD/GeForce GT840M/Win 8.1

It seems a good price compared to the other ones here:

Laptops, Notebooks, Cheap Laptops, Acer Notebooks, Dell Laptops, Laptop Thailand, HP Laptop, Notebook Computers, 13.1" - 13.4", Intel Core i7 Thailand - invadeIT

Is there any known issue with this selected model that I should be aware of? Any other better buy?

Cheers,

R

 

Hi guys, has anyone bought this ux303ln laptop in EUROPE?
if yes, what country model and price please.

im going mad with this.
Im looking for a 13 - 14 inch laptop, with discrete graphics card, i7, touch screen, light and slim.
(light and slim is relative, but the lighter and slimer the better)

this ux303ln is my first option, but I can't find it anywhere (uk, portugal, germany). everywhere they say "out of stock - no delivery date".

So im starting to moove to different models. the lenovo u430 seems prety good as well. even today i just went to a store to see it and it looks very good and very solid.... so solid that it is a bit more heavy than I first thought...
do you guys recomend any other laptop with the similar specs?

 

I agree with you there. I've used a touchscreen for the past year and I used it less and less each month. I just bought a new laptop without touch and am perfectly fine with it. The only laptops I appreciate touch with are cheap 11" and under, simply because I can use it in the garage when I'm getting my hands dirty.

 

man, that was so cheap. i hope i can get that one too in my country(indonesia) the asus store at my region still didnt sell it until now.

theres no issue with FULL HD model. everything is okay. but dont get that QHD panel. it has some yellow issues display.

 

I ordered UX303LN-R4142H at cyberport.de and next day, i saw same the model on notebooklieferant.com (price listing geizhals.de). ordered from there as fast as i can. a day later, geizhals.de removed it again (don't know why). so it's not available anymore. my zenbook is on the way to me! cyberport set the delivery time on 10.10.2014, so i canceled my ordering there.

 

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I believe Intel now requires a touch screen to be classified as an Ultrabook. It's stupid I know. Not sure how strict they are or if they only have to offer a touchscreen model or what.

 

So, again.
Had anyone ordered and actually bought (has the laptop right now!) From anywhere within Europe?. I know there are some places with pre order available but quirky a concrete delivery date... Usually they change those dates after few weeks...
Anyway, just ordered the Lenovo u430 touch.

 

It's how you calibrate a battery and then needlessly stress it several more times, if that sounds better to ya

 

8GB model is currently ready for shipping at computeruniverse.net (EU) but I'm still waiting for the 12GB model. If anyone orders from them, let me know!

 

Still no deliveries in Germany. I cancelled my order yesterday and ordered an UX32LN, which comes very close to the UX303LN. It's 50€ more expensive (1149€ , but well, i don't wanna wait until next year.
I hope this will be delivered, shop says it's in stock.

 

What do you guys say to this alternative?
https://www.cyberport.de/acer-aspir...ull-hd-gtx850m-windows-8-1-1C26-94H_1695.html

Have to buy new ram (12 GB and 1600 one) but its 200 € cheaper.. And a GTX850 And the Best: Its available!

 

The hardware doesn't read too bad. But you have to consider that it's an ACER, which does not really have a good reputation concerning quality. Maybe that's just me, but my coworkers and people i studied with would confirm that.
Additional it's a 15" and 2kg book, maybe exactly what you want, for me it would not fit the requirements for my ultrabook (which the UX303LN fits.)
As I posted before, I found my alternative in the UX32LN, even though it's 50 € more, basically same hardware, and ( at least the shop says ) it's available, too I can surely tell you on friday if that shop is trusty if my UX32LN is delivered and you consider the UX32 to be an alternative for you

 

Acer has premium models too you know, the Acer s3 392g has a better screen and better cooling than this Asus. But the v5 is not a premium model, it's quite cheaply built with bad cooling and creaking parts.

 

Has anyone tried the BIOS 204 update? I was just curious, while browsing the ASUS UX303LN page.. Also NVIDIA has a new Reference Driver, which I just installed. 344.11 (9.18.2014).

Notebooks & Ultrabooks - UX303LN - ASUS

NVIDIA DRIVERS GeForce 344.11 Driver WHQL

 

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Which shop has the UX32LN on stock?

 

Jep! Also the Netherlands.

You got the 128gb LN for 1099 euro?

 

Since these batteries will likely still have 80% capacity left after 500 charge/discharge cycles, I can see why you would worry about 2 or 3 extra cycles.

Jim

 

Yeah I'm running the latest 204 BIOS. Installed and running fine.

 

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Yeah but in terms of service I'd go for Coolblue in a heartbeat mind checking out the battery life and temperature for me? They're my main concerns.

I'm also Belgian btw, from Ghent

 

Unlikely to be full or close to full depth of discharge for those stats. Do a full discharge just once a day for a month and I bet you'll be down below 80% already.

Good luck

 

The UX303LN has two ram blocks, one is soldered on the board, the other one is replaceable. Max ram is 12 GB. And these info are not new, have a look here:
Asus Zenbook UX303LN / UX303 review - faster than ever

 

Wow, I can't believe I just waded through 108 pages of this forum reading about this laptop. Why we can't have a whole forum with individual threads for each subject is beyond me. It'd sure cut down on the amount of repeat questions.

Anyway, I wanted to chime in here, because I've been a proud owner of a UX303LN in the USA for over a month now. I pre-ordered on Amazon on July 3 as soon as I saw it up on the site and after a number of "estimated delivery" changes, I ended up getting it on September 3rd. It cost me $1,168.91. This computer was to replace my almost two year old ASUS UX32VD, which is still running extremely well and my wife is very happy with the hand-me-down.

The computer's use is that of my daily personal driver -- as I use other machines for business purposes. I needed a system that could run Adobe applications, Eclipse IDE, the Android emulator and to do some light gaming. I had to go with the LN/i7 model of the UX303 because of the graphics card and the processor. The games I usually play are often a few or more years old, as if I haven't played them they're new to me.. and they're often really cheap on Steam.

At first I was excited for the 3200x1800 touch screen, but quickly that became, what I'd say, the only downfall of the system. First of all, I now know that touch in this situation is not much more than a novelty. It's much easier to use the touchpad to move the mouse cursor than it is to pick your hands up and touch the screen. Also, although the hinges of the LCD are fine, I can't help but think about the stress constant touching will put on them. If it were a convertible, it might be fine, but I find that I move things around sweeping dust or cat hair off the screen by accident more than I actually want to use it. So, I'm over the touch option.

Second is the yellows. Yes, they're not good. I knew this going in, I had spent a lot of time reading the reviews out there and knew it was coming. For the first few days it bothered me to no end.. but after a while I got over it. I'm hoping that they put out a fix at some point, but it really isn't a deal breaker for me. I work in Lightroom quite a bit and even after adjusting photos with the off-colored yellow, they look good on a correctly calibrated screen. I emailed an ASUS rep who commented on a review on Amazon ([email protected]) regarding it and got this in response:

I think I read somewhere on here that someone got an ETA of December for a fix. We'll see.

The final piece of the screen is the HiDPI resolution. As stated before, Windows scaling is half-baked and works OK at best only a portion of the time. Changing the scaling mode to higher than 100% (which is too small on a 13" screen, by far) helps a bit, but often things are scaled oddly and look weird. Then there are programs which ignore the scaling all together -- and I use a few of them. The Adobe apps I'm using are still CS6 which I bought three or so years ago, as I haven't decided to spend $50/month for the new versions, and they don't scale at all. Same thing with the Eclipse IDE for Java/Android development. All the icons are tiny on the screen and unusable. This was almost a deal breaker, but then I decided to try a non-optimal resolution. I'm currently running at 2048x1152 and the fact that it's non-optimal is pretty much unnoticeable to me. 1920x1080 also looks alright, but I do like things as small as I can get them and still see them. So problem solved.

Other than that, this machine has been absolutely wonderful and I'm very happy I've bought it. I have no problems running my games (Skyrim, Fallout, Torchlight II etc.) and I find that this machine gets a lot less hot while playing than the UX32VD ever did -- even at full HD resolution. The touchpad is responsive and works well. I rarely, if ever, use the physical clicks and instead just tap and it works great. Sound is decent. Keyboard has no bend for me for normal typing, and I can really hammer on it when I get going (like writing this post...).

A few things I wanted to mention because I didn't see them here:

ASUS Backtracker -- ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- -- this utility allows you to put the entire recovery partition on a bootable USB drive. You can then wipe it out and recover the space on your SSD.

Windows 8.1 Pro -- I tried to load my machine with a MSDN license of Windows 8.1 Pro I had. It loaded just fine, but when I looked afterwards I still just just plain old 8.1 basic, as it took the license that was in the UEFI BIOS. I had to add a file to the windows USB install media with my Pro key to make it install correctly. Unfortunately, I can't find the website with the instructions on how to do this and that USB drive it at home. If anyone is interested what file I added, I can post it later.

Overall, this was exactly the computer I was looking for for my needs. Small, light and portable. Decent processor and speed and a dedicated graphics card.

If anyone has any specific questions, let me know and I'd be happy to answer. I'm well versed in this and many other machines.

 

MakisupaVT nice review! One question, how is Asus Backtracker different from Windows "Create a USB Recovery Drive"?

Jim

 

ASUS Backtracker takes the ASUS provided recover partition and all the drivers and configuration with it. If you use Backtracker to back everything up, then wipe your machine to load anything else you want (including blowing away recovery partitions, etc), when you restore using the Backtracker USB it returns the system to an ASUS provided out-of-box setup. This would work the same way if you were to swap a new drive in. Run the Backtracker restore on the drive and it's like ASUS gave it to you that way.

To be honest, I doubt I'll ever use it unless I have actual problems with the machine. I just know that if I were to need to send my machine in, I'd want to send it back to them completely factory restored.

 

I think you'd see a lot less responses and support if there were individual threads for each issue. It's easier to follow one thread for one device over hundreds of threads for one device. I personally don't ever look through sub threads until someone points it out in the main thread.

 

The Windows "Create a Boot USB Recovery Drive" does the exact same thing. I doubt if I will ever use the feature unless I decide to sell my UX303LA. And I use Macrium Reflect to make backup images and store them on an external HDD. And Macrium has a "Rescue" CD that can be used to boot Macrium and restore any of the backup images.

Regards, Jim

 

Good to know, thank you!

 

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So, I was pretty active in this thread when the UX303LN was announced, was very excited about the specs--for the 1920x1080 model. And was then incredibly disappointed when ASUS didn't bring that model to the US. And then the yellow issue was still a problem in production units, and the WiFi issue, and potentially some keyboard flex and battery life concern, etc. So I ended up avoiding this machine. If anyone else is in that same boat (I remember ShadowXOR was pretty interested in the 1080p version too), Lenovo's announced the Thinkpad Yoga 14. Optional GeForce 840M, i5, 4.1 lbs. Not quite as sleek, and just under a pound heavier, but it's coming with the appropriate 1920x1080 resolution, and I'm hoping some of that extra weight is from a heftier battery. And despite all the Lenovo issues I'd say Thinkpad is still a pretty respectable pedigree, so hopefully no release shenanigans like with ASUS. Supposed to be out the end of this month. Hopefully this is a treat, not a(nother) trick.

 

Where did you find the 32?!

 

I ordered it at Amazon (Germany), but no shipping date announced yet.
Does anyone have more information for European release?

cyberport.net listed it at Oct 9th, but they removed the date again...
computeruniverse.net says 1-2 weeks, but who knows if they really have it by then?
K&M won't get it at all (at least not the shop in my neighborhood where I asked)
Saturn/Mediamarkt have no information about LN model, just LA

Hope to get it soon

 

In a sneaky little linux online shop. I just checked the store for the direct link, but it looks like i got one of the last, since it's not listed any more.

 

Backtracker allows you to access the recovery partition on the hard-drive, but it doesn't backup it on the usb-stick. It's not possible to move your system to a new hard-drive nor you can recover your system if the hard-disc is broken or if the recovery-partition is defect or removed. If you really want to be on the safe side, make an image of the hd with another tool.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support-

 

I disagree with this, for a few reasons:

1) I have used it in the way that I have mentioned.
2) In the link you have provided it says:

 

ComputerUniverse had for a few hours two days ago one unit listed as available. I called them and asked if that's a mistake and why it's just one unit. He just checked the system and said it's really just one unit, if I want to order it I should use the express delivery service because the regular delivery service is on delay. As I never used computeruniverse and so I decided the whole situation is unsafe and very likely a mistake, before I have the trouble because they can't deliver or I get a wrong unit it's maybe better to wait and get it from another shop, especially after someone here in the forum asked Asus Germany for a release date and the answer was November.

Btw, Mediamarkt had yesterday(?) the LA on sale for 1100€ in his prospect. I really hope Asus don't get the idea to raise the prices because of the weak euro, because then I will get really mad after waiting so long.

 

And you're right. Sorry, it seems I mixed that up with another tool Asus had before. I just read under limitation that the recovery partition must be functional and tought it was that tool that just backuped the drivers. My mistake, sorry.

So, good news Asus now have also a tool that allows to hopefully migrate the system to a new ssd.

 

Yeah because of stuff like that I like to get it directly in a shop or a trusted onlineshop (e.g Amazon). I have a K&M Elektronik in my neighborhood, and they have Zenbook ads everywhere ("Trusted ASUS Store"), but they won't get the 303LN. I haven't heard about the November release, but at least then I don't have to check back every day

 

There you go ;-)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/746873-asus-zenbook-ux303-nvidia-gt-840m-74.html#post9766594

I really hope Asus Germany said that to be safe and maybe will release it earlier, that's why I regulary check for the 303LN on idealo.de. But to be honest, I don't believe it.

Fun fact: Asus anounced to release a ZenWatch. There will be only 300 watches and delivery is very limited. What a surprise...

 

But didn't they answer previous mails asking about the delivery status months ago with the same answer/s ( "end of august/end of september/mid octobre/ ... ) ?
I won't really rely on this informations.. :/

 

I was definitely interested in it but opted to save money and get the UX303LA, I have no regrets as it's a fantastic machine. I looked at Lenovo's for a while and checked some out in stores but their quality seemed really low and isn't on par with the UX303 line. I wanted something that looked/felt nice with a solid keyboard/track pad and I wasn't feeling the Lenovo. Good to see there is some competition in the space though, I would have liked an 840M but using the integrated video I'll save battery and heat. I decided to mostly forgo gaming on my laptop for a better experience/cheaper entry and am using it mostly for work. Thanks for the info though, and if you get it I would be curious to hear how it goes. Though to warn you Lenovo delayed one of their very hyped machines silently for months, very similar to ASUS. So your mileage may vary.

 

Hi. I don't know if this is already answered but searc doesn't work on my phone. I have ordered a ux303ln from france with an azerty keyboard. Is it possible to just rip out the keys and swap them around so I get qwerty or qwertz and than just change the setting in windows? If not is there a place to buy a replacement keyboard for less than 97euros which I found? Thank you in advance. I'm looking forward to the laptop will post impressions once it arrives.

 

arg bloodsplash, you lucky duck. I'd get a ux32ln hands down if i could find one. really want a matte screen so i can use it outdoors

 

I don't trust Asus, but my problem is that I can't find something else that fits all my needs such as the Zenbooks do. As long as I can't find something else or my current notebook breaks my only option is to hope and wait. As the UX305 is in the pipe and projected to be released in 2014* November would be the last chance to see the UX303LN at all. If there is no release in November, I'm pretty sure they will quickly abandon the UX303LN like they did with the UX32LN.

* Asus Zenbook UX305: Das flachste Ultrabook mit QHD-Display - Golem.de

 

@rfii: Can feel you, I was so happy to finally get one of the "good" zenbooks with matte, full hd and the dedicated graphics.
So i hope for you guys, the UX303 will be there soon. Had the exact same problem, that these two zenbooks where the only ultrabooks that fit my needs.
Maybe you watch out for some professional, but small stores, especially those who are not listed on idealo.de or geizhals.at/de, because I think that's the only possibility to find one.

@Portable System:
Yea, that was the reason for me to hit on the 32 which has the same problem. Maybe take a look at the Toshiba Satellite z30 ( -A177 I think). I had this on my list, too, but just didn't buy it since i've read it has bad linux support.