Asus S300CA Battery Life? (Also wait for 301? or is 300 ok? or 400?)

Hi!

I have been trying to find a bit more information on the Asus S300CA. Particularly I was looking at reviews on Best Buy, and they have been saying cons: battery life. So I was wondering what is the battery life people have been experiencing?

Also, any advice between the S300CA vs the S400CA for roughly the same price, S400 $50 more.

Would it be worth waiting for the S301? Asus Vivobook S301 review - fast and affordable 13 inch ultrabook - seems kind of high in price for the improvements from the S300.

Thanks!

 

The major pro for the S400CA is that it has a 24 GB SSD and the S300CA does not. You can I think swap the 500 GB HDD on the S300CA for an SSD but it's expensive and not easy. I don't think it's cheap or easy to swap the HDD on the S400CA either though.

The other advantage I saw was that the S400CA has 6 GB of ram and the S300CA had for 4 GB of ram so the 6 GB are useful for gaming since the graphics card is integrated BUT this is only on certain models of the S400CA, not all of them.

The two main pros of the S300CA are that it is lighter, probably has slightly better battery life though I'm unsure, and the screen resolution on both of these is around the same but the S300CA has a smaller screen size so the same resolution on it would look better than it does on the S400CA. The price difference in Canada is around $100 so unless you need the slightly better performance, I would go with the S300CA. I feel that it's the best budget 13.3" ultrabook.

 

Thanks for the response Sportfreunde! The Best Buy's S300CA is 500 at Best Buy, and then the S400CA I was looking at is at the Microsoft Store for 600, but 540 with student discount (I am not a student though, so I would call and ask if they had any HS teacher discount), and I think that one did have only 4GB.

So the price difference is around the same as Canada. I was just kind of worried about the battery life on the S300. And 4th gen models are about 200+ more. I don't know how long those would take to come down in price or go on sale.

 

I bought a s300ca recently. I was forced to buy a laptop just a school started since my probook started going haywire out of the blue. My budget was very tight and I swear by 13in laptops, so a 450$ s300 caught my eye.

Build quality , design and weight, keyboard are all very good considering the price. Puts most laptop other than a couple of lenovos and samsungs to absolute shame.

My 2 slight concerns are battery life and screen reflection. I have the p987 processor, which I believe doesnt have all the power saving modes of the i-processors , and I get around 3:30-4:30 of runtime browsing/word processing/couple of videos on battery saving mode.

Note, while the p987 is a prefectly fine processor with easily enough power for normal student/work tasks, the hhd is a slight cripple. The i-core processor have the same hhd but the added power in those processors make the hdd's shortcomings less noticeable.

The screen reflection isnt that annoying, Im just not used to it coming from a matte screen laptop.

I've order a Samsung ssd which should help in both faster reads and also around a 30min boost in battery life.

Hope that helps, good luck.

 

also, just before I bought the s300, I saw the review on the s301. apparently they cut the battery down to a 2cell 38wh battery since I geuss they are trying to counter balance the added battery life the haswell laptops will bring (for whatever reason). My guess is those laptops will be 650-699 for at least a couple months till they get a price drop.