Asus UL30JT

I've been looking at the N82 as well. I've been comparing these two machines and am coming to the conclusion that slightly larger, heavier machine is worth it since it will have the 335M, faster proc. and Optimus. I'm hoping the initial reviews for battery life are positive for this model.

I will probably be looking at this Acer as well now. That's what happens when you wait too long to get new tech to market, it can end up obsolete before it even hits the shelf.

 

acer - Intel® Core i7-620M processor = (Watt) 35

Intel® Core i5-430M/i5-520M/i5-540M processor = (Watt) 35

6-cell battery pack


asus - Intel Core i7 620UM = (Watt) 18

Intel Core i5 520UM = (Watt) 18

8-cell battery pack

Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 = (Watt) 10


asus twice the battery acer twice the performance ?

 

i seems that there will be no i7 in the ul30jt!

there was no ul30jt at cebit with this label


only this spec card:


check this gallery (UL30JT, U30JC chicklet, U30JC normal, U33JC Bamboo, PL30JT):

http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f248/ul30vt-nb-erscheinungstermin-666851-11.html#post14137726

 

Yeah, I should've also said I was looking for upper-midrange graphics cards.

The CPU isn't the only device that eats power; once you start to factor those in it isn't a factor of two anymore. Still, while ASUS' 10-hour claim seems reasonable, I'd expect 6/7 from the Acer, not 8. We'll find out once they get released and reviewed, I guess.

 

http://purplejunction.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/failurerates.png

This from a company called SquareTrade that runs failure rates every year. These results are from 2009. HP is the worst with about 25% failure rate. Asus is the best with about 15% failure rate. Acer has a failure rate of about 23% and is the third worst. I'm not saying that Asus is the end all be all, but as a student, I need a laptop with a great battery (5+ hours) and I need it to last, so I'm officially torn with all these options.

 

Thanks! Always good to back up my thinking of which laptop I'm going to buy. I'm patiently waiting to see the release date and pricing of the UL/PL30JT and then deciding between either of them and the VT.

 

Man, I believe you just found my next notebook!! really, it's almost the same weight as this UL30JT but with MUCH more powerfull components... I will just wait for a review to see if the ergonomics (temperature, trackpad, keyboard) are good for daily use and i'm ready to go...

 

People will believe anything as long as it comes in a simple bar graph. Nevermind that they never published anything about testing parameters so the numbers could be skewed. That's like saying the HP Probook 5310m sucks and has a 23% fail rate but oh wait in our "study" we never received one that was broken, those numbers are all from low end HPs that were broken. Squaretrade sells warranties, you ever think that factors in some?

 

True on what you say. However, this is not the first source I've heard about problems with HP.

 

Looks like Asus wants to sell a few more of the UL30vt which are still popular and selling well. Why start selling a new model while the existing UL30 is selling so well?

 

I did my share of research on laptops, but I am really wary about buying laptops from HP and particularly Acer. One of the reasons why HP products have such high failure rate is because it is the company that used to sell the most laptops in the market and the majority of it is low end laptops. Hence the high failure rate. I'd still trust HP's high end laptops with premium build, if the price is right.

As for Acer, to be honest I'd never buy a laptop from them because of all the horror stories I have heard. Even for upper range laptops, I get the feeling that they malfunction more than they should over time. You will find very few Acer fans compare to the rest of the brands.

Asus, on the other hand, has a very good reputation. There is a good reason why they are willing to dish out a 2 year warranty instead of the standard 1 year.

 

Don't forget that Asus also comes with one year of accidental damage protection.

 

For me and all my friends, HP notebooks have 100% failure rate. I´m not kidding.

 

I hope that doesn't occours with ACCER's

 

I second this. If you add in repeat failures (ie the laptop died again after they got it back from warranty repair), the rate jumps up to 150%.

 

Below are all laptops listed in the Mar/Apr 2010 ASUS World Magazine. Most of these laptops will be familiar to many on the forum here.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=465353

 

nice ! thanks for the link. Well at leat we know it might be for this month or April...

I noticed the Ethernet connection is only 10/100 for UL30JT ... a detail for some, but a real need for me with frequent data transfer ... If this is really the case, it would be the only bad thing about this laptop

Nothing on a UL33JT as expected on CES ... The U33JC will have less battery life... Bamboo looks cool... but I would have preferred a ULV CPU for it...

 

I see the pl30jt only has one processor option while the ul30jt has three.

 

Yeah, this is disheartening. I hope a reseller like xoticpc can take the PL30JT and allow customization.

 

I just want to know when the pj30jt or ul30jt are available, I thought some said possibly the 15th of march

 

We still don't have a confirmed release date, but it's between Now and the end of April.

 

If this is any indication, we could possibly see the UL30JT go on Amazon.com preorder on March 9 or March 10 .

 

The U30JC went on Energy Star with a market date of Jan 21st or something like that. It's yet to see light of day although available for pre-order through a couple of gray market channels.

So, yes it could be March 9th or 10th but it could also be April or even May.

 

we waited enough

March 10-15
:yes:

 

Where did you get that date from?

I'm thinking April/May

 

Seeing these pictures


http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f248/ul30vt-nb-erscheinungstermin-666851-11.html#post14137726

Its seems that the palm rest is made of plastic .


But in this (which is supposed to be the UL30JT) its brushed aluminium.



Is it just bad quality pictures/bad angles, or is it really plastic?

I just hope that Asus puts the UL30JT/PL30JT for sale here in Portugal, here we only have the UL30A (not even the VT)

 

In the description in the image it says "Smudge-proof satin-brushed aluminium LCD and palm rest" so that would mean that it's indeed aluminium.

 

a new ul30jt video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHKVTsY7ox8

go to 3:32

 

For over two months, we've been asking the exact same question. Welcome to the club

 

I know everyone's been saying that the GT 310M is a entry-level graphics card, but in case your like me and can't really picture what that would feel like. A guy with a UL30VT-A1, which has a GT 210M (Same card, shaders a little slower and less RAM) has posted some gaming videos which are pretty good. If anything the GT 310M will perform probably 2-5fps higher.

Starcraft 2 Beta: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-_DBd6Xc_M

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_rGIkHWjmw

Borderlands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpt45yKPfAU

 

I am completely confused now, some people a couple pages back said the PL30JT is the UL30JT, did they not know what they were talking about or has that been disproven?

 

it's the same but with additional business-oriented features

 

Ok, here is the underlying question that matters most - how will the UL30JT / PL30JT compare to the UL30VT-A1 in performance? Specifically, I'm referring to processor performance, as I'm not concerned about the graphics other than the fact that they will enable me to watch 1080 streaming video seamlessly.

UL30VT-A1: SU7300 - 1.3GHz --> 1.76GHz
PL30JT / UL30JT (lower end): i5-520UM - 1.06 --> 1.86
UL30JT (mid range): i7-620UM - 1.06 --> 2.13
UL30JT (top): i7-640UM - 1.2 --> 2.26

Can anyone answer how these processors would compare in performance? Is it a simple calculation of 1.86 / 1.76 = 5.6% increase, or is there more to the calculation?

I've wasted the last several months of my life researching the UL30, then the UL30VT, then the UL30JT, and now the PL30JT, and I need to make a decision. Couldn't even open I-tunes on my Inspiron 6000 yesterday...

Thank you.

 

The westmeres are definitely faster than the older gen core2s. So there is more to it than just a simple calculation as you mentioned This chart at Anandtech's gives you a little hint of the performance improvement over the previous gen http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3704&p=7 check the core2duo E8600 and i5 661 (core2 and a westmere). The entire article might be good reading if you are not familiar with the westmere architecture and the benefits it has (hyperthreading that aws introduced already with Nehalem, turbo boost, high level of integration and extremely low power leakage).
I think it is irrelevant to compare SU7300 to i7620UM/640UM, they are the most efficient mobile computing when released. They are very low energy but still pack a considerable degree of computing power. If they manage to pack the ul30jt with nVidia optimus this package will be unbeatable in terms of performance/battery life.

 

Whoa, checked wikipedia for westmere and it states that nehalem (probably westmere as well) provides a 15-20% performance inprovement clock-to-clock compared to penryn (that's core2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Westmere_(microarchitecture)#Performance_and_power_improvements

 

Which one will give the user a longer battery life? The SU7300 or the i5-520UM, i7-620um, etc? Thanks!

 

I wonder if they will make a ul30Js model. It should have a 160Gb ssd according to their naming scheme. Would be nice, even though it will bump up the price considerably and if they pack in a cheap, crappy ssd it won't be a good deal.

 

The i7 620UM/640UM/i5 520UM have all the same TDP value of 18W while the SU7300 has a TDP of 10W but we must not to forget that the newer processors pack memory controller, pcie controller and most importantly the IGP on die with the CPU. I read somewhere that someone had calculated that the power consumption of the SU7300+chipset+IGP was something like 23W and the i7 620UM etc. had 21W so it should consume less energy. On the other hand the ul30jt has discrete graphics but so does the ul30vt...and the jt has nVidia optimus (just checked it, they announced it somewhere..) which means that it'll be very efficient graphics wise. The jt has also slightly larger battery (vt has 5600mAh, jt has 5800mAh) so I could say that the battery should last as long as the vt's or even longer (about 9-10h of light browsing according to some reviews).

 

Well, if the published numbers are an indication the battery lives for the new models are definitely less. Published 10hrs vs 12hrs. As Tom's Hardware noted in their tests the new chips are quite power efficient but they are considerably more powerful than the last generation and that will take up some battery life. Also Optimus is really a convenience feature when comparing to a hard switch that completely switches off the graphics card. At best it will give same battery life as the physical switch and in most cases it will be marginally less battery life because the computer is switching back and forth (rather than being forced to run without the GPU for the entire time if there was a physical switch).

Obviously, 10 hrs is still a lot of battery life.

 

Very interesting ! Good to know

 

I haven't been fortunate enough to come across this information, thank you for telling me this! I agree, 10hrs is a lot.
I agree on the super energy saving occasions but Optimus might be more efficient in involving hw acceleration for optimal user experiance (read: gaming) compared to previous technologies in graphics switching. It will shut down the discrete gpu even when running a 3d program, if the extra power is not needed (for example menus in a 3d game). With no real third party reviews or tests it is very difficult to say anything more about Optimus' energy efficiency.
I am pretty sure that there is a way to force the optimus use only IGP when the user wants the ultimate battery life.

 

Thanks to hardware assisted HD decoding, any processor, even an Atom, paired with a modern graphics card from either AMD or Nvidia can decode h.264 1080p video flawlessly.

 

These new Acers were discussed here a few pages back.
A quick update...

"Acer Will Launch Calpella Platform Notebooks At The End Of March 2010, Says CEO
DIGITIMES [Friday 5 March 2010] Linky
3820T Specs at Acer

 

At least that's less nebulous than the dates we had before.

Still, what's the price?!

 

Well, Lenovo's Y460 is $1200 for the HD 5650 model, so I would expect the Acer at $1000 or so.

 

I hope your right but i'll be that the I7-620M/HD 5650 will be more. $1,400?

 

I would expect a basic Core i3/HD 5470 model at $800 or less.
Hopefully, there ought to be a Core i5/HD 5650 model around $1000.
For a model with the i7-620M, you might be looking at closer to $1200, but I wouldn't bother.

 

How come? Not worth the +$200?

 

Well, all the i7-620M has going for it over the i5-520M is ~15% faster clock speed. Wikipedia states $225 for the 520M and $332 for the 620M, but I would expect additional manufacturer markup on higher-end CPUs.

The upgrade might be worth it to some people, but not me.

 

Acer 3820TG or Asus UL30JT?