Asus UL30JT

Now that a couple of people have the actual item can they answer my battery concerns?

What configuration you have?
What battery life do you get with surfing and wireless on?
What battery life do you get with video watching (wireless not on)?

If the i3/5/7 platform definitely doesn't get more battery life I can save myself a lot of money and go for the UL30A

 

word Quatro. backlit keyboards are super classy especially on MBP's. Why can't asus at least have an option alongside integraded bluetooth!! and no i don't want to use a dongle!

 

exactly my thoughts.
btw does UL30JT does not have BT??

 

Not in the US-version of the UL30Jt. No BT.

 

asus and acers handling of laptop releases is extremely confusing.

 

That may have to do with large-number availablity of processors or other parts. That is probably out of their hands as their supplier may give THEM a date that doesn't work out and so their deadlines get pushed back as well.

 

it's not gonna get more battery life, it will get more speed

 

Anecdotal stories are all over the place. I'm waiting for a methodical test of battery life on the JT so I can compare it with the VT, the JC and the Acer TimelineX.

AnandTech did a nice comparison benchmark that pegged the UL30JC and the UL33JC battery life at 7:40-7:55 while "heavy flash web surfing", about the same as the Acer 1810T (the UL50VF managed to last an hour longer).

Unfortunately, still no review of the UL30JT.

 

Since this thread seems to have stalled due to no UL30Jt available on the US or Canadian market yet (it was originally seen at the CES in Jan and predicted to arrive to market by Feb 2010), I post, once again, a short poem I composed 6 weeks ago.

So, for the entertainment of those who are sick of waiting and are looking elsewhere...


An Ode To ASUS

You're losing your customers,
ASUS, my dear!
They've waited and waited
For some news to hear!

Yet you've kept your silence.
No progress we see.
So when will you sell
The 30 JT?

It's out in Taiwan.
For sale in some places
But in the US,
Better systems it faces.

No USB3!
No eSATA port!
And the battery life
Has less to report!

For 200 more
Than the UL VT
More power and options
We expected to see.

But it's just a retread
Of the same old model!
And then you're so late.
You just shuffle and dawdle!

And anyway, why
Should you sell it here now?
There's many more options
And models to wow.

Gone are your customers.
Stolen your thunder.
You're late to the market.
You've made a big blunder.

Your coffers are smaller
Less money you'll make!
If you check the boards,
You'll see what's at stake!

They're moving to Acer
Or Sony's light Z!
They're buying the Mac
And the Envy HP!

They're buying from whom-
Ever offers them more,
And brings it to market
Or sells in the store.

They're buying from those
Who give more than an ad.
Who'll do what they promise
Like the Apple iPad!

Don't rest on your laurels!
Don't think that you're done,
Or you'll lose more buyers.
To others, they'll run.

They'll run to the Envy!
They'll run to the Z!
They'll run to the
38 20 TG!

.... except now some are saying the Envy 14 has problems.

ASUS ... you have been forewarned.

BTW, this is what happens to your brain when you raise your kids on Dr Seuss.

 

The Asus UL30JT and UL80JT have been available on Amazon for a few days already. Prices are $849 and $872, respectively.

 

GenTechPC has it for $819, but I'm not sure if they have it in stock.

 

What about the PL30jt?

 

Bought the ul30jt, didn't like black glossy bezel around the screen as it had swirl mark damage with one wipe down with a micro fiber laptop cloth. I cannot understand who designs these products with glossy plastic. Real smart! Buying a Sony Z. You can never buy cheap and be happy.

 

We shall all be envious.

I wish I could afford the Sony Z. It's a really beautiful, quality notebook. Enjoy!

 

the jewelery store is that way *points*
yeah, don't we all wish we can afford the best of the best. but the way i see it, things are meant to be used. u want the best bang for your buck and not just the best damn thing out there

 

What are the direct competitor models from Acer to the UL30JT ?

 

The Gateway EC39C. Has GeForce 310M, Core i3 or i5 ulv, and Optimus.

 

Ah, but watching Sony's ad for the Z .... makes me quite happy if I could have the best.

For now, I shall just drool.

 

Has anyone tried disabling the nvidia 310 in the device manager and testing how long the battery lasts?

 

Have any owners of a ul30jt experience with the ul30vt or ul30a?

My main decision here is between a ul30a-x5 and the jt, basically an undervolted core 2 duo vs an i3 and better gpu.

Portability and battery time are most important to me and Photoshop is the most resource intensive thing I do. Though, on a 13", it will be mostly for simple photography and project touch-ups. There's a $200 difference in the x5 and the jt, not bad but I read DDR3 is much more efficiently used with the i3 than the core 2.

The tradeoff of the undervolting is the better cpu but I wanted to ask if anyone has experience with both the i3 and the core 2 duo models.

 

btw, the review for U33JC is out. it talks about how asus underclocks the gpu memory to save power

 

And it seems they are simply putting cheaper (cost) memory as VRAM on the GPU card; same core, slower memory.

 

Just registered to participate in this discussion.

I had access to a UL80J-BBK5 (best buy version)

So I ran a few tests and compared them to the UL80Vt tests ran by laptopmag.com here

UL80J-BBK5:
pc mark vantage: 3886
3d mark 06: i forget the exact number, but I think around 3500.
Battery life in turbo33 mode, same method of testing as laptopmag.com: load a new webpage every 33 seconds using wi-fi on balanced battery settings ---- 5.5 hours

UL80Vt-A1:
pc mark vantage: 3600
3d mark06: 3463
battery life in turbo33 mode: 8.5 hours

the best buy version has a 4400mAH battery and the ul80vt has a 5600mAH battery, so 27% bigger. With a 5600mAH battery, I would expect right about 7 hours of battery life.

The UL80J (from bestbuy) and the UL80Jt are pretty much identical in specs, including turbo33 mode, except the UL80Jt has the 5600mAH battery. So I expect the performance to be about the same.

However, the UL80Vt is cheaper, gets nearly identical performance, and lasts at least an hour more on a charge.

Any criticism of my testing and conclusions is welcome.

 

Keep in mind that the UL30/80JT series use ULV i3s, not the "real deal," so to speak. The performance increase from the VT to the JT series is minimal. The only improvement, in my mind, is the addition of Nvidia Optimus into the picture. But seeing as how you're looking at the UL30A, the GPU is the main difference between it and the UL30JT. Luckily, Photoshop is more CPU and RAM intensive than GPU intensive (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

vvaffle, I went to best buy and played with the UL80J-BBK5 and only wanted to add one more little tidbit of difference.

The trackpad and buttons are greatly improved on the UL80J-BBK5 over the VT version. Gone is the single "rocker" button and now there is individual left and right buttons with a much improved click.

 

Correct me if im wrong but i believe only the best buy model of the ul80j has the two trackpad buttons. The other "official" reseller versions are still single button i believe.

 

I forgot about that, the touchpad and mouse buttons on the best buy version are much better. The ul80/30Jt and u35jc still use the single rocker right?

By the way, if anyone missed it, the point of my post was to show that the ul30/80jt don't seem to be worth the price difference and loss in battery life when compared to the ul30/80vt.

 

How much longer would the UL30JT last in battery life vs. the U35JC?

They seem to be about the same weight and the only difference is the i3-330um (1.2ghz) vs. i3-370 (2.4ghz)?

Unless the UL30JT can last a hour or two longer why would anyone purchase the UL30JT? they are around the same price, except the U35JC has a faster processor.

 

The i3-330UM certainly uses less power and so indeed delivers longer battery life. Most likely 1-2 hrs, as you said.

There aren't enough reviews of the UL30Jt in the US or Canada to say with any confidence yet.

 

Based on what I saw with the ul80j from best buy, I think the ul30jt will last at most an hour longer than the u35jc.

If the ul80j had a 5600 mAH battery, and there been equal in every performance stat to the ul30jt, it would last about 7 hours. The difference in battery life between the 14in and 13.3in versions is about 30 min. If you turn off turbo33 mode, it would get you about another 30 min. So my guess is that the ul30jt, with turbo33 mode off, would last about about 8 hours.

Using the same test that I ran on the ul80j, the u30jc lasted for 7 hours and 7 minutes. According to tests ran by anandtech.com, the u33jc has about the same battery life as the u30jc. The u35jc has the same specifications as the u33jc so I expect it to last about to same time, about 7 hours.

So with wireless web surfing, I think the u35jc will run for 7 hours, and the ul30jt for 8 hours. Only an hour difference. Not worth it in my opinion, especially since you have to turn off turbo33 mode to get that time. For the best battery life, I think the ul30vt is still the best choice. I think it should get close to 9 hours even with turbo33 on.

 

This is true. Another thing about the UL80J BBK, it has a brushed aluminum (not high gloss plastic!! ) palmrest and track pad. The track pad doesn't have the dimples either, totally smoothe, very comfortable. The two buttons are very nice also.

The store display has been running since the place opened but when you put your hands on the BBK wrist/palm area it feels very cool to the touch, it just feels like a pleasure to use. However I've unfortunately never gotten my hands on any 13" Asus notebooks so I can't compare how they feel. I'm torn between the UL80 variations or the U35f. I just don't know if I'd be happy with the 13" screen but everything from there is a welcome step up.

Would there be ANY advantage to going with the i3 330um in the UL80j over the Core 2 Duo in the vt? The only modifications I plan to make are a Momentus XT and/or when a true SSD becomes more affordable, installing an Intel. The UL80j and vt price difference is about $40 so it's doable with incentive but there's no point in future proofing if the 330 will give no payoff down the road.

 

I have the UL30VT and also have the Bestbuy UL80J RBBk.

UL30VT has much longer battery life. With turbo 33 and on entertainment mode, I would go over 8 hours real usage with 3 bars of brigthness.

UL80J (Bestbuy one) is kinda hard to say for now since I just got it yesterday but the battery is indeed 4400mah and on power saver mode, turbo 33 off, brightness at the lowest setting at 99%, windows battery meter reads 5 hours 30 mins. With slight increase in brightness or other heavier activities, it drops down to 4 hours or even 3 hours 50 mins.

With careful power consumption profile and activity minimized and screen brightness dimmed to lowest or 1 bar up. When battery is between 85% to 100%, the power meter can show anywhere from 3.5 to 5.5 hours. I do not understand this fluctuation and could not pinpoint a pattern. UL30VT seem to be much more consistent in power meter readings.

As for keyboard and track pad, the trackpad is smooth no holes in them and there are 2 dedicated button. They are much much more comfortable to use then UL30VT. As for keyboard the key is much more responsive than UL30VT's as well. UL80J's key seems to have more material/weight to it than flimsy UL30VT's.

As for testing SU7300 and I3-330um on daily tasks, I could not tell any difference but hey, the cpu meter shows 4 threads and look pretty lol.

Right now at 93% and entertainment mode with screen fully bright and MSN messenger running and wireless on, windows battery meter shows 3 hours 12 mins...not exactly what I was expecting.

Now having let it sit here for a while typing with power saver mode, no turbo 33, lowest brightness setting wireless on. At 89% battery it shows 5 hours 40 mins battery......this lappy is moody like woman. But I suspect it has to do with Optimus...

 

Thanks for the info Howard. Can Optimus be adjusted for power savings or even disabled?

Also are the keyboards between your UL30 and UL80 the same size or do you feel more constrained on one model vs the other? The 80 feels great for me but I wouldn't want to go any smaller.

U35f or Ul80j bbk......I still don't know!

 

Update...UL80J is going back to Bestbuy tomorrow. My wireless constant shut itself down and drop. When I press FN and wireless key to activate it. Screen would display it being activated but it really didnt. The only way to activate it is to reboot the pc. 10 mins later it shut itself down again....................

Not sure about Optimus yet.. will have to check and get back to you but there are settings go to control ctr, and go to 3D settings, you can set when to activate optimus and when not to. However its more refined and not just 1 button switch on and off.

 

Allright guys....

Which is the best Non-SSD HDD for Asus UL30JT at this point in time....??

Is it the Seagate Hybrid Momentus XT ?
Is it the Seagate 7400.4 ?
Is it the Hitachi Travel Star 7K500 ?
Is it the WD Scorpio Black ?

Minimum size Required is 500 GB.

Which is "THE BEST".... PERIOD....???

 

The Momentus XT is an SSD hybrid so it has the solid state memory for quick access to data it 'learns' you use often but for bulk storage, it uses a normal hdd platter.

Here's some info on your 7400.4 vs the WD.

Overclockersclub.com review

Scorpio Black vs 7400.4

The overclockers also has info on the XT, says reboot time was reduced by 13 seconds, impressive!

I personally am going with a 320gb Momentus XT for whichever Asus I decide on.


Edit: Back from a BSOD.

Howard, that's a shame about your UL80j. Did you by any chance do a driver upgrade to the wireless card when you bought it or is this just a total freak thing?

It sounds like I could live with Optimus, being able to turn it down and maybe just use it for .mkv movies. Let us know how the new UL80 turns out.

I'm also on a Seagate 500gb 7200.4 in my Dell XPS 1640. It does give me occasional problems.

 

Rana kirti, you've got me going on hard drives now. You should find this useful for Scorpio Black numbers. The review puts SSD against some top platter hard drives, interesting read.

Seems like my 7200.4 is right around the same performance as a Momentus XT, wasn't expecting that. I'm thinking now I should just wait for a sub-$300 256mb true SSD for the Asus. The U35j isn't even available yet.

 

Your 7200.4 IS the Momentus XT, but without the 4GB NAND flash memory. The Momentus XT uses a Momentus 7200rpm HDD and adds in the flash memory plus the circuitry. THIS is a good read. Note the charts of performance.

Seagate uses your 7200.4 drive as a base, but increases its performance through repeated use of a limited number of programs & files (4GB worth). Here's what Tom's Hardware says:

"As mentioned in the introduction, we weren’t able to provide all the test results when we posted this review in time for Seagate’s launch. A few more results are now available in the benchmark sections, and these results prove Seagate’s concept right. Repeating PCMark Vantage several times leads to performance increases in the range of 20-70%, which is significant."

 

By any chance would you guys know what the part number for the UL30JT palm rest is?

 

just buy the base model of ul30jt, then buy an intel ssd when you think the hd is bottleneck. the longer you wait, the faster ,cheaper and larger the ssd will be.

 

from exoticpc:

I do applogize, we were just informed the other day that the UL30JT-A1 has become amazon.com only
we were just told about this on monday and are in the process of notifying customers that have pre orders
we will not be getting them at all, im sorry if this cause's any problems for you

 

Hmmm ... and instead of $819, the price is unfortunately stuck at Amazon's $849. Too bad.

 

yeah, clearly Amazon want to hold the price for a while.

 

Laptopmag.com review of the ul80jt. Specs are pretty much the same as ul30jt except the ul80 is 14in and has a cd/dvd drive. Like I suspected, the loss of battery life is much larger than the gain in CPU performance, especially since graphics performance is actually worse. It got 6 hours and 15 minutes on battery life so we can't expect more than 7 hours from the ul30jt.

Wireless speed and hard-drive speed seem to be much improved though. The problem, in my opinion, is that the u30/33/35jc all have better performance, and at least the same amount of battery life, for the same amount of money...

Of course, the lack of graphics performance and battery life from the ul30/80jt may be due to optimus drivers so both of those could improve over time.

 

Amazon has the i5-520UM UL30JT.

 

OMG, same price as i3 on the ealier day ???

well,

Technical Details

* Intel® Core i5 Processor 520UM: 1.06 GHz, with Turbo Boost up to 1.86 GHz;

--
versus
--

Product Description
13.3-inch HD (1366 x768) (LED) / i3-330UM / 4 G DDR3 / NV 310M 1 G DDR3 / 500 G 5400 / No ODD / W7HP (64bit) / 802.11BGN / HDMI / 0.3 M Pixel / 8-cell, 5600mAh.

--

must have a typo, but which one.

 

and finally it arrived at asus usa web:

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks - UL30Jt

The page says i3 though,

 

No one's posted here in over a week. Has this become a dead thread now? Amazon-only sales sort of closed it down?

 

UL30JT disappeared from Amazon, (it's used to list as 2-4 weeks shipping),

Same as xoticpc, the laptop disappeared from the preorder list.

And I swear, this URL - , used to work.

It seems like Asus dropped this model off the shelf. What's happening ? Will it be back ???

 

This happened: Amazon.com: ASUS UL30JT-A1 13.3-Inch Laptop - Black: Electronics