Asus W3J vs V2

Alright, so I'm just about ready to take the plunge and I'm torn between these two great machines. I may be jumping the gun because the V2 isn't out yet, but I wanted to run through a quick comparison to your opinion.

W3J Pros:
$200 Cheaper
Video card- X1600
XP Pro (May be better for some)

V2 Pros:
Comes with two batteries
T7200 (perhaps 20% faster than the T5500)
1440 x 900 screen res.
DVI out
Vista Business

Right now I can't decide at all. The $200 price difference seems negligible when you think an extended batter will run around $150 anyway and an upgrade to vista will run at least $70 (at academic pricing). But, the V2 is untried and the build quality may fall short of the W3J.

Ahhhh.... at least I still have two weeks to decide. What does everyone think?
What are your opinions?

 

Perhaps you should consider that the W3J is no longer being made.

 

The longer you wait the better off you will be irregardless.

I would go with the V2 myself.

 

Wait till may/june, if you can----Santa Rosa. In any case, the W3J's off the market, so you've got only the V2.

 

They're off the market, but you can still buy them at a variety of places. For example, Newegg carries it for a notch below $1600. Plus, "as long as I can wait' is about 2 weeks. I'm going to need it by the second week of April .

 

The W3 was a great system, if you can even get your hands on one at this point I'd be surprised becasue it went EOL at the end of December...... The V2 is better in every possible way except for the graphics card... and the only reason the graphics card isn't AS good is because Asus is trying to keep their business travel model true to it's roots...... Anyone upgrading from a W3v (w/ 64mb x600) is really going to love the V2... The 128mb x1600 in the W3j was great, but with a model like the A8 going for the power with bad battery life, the V2 had to go in another direction. The 256mb x1450 is going to be more than more people who would be attracted to this sort of system anyway... but basically that's it.. The reason the W3 isn't being refreshed here in the US is because the V2 picks up on all that was good about the W3 and adds a ton of features, lightens it up, and just freshens up that popular segment of notebooks..

 

Well, looks like I'm sold. The V2's ship out at the end of March? So if I pre-order one now I should be able to get it before say... April 5th?

Maybe?

 

You have to keep in mind what an ETA means (estimated time of arrival). They are set to hit customs next week....... they need to clear there and get processed at Asus and then ship out to us... We usually give customs a 2 day window, but I've seen cases where they've taken a week or more... so until they get to Asus and get on their way to us, I can't say for sure. We have an ETA on our site of 3/29, which means it probably wouldn't even ship until the following Monday, which is the 2nd of April, and via 2Day, that's the 4th it would be recieved by customers... but that's in a perfect world and customs doesn't work for us, so they really don't need to answer to anyway.... so anything goes until they get past them.... but that's the best idea as of today.

 

Definlty go with the V2 by far one of the best 14.1 laptops on the market.

 

I agree with them all... stick with the V2. Looks like a beast!

 

Yep, just gotta get used to the beast of a price tag too!

*sigh* I need to pay for law school somehow too...

 

u really do get what you pay for with asus..i'd pick up the v2 if i was in the market for that kinda notebook..personally i don't game at all anymore since getting my first job outta college so the x1450 probably would be a good compromise for all but the most hardcore of gamers

 

Id get the w3j.

I mean, if you put a t7200 in the w3j, the only real specs that are better on the v2 are the camera, sata hd...

vista I guess.

If youre talking about the next v2 with an 8400, id get that hands down because an 8400 might easily be faster than a x1600. It should be.

 

It's a moot point, the W3J is so 2006!

 

What about if you own a W3J, would you consider going to V2?

 

If you want to get your little grubby hands on the latest technology, like me, it's a foregone conclusion. Otherwise, many will be very happy with their W3J until about June!

 

Recently in Taiwan they refressed the W3j with the T7200, and a 120GB 5400RPM HD and 1x1GB stick of 667Mhz RAM as well as Vista pre-installed. But I guess this refressed version is not going to make it to US markets. If your not going to be gaming, then I'd go for the V2 for sure. It has tons of different wireless features.

 

Are you sure there will only be a 200$ difference between the W3J and the V2 ?

 

Hi guys,

I too was looking at the W3J, i wanted good gaming performance in a light 14 inch laptop that looked good and had high build quality, and the w3J seemed to match all of these criteria. The V2 looks less good for games with its weaker graphics card. I have seen all the praise for the A8JS and A8JP but these models are not available in the UK.

The only other manufacturer i have liked is Zeptop with its 6214 model which has a Geforce Go 7600 with 512Mb Ram but i was suprised that this gave worse 3dmark scores than the X1600 in the W3J, ok it has the core 2 duo processor so is going to be 20% quicker and it is also £200 cheaper but everything i have read about the build quality of the W3J screams quality and style , i havent seen anything about overheating either.

Is there going to be a new 14" laptop from asus with decent graphics performance released onto the UK market in the next 3 months? I have read something about a new Zepto with dx10 graphics, what Asus models will be carying these new gen cards?

The W3J seems like a great machine but is it too dated now and not worth the £1130 it is retailing for here? what other models would you guys recommend ?

Thanks for any help you can provide,

Regards,

Tim

 

I would personally pick the W3 over the V2. Here are my reasons:

1. Slightly better build quality (can't beat brushed aluminum)
2. Hotswappable bay: can add extra battery, HDD. (a big plus!)
3. Better GPU.
4. Smaller, basically all the surface of the laptop is dedicated to the screen - which is what I think any laptop should do.
5. Can get it now for an indecently low price (if you still can get it) since it's EOL.
6. No battery wear issues (battery issues with V2 are a likelihood given the fact that the V1 suffers from them).

The pro-s of the V2 are really only the fancy gadgets like webcam, fingerprint reader, and high-speed wireless. The first two I don't use (the second can only be a hassle in my opinion), and the high-speed wireless is only available in a few places over the world, and this will be the situation for the next year at least. Also, the looks of the V2 may be slightly better, but that's subjective and depends on the person.

So, there you have it. I would go for the W3j over the V2 anyday. In fact, I am strongly tempted to pay 1000 EUR for a W3J even though I don't need one... then I'd own the greatest three notebooks ASUS ever made (M6Ne, V6, W3)

 

Is the V2 available in Taiwan right now?

I'm visiting right now, don't really know which stores in taipei to check out.

i recently just sold my a8js (not satisified with the screen and build quality) and was just going to wait for a santa rosa macbook pro, but i might go back to the refreshed w3j/v2 and just skip next generation and wait for penryn.

 

all good points. might i add also that santa rosa chipset is only a mere 133mhz increase.

 

No doubt the W3 series, the W3J is a great powerfull little notebook. However it is EOL, and the V2 is going to be the replacement business projected laptop.

Aside from the from what has been mentioned above. The V2 is quite appealing to the business user because of the features it provides, multi-bay, optional docking station, 6 & 9 cell main battery, spill proof keyboard, great quality chassis, webcam and a fingerprint reader.

Don't forget Asus will provide both V2 models, one with 3.5g and one without one.

As for the chipset, sure Santa Rosa bumps up the FSB of the CPU to 800mhz, which seems like a mere increase. One of the biggest things I am looking for is the Robson technology, which will feature a small amount of flash memory to help bootup times, increase battery life and etc.

Also once hybrid hard drives become more mainstream we could also see this being implemented in notebooks. In my opinion Santa Rosa will open the doors to more battery life while keeping a high amount of performance.

 

Does the V2 have multibay? I didn't see one on the product page on asus.com, as far as I remember. No, I checked again right now and it doesn't.

As to the features, like I said, many of them are superfluous at least to me: webcam, fingerprint reader. Spillproof keyboard - maybe. Chassis -- a bit worse than W3J like I said; you can't beat brushed aluminum on the LCD, it's going to give you the best protection for your LCD that there is in any laptop. Docking station - yes (for some). Battery - yes, I would suspect the V2 has an advantage here due to lower consumption components; keep in mind though that the W3 batt life can be boosted by secondary battery whereas V2's can't. Also keep in mind the battery wear issue; only that and I would be wary of buying a V2 right now.

 

Yes, it does, as has been mentioned here several times.

 

Ok, then the asus page is buggy (sorry I didn't read every post in detail). Yep, then it gets closer to the W3J, but still doesn't quite make it.

 

Who has placed their orders already? I would love to know!

 

I am curious about Robson technology. What happens when this flash based memory goes bad? Can it be easily replaced like RAM modules?

I have had to replace bad RAM modules before.