Asus Zenbook NX500

I was in dialogue with Asus Nordic about the price of the NX500, and it was confirmed to cost just under 20,000NOK here in Norway atleast. Still looks like alot for the buck imo.

 

Wow that's around 2400 euros! More than what a rMBP costs.

 

I'll never understand why some areas get ripped off so bad. Not familiar with Norway prices but the UK always seems to pay 20-30 percent more for electronics than the US does. I'm guessing it's import taxes?

 

That and UK prices are usually quoted inclusive of tax, wheareas in US prices are quoted exclusive of tax (generally).

 

Probably a November broadwell announcement, to release it in... August 2015
Funny thing bout it, it's not a joke but reality

 

Whether that is the MSRP or not, my intuition tells me that it'll sell for less. The MSI GS60, a notebook comparable in several ways, can be had for 13495.

While there is no value-added tax in the states, Norway has a 25% VAT on most goods and services whereas people in the UK pay 5% less within the same category. Import taxes shouldn't differ much for this notebook since it's not made by a company based in the US. Prices for niche products like mobile workstations can indeed be mind-bogglingly different when you compare the US to high-tax countries where outlets don't have enough competition, but overall I think electronics are appropriately priced on this side of the pond. With the average wage being considerably higher in many European countries than it is in the US, high-end products can still be fairly easily attainable. Gas prices, on the other hand, are ridiculous.

 

U.S. is actually #1 in the world in average (mean) wage.
List of countries by average wage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The mean over-emphasizes high-wage earners, so median is probably a better measure. Unfortunately, most of the median stats on income are household income, not individual. So it's not really comparable to average wages. But anyway, the U.S. is #10 in median household income (nominal). But what about all the services the higher-tax governments provide? Those services come at the price of higher taxes. If you normalize for the cost of goods and services, the U.S. actually goes up to #4 in median household income (PPP). That is, incomes are lower in the U.S., but prices are even more lower (the opposite of what happens in 3rd world countries with lower incomes, so no the lower income is not an indication that the U.S. is less developed).
Median household income - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The countries with higher real incomes than the U.S. are heavily into banking (Luxembourg, Switzerland) or oil exporters (Norway).

As for what this means for laptop prices, PPP is probably the measure you want to use because that takes into account the cost of other goods and services in the country. The U.S. is the standard used for PPP (nominal = PPP in the U.S.), so you can just use the ratio of your country's nominal to PPP income and divide your prices by that. Norway's ratio is 1.75, so the laptop price would have to be 75% higher than in the U.S. before it would be comparable (thanks to all that oil you export essentially becoming free money for you). The UK's ratio is 1.21, so approx 20%-25% higher electronics prices makes it pretty equivalent to U.S. prices. (Whereas the $30,932 median income in the U.S. vs. $21.470 in the UK means the 50th percentile Brit can only buy about 2/3rds as much stuff as the 50th percentile American.)

When you buy a laptop from overseas, you are using overseas transport to overcome a market inefficiency (higher price > cost to import and transport it yourself). If this saves you a lot of money, eventually some distributor will step in and start importing the product to sell it at lower prices as a business. Or if the government prohibits that, a black market crops up. (e.g. "Grey market" camera lenses sold in the U.S. - where retailers pay someone in Japan to buy and hand-carry lenses on a flight to the U.S. This isn't necessarily because of U.S. import tariffs or the Japanese lens makers charging too much in the U.S. The Japanese companies have to convert their U.S. profits to Yen, and currency volatility means they're going to try to play it safe and value the USD low. That means a smaller outfit like a camera retailer can import the lenses at a better price, because they're able to quickly shut down the operation if the currency rates shift and make it unfavorable to them.) So price differentials between countries tend to be eliminated by natural market forces.

Anyway... 20,000 NOK is about $3234 USD, which if you use the 1.75 ratio of nominal to PPP is equivalent to almost exactly $1850 in the U.S.. i.e. if Asus is pricing this based on what they feel Norwegians can afford, then U.S. pricing would be around $1850.

 

Very interesting stuff! Does your estimation account for Convel's suggestion that the NOK price is including tax? In the US, sales tax varies, but if we can guess at an average being 8.5%, then the pre-tax price would be around 1700. I'm not sure if that's how they think about it, but I figured I'd throw it out there.

Anyone hear any updates on the release date? I've seen both "late August" (now!) and November 1st, which is quite a discrepancy.

 

Hi guys, so honest opinion is this worth paying the big bucks for if I wanted to do some gaming with it, also would you consider it somewhat future-proofed i.e run games next year or is it a waste of money and I could do better for the same price?if so, can you give me examples

 

It's not meant to be a gaming machine, but a GDDR5 GTX850M is quite capable, probably even next year.
But if you mean native gaming, than even for today games a GTX850M is waaaay to slow.

You cannot do better for the same price if you keep in mind design, 4K display and maxwell graphics BUT
this is still not released yet, so I wouldnt be suprised if companies like Dell with their XPS lineup will release an updated model soon.
If you don't need the power of the GPU, then you can consider the current dell XPS15 or the macbook retina 15 (since they failed to update their graphics to maxwell)

 

Well id also require a laptop to function streaming movies and sports games,connectivity to a tv would be an assit also with the ususal laptop features,light gaming is all i want with it,playing games like red orchestra 2 etcor the new age of empires or rome

 

I should have been more descriptive. What I meant is that the higher hourly wage helps compensate for the higher living expenses and taxes, making it possible for the same product to have a comparable attainability despite it having a higher price in other regions. I'm well aware that the US is a wealthy country, even if you account for the distribution of salaries being less even than in many countries where socialism stands stronger. However, as we all know, less financial inequality doesn't translate to the part of the population earning way more than the median being almost non-existent.

Revealed: Global cities with the highest percentage of millionaires - Spears

 

If they wait until August 2015 they better have more then just a Broadwell processor added to it and even an updated Graphics card.

 

All depends what's out at the time.

 

Correct, this is true

 

What's with Asus and not making the keyboard keys a contrasting color.
http://rack.0.mshcdn.com/media/Zgky...CmUJanBn/45d042d8/995/Asus-Zenbook-UX3051.jpg

I bet the backlighting is white too...

 

I dont mind it that much (although the black UX305looks much nicer)
I now have a hp envy 15 and the black keys are barely visible on the bronze/silver background.
I could imagine if you have a brighter colored caseing and white keys pe, the screen could illuminate it by reflection

 

It's the glare I'm concerned about. Closest comparison I've seen is Acer's S7-391 which had silver keys with light blue blacklighting. The screen was so bright that glare was created on the keys and you couldn't read them. It was also auto-backlit so it ended up being a war against whether or not to enable backlighting on the keyboard all the time. I'm just not a fan of light colored keys and palmrests, especially white. Not to mention how gross they will look after a year. Hopefully it's all metal so it won't suffer the same fate as the old Macbooks.

 

I hope they wait until Broadwell and NVidia's 2014/2015 level GPU before releasing this laptop. I don't really know why they would want to release a laptop of this caliber at the tail end of the generation. If it was a mainstream HP or Dell, their target market wouldn't care or even know what's inside, but this and the GX500 are high end laptops and people will know the specs.

As impatient as folks here are, it is better to wait until Broadwell/950M rather than release a Haswell/850M and then update in 4 months.

 

It's probably a rebranded GTX860M anyway, and the higher class maxwell wont fit in these thin devices.
Broadwell is also way off, quadcore versions although, like literally months, maybe half a year.
It should be released already

 

Msi is already putting model specs for the GS60 with a 970M. It's not that much thicker than this. And the reported benchmark leaks of the 900 series all show nice improvements over the 800 series. I'm waiting until the Nvidia announcement now before pulling the trigger on something permanent.

 

The problem is if the rumors are true, the NX500 won't be out until November. If I were in the market for a laptop around that time, I'd rather wait an extra 3 (Feb-March 2015) months until the Broadwell equivalent of i7-4700mq and GeForce (hopefully 20nm) 960m comes out unless I needed a laptop right away. By Nov, we are at the tail end of the Haswell/800m generation. Bad time to introduce a high end laptop.

 

Just came across this browsing amazon UK today -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/NX500JK-DR0...efined&sr=1-3&keywords=i7+4500#productDetails

hopefully its the right one as in the thread

Went through the checkout process to see a delivery date, states -

Estimated delivery: 2 Oct 2014 - 23 Oct 2014

 

Gaaaah, that "silver" keyboard !!!

 

Yeah but MSI just puts in stuff without thinking. It will just overheat and be unable to touch under heavy load like their GTX870M model.
But hey, they can advertise with it, right?
Source: http://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GS...on-2PEWi716SR21-Notebook-Review.118569.0.html
lol, load 56C average and peak to 78C bottem, one can get burn wounds with these temps

We all know the new GTX970M will be @ 28nm, so considering the GTX860M is already problem enough to keep it cool in 20mm laptops,
I dont expect a bigger 28nm chip will have suddenly no problems.

I wonder if the GTX960M will be a rebranded GTX860M or a new chip

 

Likely the 950m will be a rebranded 860M

 

Well, there's already a mistake in the listing. The i7-4702HQ is 2.2 GHz, while the listing says 2.3 GHz. The i7-4712HQ is 2.3 GHz.

 

And DDR3 instead of GDDR5

 

WOW $2400 USD. I might wait the two-three months for both price and chipset availability.

 

My guess is it will be around $2000 in the states. My experience is it's usually 20-30 percent less than the UK, probably because of VAT or import duties or something.

 

i was preparing myself for $2k but as the days go by, its sounding less appealing. i hate to be another "one of those" on here... i'll continue to reserve my judgement for an actual release.

 

Yeah, they messed up.. AGAIN
Their U500 ivy bridge release over again

 

So... What was messed up with that model? I'm typing on one right now and it is the best computer I've used yet.

 

I think he's referring to the release, not the machine. Asus makes great stuff, but they have the worst releases ever. They usually go like this:

FEBRUARY: Demo of greatest machine ever made.
March: Silence
April: Silence
May: Silence
June: "Hands on" somewhere in Asia; youtube videos with 100s of photographers around. "No mention of price or release date yet"
July: Silence
August: Rumors of a August 15th or September 15th or November 30th release date. Rumor that the price will be greater than or less than $2000.
September: Silence
October: Silence
November: Visible, but "out of stock" at all your favorite retailers.
December: Seen in the wild.
January: Readily available at most retailers.
FEBRUARY: OMG LOOK AT THE NEW THINGS WE'VE GOT COOKING!

And so on.

 

Yeah that is what i mean. I have never know a period where availability was decent.
But it had also some serious heating problems and it wasnt quiet either so it wasnt the fans that were spinning too slow...
but apart from that it was a good machine, IF you could get one.
But I never saw why you should have taken it above the retina 15.

This thime the NX500 features a MUCH faster gpu, but it is still not released

 

Okay guys so I just did some research and stumbled upon this video: http://youtu.be/bt_o82W4Fqo

There an Asus representative (actually the product manager for the notebooks department) says that the NX500 will be available very soon in Germany with the GTX 850 graphics card (not the 9xx as some were hoping due to the leaked GX500 benchmarks) and a price tag of 2199 to 2399 EUR (2810-3070 USD).

This is some serious cash I am not willing to pay for a notebook with obvious cooling issues and outdated CPU and GPU in less than 3 months when Broadwell finally hits the shelves.

It was nice following this conversation but after all Asus finally managed to kill my interest. I'm out!

Looking forward to see the XPS 15 successor..

 

Fully agreed.

 

yeah $3k is some serious change i'm not willing to invest in an already outdated laptop. hopefully ASUS learns something from this.

 

I hoping the amount show on the UK amazon site for the nx500 is true. I think it was like 1400, which asus seems pretty consistent with the pricing across the world. Isn't it when it's like $1100 in the us it's also 1100 Euros in Europe?

 

And the wait is over
Bought myself a refurbished macbook retina 15 for not that much.
Good resell value if broadwell +20nm maxwell comes around in june (MACBOOK, lol not going to wait till 2018 when asus comes with one)

 

The wait is almost over

 

It doesnt matter for me anymore, the new maxwells are coming next month, broadwell is also just some months off.
So I bought a retina till a 20nm refresh maxwell+broadwell comes out from Apple or Dell XPS, I'm done with ASUS

 

Someone said it's already listed in MediaMarkt germany. Checked the website and yeah, it says 15th October for the NX500. Price: 2.200-2.400€.

OK it looks nice from the outside and it's made from metal, but does this justify its pricepoint when the N550jk only cost 1.200€? Which has the same equipment + LAN Port + DVD Drive, and is also made from metal? (except the bottom cover for opening up). Anyways, that's a lot of money - almost considering the N550jk now... (not the crappy N551 successor though).

 

- - deleted - -

 

Will be Oct-Nov.

 

Now we know, sort of.

Here's what's in Asus' $2,699 Zenbook NX500 laptop | PCWorld

 

Insanity... Should have known considering they were trying to sell that 13" Zenbook Infinity for over $2k last year. Still no official US prices yet, but given the release of the 900M series soon, I don't think this is going to be well received at even $2000

 

Well looks like the holiday guide is out. NX500 comes out in Nov at $2,699. Can confirm cause I was sent the guide #breakingdigital.com hehe

 

Thats really expensive, I was hoping it would be $1800 - $2000 like they mentioned when it was introduced. Way out of my price range.