Ivy Bridge Zenbook with FHD IPS screen UX21A UX31A UX32A UX32VD

I've seen the vaio Z 1080p and 1600x900 screens side by side with the ux31a and ux31e screens.

The vaio screens have a sharpness to them, they just pop, really good contrast, even backlighting etc.

The 1600x900 on the ux31e is a bit washed out by comparison, but still a great screen.

The 1080p screeon on the ux31a is pretty close to the Vaio Z, but if you get a unit with backlight bleed it just blows it due to inconsistent brightness on the backlight.

They need to knock about 400-500 off the Z series though. Too pricy.

 

I was referring to this post. The Z handles sRGB 100% and mostly adobeRGB too. The UX31a only handles mostly sRGB. But it would be good to hear it from someone who can both directly. Or even posts some photos.

 

ELAN trackpad. I go to the ux32vd download driver site on ASUS, it only shows the Synaptics drivers? I can't seem to find the elan trackpad drivers, anyone else experience this.
ASUS - Notebooks- ASUS ASUS ZENBOOK UX32VD


Also, the darn trackpad is too sensitive, on the one click sensitivity, there are no adjustments settings for click sensitivity that i can find, is this true?

 

Like anything else, you'll get used to it. Maybe your last laptop wasn't sensitive enough? Mind blown?

 

Well my UX31A from best buy arrived in the mail today. Beautiful screen. Backlight bleed is noticeable during boot but I don't really notice it any other time.. its similar to the bleed on my Lumia 900. Its much worse on the right side than the left side...

Core i5 with only 128GB and 4GB of memory is not enough for me..

Placed an order for the UX32VD from Amazon hopefully it does not take forever to come back in stock...

 

Can you verify IPS display with 1920x1080 resolution.

 

I'm psyched as mine will be delivered from Adorama on Friday. Already have my Samsung 830 and Mushkin RAM was delivered today! Used Fatwallet for an additional 2% back.

 

Yes it is 1920x1080

 

I was thinking of putting this SSD in my UX32VD when it arrives.

Amazon.com: OCZ 256GB Vertex 4 Industry's Highest I/O Performance Up to 120K IOPS SATA 6.0 GB/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive With 5-Year Warranty - VTX4-25SAT3-256G: Computers & Accessories

I know that I will have to disassemble the unit but if this ssd really is the fastest and its cheaper than the Samsung then that seems like a good idea right?

 

Can someone sell me on the merits of the UX32a over the UX31. On the surface it looks heavier, has more storage at the cost of moving parts and power that will likely shorten its battery life. It has the same screen as the ux31a. The dedicated video is the only thing I can see that it has going for it.

Im still waiting for a ux31a to come in stock to exchange for mine with screen problems but they got in a ux32 and im just wondering if its worth looking at.

 

The dedicated GPU and the ability to upgrade the RAM and SSD are the main advantages of the UX32VD. The difference in battery life is probably negligible considering both laptops don't exactly get "stellar" battery life.

 

The way I look at it is that if you buy a UX31A with only 4GB RAM and 128-256GB SSD, how long will it take for that to become completely obsolete? 2 years? With the UX32VD I've already upgraded my RAM to 10GB. While I can only afford to up my hard drive to 256GB SSD, may be in 3-4 years a 1-2TB SSD will be inexpensive and I can upgrade at that time. While upgrades require some up front cost increasing initial expenses, over the long run being able to upgrade increases the usability of your computer for a longer period of time so you don't feel like you need to buy a new computer so early. Having 1 computer over 6 years with money spent on upgrades is still cheaper than having bought 2 computers in that same time frame. Having a dedicated GPU is also nice.

 

So the ux32 has a standard HD bay so you can swap out the HD for an SSD. How about the built in SSD. Can you swap it out, or reutilitze it as a drive. Does it take normal sims for updating the ram. The 4gb standard on ultrabooks bugs me when you know some of that is being stolen by the video card.

 

I think this is a little optimistic. Storage alone is not going to last you extra years of life on the laptop. The battery will be long shot and the CPU will be long obsolete well before that time frame. I've had countless computers in my lifetime and whenever "real" upgrades are useful, is when you are replacing entire motherboards+CPU's+RAM. Not just a harddrive...

Just my $.02

Not saying the UX32VD isn't a good option for alot of people, just saying your reasoning is a touch on the optimistic side, and I don't think the difference in usable life between a UX31A and a UX32VD are all that much really.

You should specify the UX32 VD, there is a UX32A which is very similar to the UX31A and not at all similar to the UX32VD.

The UX32VD has 2 harddrives, 1 SSD which is used as cache and 1 HDD that is for the OS and anything else in the standard config. Most people here have been replacing the standard HDD with a second SSD. Some ignoring the first, some using the first for OS only. The built in SSD is soldered in and cannot be replaced, it's something like 32GB I think.

The RAM then has a soldered 2GB on the board, and most are adding a normal SODIMM I believe of 8GB to reach 10GB.

The UX32A is basically the same as the UX31A but allows TPM and comes with Win 7 Professional. For the vast majority of people there is no reason to spend the extra money to get the UX32A. Maybe only if you are a business or very paranoid user that demands the encryption that Microsoft utilizes. There are still free methods of encryption that any computer in the world can utilize that is just as good though.

 

I did a bit of work on the ux31a tonight... basically a DTP project, lots of text editing a little bit of layout and graphics.

Had some lag early on, then switched the power profile to performance and things got alot better. It handled everything I threw at it and for the most part was great to work with.

I did have one problem though... the P key on the keyboard is useless... it doesnt feel like the other keys and is prone to just not working. I must have had problems with it at least 50/60 times in 2 hours.

Since it doesnt feel like the others its probably just this keyboard but thought id ask, as anyone had problems with the P key feeling wierd or not registering.

 

Can someone point me to where you can download the ELAN drivers? why is synaptic drivers on the site, do the laptops ship with synaptics touchpads as well?

 

For people comparing the 32 to the 31 don't forget the 31 is a unibody construction and the 32 isn't. Makes a big difference in keyboard flex and overall feel. Just pick the two up together (if you can find a place with both) and see for yourself. You really have to decide what is more important for you.

Anyway, I ordered my third 31A from Amazon yesterday. It looks like I will have to wait awhile to get it and if this one isn't right it's back to the drawing board. I don't want Sony for price, I don't want Apple because of the display resolution and I don't want Samsung because they decided to go with that horribly slow Sandisk SSD in their new models..why, I have no idea. The Vizio is actually a great machine, saw them at the Microsoft store yesterday but I want a 13.3 and they only have 14 and 15.5. The ASUS is the best if only it had no defects.

I see they just got it back in stock this morning..maybe I will get it tomorrow anyway.

 

i have a question about the ssd..im not a gamer or graphics person, im mainly getting the ux31a for school, so i need it for extensive microsoft office stuff and internet things obviously...hearing talks about how 128ssd may not be enough on this forum is that just gamer talk or should i too be concerned with a 128 ssd as a student? also i have a 500gb external harddrive that i use to backup files (if you havent already noticed im not that computer savy)

 

Here is a review that was released yesterday:

ASUS Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 Review | Ultrabook Reviews

Mostly positive except for the unacceptable heat problems that others have mentioned. I am really liking the specs on this laptop, but I am waiting to see if the various issues get resolved.....If not, I will wait for a 3rd generation or see what other manufacturers come up with, as the ultrabook choices are growing very rapidly, and with better and better hardware to boot. Maybe I am asking too much from an ultrabook, but this unit has just too many problems to shell out this kind of money.

It looks as the adaption of ultrabooks is not as fast as they thought it would be. I suspect that the high prices, various technical problems and the economy have a lot to do with it. As quoted in the following article:

"Industry sources reveal that Samsung and Toshiba are planning on slowing down the production of NAND flash until demand improves. So far, the demand for ultrabooks and SSDs have been disappointing in 2012"

Samsung and Toshiba putting brakes on SSD production - Notebookcheck.net News

 

I have a year old MBA that I partitioned so I could run windows. Out of a total of 80 GB in the partition I still have over 20 left after a year and without ever trying to clean it up. For what you plan 128 should be plenty. Movies and music are the only things that may reduce that space and with an external drive you can put all but a few movies at a time on that.

 

That explains why Samsung is using Sandisk SSDs now. I wish Sandisk had cut back instead.

 

Wow...Amazon now has the UX31A-AB71 in stock..anybody waiting better pounce on that in a hurry..they are the first to get it that I know of. Although it doesn't seem worth it unless the SSD is 256. A slight bump in CPU for $250 isn't worth it and everybody says it only has 128.

 

So I've had my UX32VD laptop for a couple weeks now. Overall, I've been fortunate. Little or no screen bleed, no keyboard flex, and despite opening and replacing the memory and hard drive without disconnecting the battery, no issues with that operation.

My boot time is about 12 seconds. Shut down is about 8 seconds. Operation is snappier on the AC Adapter, so I'm hopeful to find a US 65w unit compatible with it. That small tip really seems to be the big issue with finding one that works...

The one problem I've had a history of, and maybe my checkered past is following me, "sleep mode". I've seemed to ALWAYS have trouble when putting a device to "sleep", and then trying to use it after waking it back up. In this case, closing the lid with the power cable connected seems to sleep the unit. But when I reopen the lid, first I had a blue screen. After a full shutdown, boot, things working fine again, and trying to put the laptop to sleep again... it awoke with no trackpad functionality. Keyboard and external worked fine, but the internal trackpad would not work no matter if I disabled and reenabled it, etc. A reboot fixed this issue.

So is everyone using sleep mode? I suppose I could try hibernation, but it takes so long to boot back up I find the idea pointless. I rarely "walk away" from my laptop with something open. I'm much more likely to shut down and take it where I'm going. So I've currently got my laptop to shutdown when I close the lid or press the power button on battery, and when I press the power button on AC.

 

Did you reinstall Windows? If you did you probably left something out, if you didn't you have a problem with that unit.

 

The HDD can be any standard 7mm drive and the ram is standard 204-pin sodimms.

Unless you are doing CPU intensive task, ivy bridge won't be outdated for 4-5 years lol. And if you are doing CPU intensive task, this isn't the right device for you. When talking about the GPU, that's another story.

Also, the battery is removable on the UX32VD, so I won't be surprised if some after market batteries showed up in a few months.

Lastly, I would say an SSD upgrade is more of a "real" upgrade than any other hardware upgrade. The huge performance increase provides a much snappy-er everyday experience. At some point, a CPU upgrade can only be seen in CPU intensive task, but the upgrade from a mechanical HDD to an SSD can be seen all the time.

 

My sleep works perfectly. If you have installed an SSD you should disable hibernation.

 

I'm sure the battery can be replaced in the 31A as well but like with Apple you have to send it to them to have it done. Otherwise the PC wouldn't be worth 2 cents as batteries die all the time and usually for no apparent reason.

 

I usually put my UX32VD to sleep manually before closing the machine. I use fn-F1 (Zz) to do this.

I got out of the habit of just closing the machine when I was working with one that always messed up if you closed it while is was shutting down (it would sleep or hibernate depending on some internal rule). This could result in the battery running down when I thought it was off. Now, I like to make sure it's asleep (or off) before I close it.

 

I don't want to pull this too off-topic, but not all SS9s have SanDisk SSDs. I'm waiting to see what the A04US has but the other international versions of the 256GB / i7 that we've heard about don't have the SanDisk.

 

This. The battery is not 'user-replaceable' if thats what he meant. If it wasnt replaceable at all, then it would be one of the most redundant and worthless piece of technological garbage.

 

I agree completely. You'll be fine with a 128GB harddrive. People often overestimate the size of their needs... Unless you are planning on storing lots of video on it, you'll be perfectly fine. Even a healthy amount of music and photos will still survive perfectly fine for you.

The upgrade he was talking about was a 128GB SSD to a larger SSD. My only point was that that wasn't really an "upgrade" and wouldn't extend the life of the laptop all that much. He had already upgraded the RAM, and the mechanical HDD to SSD, so this was the base state, pre-future upgrade.

Everything else you said I agree with completely. If it's 4-5 years for the UX31A, it'd be 4-5 years for the UX32VD. I don't think any one of these second generation Zenbooks will have any longer usable life than any other second generation Zenbook as the usable life of most laptops is built into what you buy on Day 1, via Motherboard+CPU, anything else is just to metaphorically just to stretch your arms a bit, but that's about it.

It is still a person or user opening it up by hand and replacing it by hand though, even when the manufacturer does it. If it can be done by them, then a qualified individual can do it themselves as well. I wouldn't recommend this to any joe-schmoe that buys one, but I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the users that found their way to this forum are more tech savvy then the average consumer. Just requires opening it up and getting the part number yourself when that times comes.

 

Just the new ones do..the ones using third generation processors..I saw three of them in the MS store yesterday and they all had Sandisk SSDs.

I will get my new 31A tomorrow as Amazon got a new shipment in today. I can't wait to see if anything as changed. I could jave lived with the bleed I had on my second as it was almost non-existent. Unfortunately that one had a bad graphics chip and the first one couldn't stay connected to the net, WIDI or bluetooth so I guess that had a bad adapter. This will be my last one way or another.

 

So, I have decided that I am probably keeping the UX31A I have. The light bleed is minimal and barely noticeable when anything else is going on. Even dark movies, I ran it through its paces last night.

The laptop is just beautiful though. Maybe I got a better version that others in terms of the bleed? I don't know. I am usually pretty picky about quality and it passes my eye test perfectly fine. I've spent a lot of time trying to make myself unhappy with the bleed to a point where it is worth taking it back and I just can't.

 

saw here that a new bios is out at NBTSD-ASUSTreiber.de ( UX31AAS.209.zip and UX32VDAS.207.zip)

 

Read my post again. The Ivy Bridge, yes, but the US 256 GB version (not the 128GB version you saw, which is hit or miss SanDisk). It just showed up available at one online retailer last week and hasn't made it to the Microsoft store.

It's the model in my signature if it helps. The posters in the SS9 thread might be able to give more insight.

 

What's the changelog for the new bios? Can't seem to find it anywhere ><

 

Well, that's an interesting update. I'd make sure there is a US version or that the version numbering matches up on whatever is currently installed to other versions on that website.

 

if i knew i would've posted, sorry

 

For those that have been unhappy with the touchpad, I saw on the UX32VD driver page that a new touchpad driver called "ASUS Smart Gesture (Touchpad Driver)" was uploaded today. I am going to try this out later today, but thought others might be interested in the meantime too.

Will be interesting to see if this fixes he broken disable-while-typing functionality. Other than this function, I'm actually fairly happy with the trackpad performance.

 

Thanks, updated mine without issues. So far I have not had any issues with the fans spinning up on light usage like I used to. So hopefully they did some tuning...

 

Seems to work great, no more issues when hitting the touchpad while typing

Thanks!!

 

Ah, nice, thanks for the driver page link. Was able to use it to get to the UX31A section. They have the touchpad driver listed and updated on 7/12/2012 (today) as well, but the BIOS's listed are just the 204 and 206 versions.

I'm hesitant to try the 209 version someone linked earlier since it is on the German site and all.

 

Updated to BIOS 2.07 and Touchpad Driver on my 32VD, didn't notice any difference other than higher sensitity for the mouse pointer and scrolling of the browser page even when fingers are lifted when you gave it a twirl. But this might have been there before, don't know. The BIOS update did not slow down the system bootup in my case. Will have to do some further tests to see if it improved the fan on-off behaviour after sleep.

 

I just installed Smart Gesture, and now I don't have the annoying touch pad action while typing, but now my scrolling up and down is not working. Is anybody else experiencing that?

EDIT:

Reinstalling software has corrected my lack of scrollability :ㅇ

 

Can anyone tell me if with the 1080p resolution, if setting up vertical split coding window is usable?

Thanks!

 

Don't see why not, on any screen...

 

Why wouldn't it be?

 

When I say "usable" I mean to ask if the line width allowed for about 70 characters for each split window.

 

It would be identical to any other 1920x1080 screen, whether it is 13.3 inches or 27 inches.

 

Thanks. Please excuse my ignorance. I'm coming from an 8 year old Thinkpad T41 with a resolution of 1024x768 and that is definitely not wide enough for vertical split windows!