Ivy Bridge Zenbook with FHD IPS screen UX21A UX31A UX32A UX32VD

Me too but careful with returns. Amazon has and will ban you for excessive high-ticket returns. Google for more info. They were rampant in 2008, but seemed to have cooled off lately. I got a call from them about 8 months ago asking why I had so many "reasons" on my account (returns).

I have spent over $35k at Amazon since 2000. I pointed out that my return rate was 4% (after downloading a report and doing the math). I asked them how that was remotely excessive. They backed off but it made me nervous.

 

If it helps, I've been split between the UX31A-DB71 and the Samsung Series 9 NP900X3C-A01US for over a month. I ordered the SS9 yesterday, partly because of better form factor, partly because of better quality.

 

Im using express cache, stock config win7. It does it resume from sleep and resume from hibernate. The only time it doesnt do it is on a fresh boot. It does it in both the entertainment and power save profiles.

So right now im always shutting it down and booting from scratch so its a 30sec until use instead of instant... kinda defeating the purpose.

 

When its working correctly after a clean boot its silent until it gets a load then only spins up sufficient to cool then returns to idle. It never maxes out.

After a resume it maxes out full speed... sounds louder than my g73sw gaming notebook. While silent fits in well at meetings with the tablet folks, the loud fan noise is distracting and draws attention so i won't use it in meetings. At home, its just plain annoying that every min its cycling up to max, finally gets back down to quiet then 15seconds later kicks in at max again.

Besides the sound issues and the fact that its not how its supposed to work, all that fan activity is sapping battery life.

 

I like the series 9 but its kinda pricy. for the $1350 range its tempting to go 1599 for a sony Z series, but since this is a 2nd notebook for me since my asus g73 never leaves my desk anymore I can't justify much over 1k.

 

If you have a chance to meet one in store, you'll realise what you're paying for - impeccable build quality, beautiful form factor, and impressive thinness. It won me over.

 

So I did a completely fresh OS install on my VD and reinstalled all drivers. Does anyone have any suggestions for software (ie. drivers) that I should install on my laptop to help make the touchpad better, or other parts of the laptop.

 

I'm not as technically saavy as many of you so I'm asking for a little help. I would love to start with a clean OS install.

I don't even know exactly how to reinstall Windows 7. Obviously no disc came with the Zenbook so how exactly will I authenticate it? Also there is some discussion about the partition and also rapid start and the usb3 drivers. Can someone please post a short guide for us old timers?

Thanks!

The one that I purchased from Amazon unfortunately had a Sandisk drive in it and some noticeable small bleed spots at the bottom of the screen.

 

Best Buy Canada recently got in the UX32A-DB32.. Which is the same as DB31 but with 6GB of RAM.
Here: http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product...spx?path=4e092cb85c510923c201b12d30259513en02

I'm looking into purchasing this. Any input?

 

i3? I'm glad I didn't wait until they came out with these before jumping on my SS9.

 

Yeah but you paid $1300, could have paid $1100 and gotten a UX31A, which gives better overall specs and value, for less.
On the other hand, I'm looking for something to last 2-4 years, so don't want to spend too much, and $800 +tax is good.

 

Specs aren't everything.

 

I finally saw one of these in a local Microcenter... really nice.... a great improvement over last year's rookie ultrabook.

I'm still not liking only 2 USB and that you have to use dongles for HDMI and VGA but the HD res on the screen and the addition of backlighted keyboard is a big upgrade.

But I think I'm going to wait to see what the Acer S7 looks like... the touchscreen and fold flat design looks interesting and although it doesn't have dedicated hm/end/pg keys... at least it has pg keys.

 

That has the extremely slow Sandisk SSD..the same one that was in the original UX31. No idea why they stopped using their own SSDs in this go around. It also has slow ram. It didn't seem worth the price. They have also had their own build quality issues. All you have to do is look at the customer reviews on Amazon for a sampling.

 

OK guys, I picked up my Asus UX32VD from the post office this morning.

First impression: Great looking machine, great build quality, excellent screen.

Also, a load of bloatware installed so I think I'll try the W7 on the iSSD. Unfortunately my iSSD is a Sandisk and not an Adata drive so it's slower but do you think it's still worth it to install W7 on it?

Can't detect any noticeable flex in the keyboard, screen doesn't seem to suffer from backlight bleed. There was no bleeding during boot of W7 and furthermore I tried Prometheus 1080-trailer (lots of dark) at highest screen brightness (which should provoke light bleed, right? and I couldn't detect any bleed at all.

edit: Touchpad seems nice but I feel it gets "pushed down" on presses more than expected. (never owned MB Pro/Air/Laptop with similar integrated buttons) I understand that it should get depressed some due to the nature of pressing down on it, but how much should that be?

 

There is no ADATA iSSD on the UX32VD, all of them are SanDisk. Don't worry about performance. If you don't plan to upgrade to an SSD, than moving it to the iSSD will be your best bet.

 

Thanks for the reply, electro_chef.

I would like to upgrade to SSD but I think I'll wait maybe a year for 512gb SSD prices to drop even further down as I would like to just have one disk and not rely on external HDD for anything but backup. So I guess I'll do the installation to the iSSD for a quite nice improvement in readspeed but not so much for the writespeeds.

 

Hi everyone,

You all seem to be very satisfied with your new Zenbook while I'm still stuck with my wifi problem as described in another post here :
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/678302-asus-ux32vd-wifi-problem.html

Anyone has an idea on how to solve this ?

thanks in advance !
Sam

 

I've been following this for a while, waiting for my UX32VD to arrive. A couple thoughts:
-Very minimal screen bleed
-Happy overal with the iSSD, a little slow after booting into windows to when I have a useable chrome window, but that's just processes that I need to look into and streamline
-I have some keyboard flex around the J key, but only when I press extremely hard, no issues when I type
-haven't tested wifi speed but it seems fine
-pretty happy with the overall build quality of the machine, just a lot of $$ for a laptop

One question: I just invested a chunk of change into this and would like to protect it. I looked around briefly for a case, like a speck one for the macbook airs? All I could see were matte decals which doesn't do much in actual protection, as it is a superficial barrier. Would the ux31e cases work?

 

Have the UX32VD, updated with the Samsung SSD and 8GB DIMM from Patriot D11.

Noticing the WINDOWS and Screens i have open, like 2 powerpoint files, just feels sluggish. This is also confirmed by the windows scores of 5 on graphics. All the other scores are very high, anyone know what could be the culprit?

Earlier someone mentioned having the 8GB and 2GB RAM defaults to single channel vs dual channel, would this cause the sluggish window screens?

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3517U CPU @ 1.90GHz 7.1 5.0
Determined by lowest subscore

Memory (RAM) 10.0 GB 7.4
Graphics Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 5.0
Gaming graphics 1696 MB Total available graphics memory 6.3
Primary hard disk 190GB Free (238GB Total) 7.9

 

I have Graphics Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 6,3, all the others are the same except for the hd which I'm using the sdd on the mobo instead of a Samsung SSD. Check your power settings/gfx settings and make sure you aren't throttling your Intel GFX card.

 

My intel 4000 WEI score shot down too after upgrading to the SSD, uprgrading RAM (corsair cl10) and re installing windows and using the drivers from the ASUS site. I checked my power profile and didn't see anything relevant that could be causing the issue in the intel settings.Could it be the CL10 ram lowering the speed to 1333mhz?

GENERAL QUESTION: Does anyone who actually reinstallled windows, upgraded ram AND upgraded to an SSD actually have a score of 6.3+ for the intel graphics?

 

I'll let you know how things go when I get my UX32VD. I am going to upgrade to 10GB RAM, Samsung 830 256GB, and make a ASUS recovery disk. I could do a clean install of Win7, but I would rather make some recovery disks and uninstall bloat after.

 

Hey guys i'm new to this forum, but i read a lot on the fan issue. Is there a fix for this? I just received my ux31a yesterday with the adata ssd, and minimum backlight bleeding.

 

Hello.
I just received my UX32VD-R4002V (Denmark) earlier today.
I have been reading a lot about the issues on this thread and I don't have come across any bad ones... yet.
The screen is very great - no bleed (perhaps a few millimeters when maxed if you look extremely closely)
No keyboard flex at all -But I do prefer the one in Asus u36jc.
The touchpad isn't that great -like many have written about before. Worse is the difference in sensitivity when i go up/down compared to when moving to the sides. I hope this is a driver issue, because it's a bit annoying.
One of the four feet under the laptop doesn't seem to contact the table completely, (this is probably due to tightening the screws wrong from the fabric - ill change the harddrive to a SSD, that might fix it?) This really isn't a problem, just mentioning it to be thorough.
The speakers sounds great. First thing I did was to play the Avatar trailer in fullHD and max volume - very nice indeed.
Going to spend this weekend to test the rest out, like installing D3 to see if the graphic is okay and testing the different ports. Then I'll order the Samsung 830 SSD and some more RAM, because the hard drive seems a bit slow IMO. Thx for all the great posts guys!

 

I can't stand XoticPC. Ordered last Thursday morning only because I was told by multiple reps that they had the laptop in ample stock.

I've been asking for the past few days if there is any way I could get the laptop more quickly. They said it would be $119 for 1 day shipping. A complete rip off, but I said fine.

And now today... 5 minutes ago I get an e-mail from them saying that the laptop is out of stock.

Thanks a lot. :/

 

IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO ALL UX32VD OWNERS:

Since yesterday, new Touchpad and ATKACPI drivers came out, and also a new LiveUpdate utility. Please test them and let us know if the fan-behaviour and mousepad behaviour has improved or not.

Downloads for UX32VD
Run Asus Livepudate if you installed it (or if you have the factory Win7 installation), if not: then go to Utilities, download ATKACPI, and go to Touchpad and download the new driver.

I'm waiting for your feedback, guys.

 

nm..I just realized you may not have it.

 

What's the word on UX31A SSD's from MicroCenter? All ADATA SandForce or some reports of SanDisk?

 

I had 2 from microcenter. Both with ADATA Sandforce drives. They went back for other reasons.

 

Anyone experiencing... creeping bleed on their ux31a?

When I got this one (my 3rd) there was no bleed at all... then there was a little and after about a week of use theres alot. Now it ranks up there with the worst bleed unit I had. I can only imaging what it will be like if it keeps getting worse.

So is anyone else seeing their bleed get worse over time?

 

Actually, I had the opposite! There was moderate light bleed along the bottom edge and after two days it seriously diminished to the point where there's almost none. Perhaps the glue finally set that holds the display?

 

Backlight bleed? Fan issues?

 

Has anyone noticed that if you idle on the desktop, the screen becomes more washed out? I noticed the taskbar and the icons got really weird.


EDIT: Display contrast reduced while on battery mode on ... - Lenovo Community

 

I've actually read a few posts where people said their bleed got better with time, too.

Unfortunately for me, it was the opposite. Or at least it seemed that way. On first boot, it looked like the bleed was only in two or three places. Over the course of a week, it seemed like it grew to cover nearly the entire bottom and right side of the screen. Not sure if it really did get worse, or if my ability to ignore the problem diminished over the course of the week. I know at least that it certainly didn't get any better for me.

Regardless, I shipped it to Asus the other day to get the problem fixed. Hopefully they'll take care of it.

 

Both of my microcenter units had backlight bleed... I think its nearly universal with these things. Its a real shame too.

I'm having fan issues with the 3rd one (from best buy) and newly creeping backlight bleed.

 

In my case... its definitely getting worse with time. This one (my 3rd) didn't have any bleed when i bought it but is getting worse daily.

 

Maybe a weird question, but is there any way to further turn down the brightness of the the UX31A display? It's too bright in a dark room, IMO.

 

Use the Nvidia or Intel brightness and contrast adjustments.

 

That did the trick. And any way to improve scaling? Seems to suck in Chrome. Firefox might do it alright. Seems to scale okay with I use the 2 finger gesture to make things larger. But I don't see a setting in the options to keep in zoomed in.

IE seems to scale okay, but it's IE. Would rather use Chrome. Or FF if need be.

 

I'm not sure what the ATKACPI driver was supposed to do, but the first time I restarted, a bunch of error messages came up, the next time I restarted everything seemed to be back up and running.

As for the "Smart Gesture" software, blech! I'm going back to the last Elan drivers. Seems like Asus has added some horrible cursor acceleration and inertial scrolling, neither of which work very well.

 

Agreed, I uninstalled Smart Gesture and reinstalled the Elantech driver. All of my settings and the three finger middle click registry tweak still work fine. Honestly, once I disabled inertial scrolling, tweaked a couple of settings and added the middle click drop-down, I really have no complaints with the Elantech driver.

For those wondering, the new Smart Gesture still didn't add (at least I didn't see it) an option to disable the touchpad while typing.

 

Thankfully the bb nearest to my job has a ux31a in stock, so on Monday hopefully the box can tell me if its the adata or not

 

So my few day old UX31A just decided to shut down immediately while I was working on an important document.

What's with that? I have a Lenovo X230 sitting here in the box and I am trying not to open it (I can return it with no restocking) but if this Zenbook keeps this shutting down up, I may not have a choice.

Anyone else have this happen? No rhyme or reason. Just a dead shutdown (immediately turns off with no shutdown sequence).

I'm stock. Battery full (and plugged into the wall).

 

That sounds like a hardware issue; no software would be able to bypass the Windows shutdown sequence. Something like a power cutout.

Either return or service.

 

Hey,

How are the temperatures on the UX32VD while gaming on maximum and low settings? While casually browsing what are the temperatures in key spots such as the bottom (if placed on the lap), the keyboard, the touchpad, palm rests. And how is the fan noise during casual use, gaming, etc.?

I'm concerned because the UX32VD uses rebranded Fermi chips with a TDP of 35 watts versus newer chips such as the GT 640M-LE, which uses Kepler architecture and has a TDP of only 17 watts.

Thanks!

 

I'm not the only one with random shutdowns:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...ux21a-ux31a-ux32a-ux32vd-250.html#post8714893

This genuinely concerns me. I want to avoid a return/exchange because my unit is perfect except this...

 

Any help with these? I would also like to know how to format and do a clean install of Windows on the UX31A

 

What's a good replacement charger for the UX31A? I am not sure whether to trust the ones on eBay. I would prefer original, but they appear to be $100 on Amazon. Any other options? Asus doesn't sell them?

 

I'm going to join the people who'd love someone who knows what they're doing to explain how to do a fresh install on the UX31A. There are a few partitioning things which are confusing the hell out of me (GPT v MBR?) and I'm not sure what I need to do with USB and wifi drivers. I've done a lot of research, but can't possibly get myself feeling confident enough to actually brave anything.

Thanks in advance,
Liam