Ivy Bridge Zenbook with FHD IPS screen UX21A UX31A UX32A UX32VD

Of course not. I wasn't suggesting a massive issue, but there are certainly units with this issue as reported on this forum. Granted this is a minuscule sample size of reality, but it does suggest it's not isolated to a single "lemon" machine.

Either way, I'm sure most if not all users will never experience a random shutdown. It's just the fact that it is an issue with some machines that makes me wonder how prevalent it is worldwide.

 

You need to feel comfortable with it of course. I don't blame you for not wanting to deal with the RMA route either. No sense in being paranoid for the life of the machine.

 

I been following this thread for quite some time already & finally got my UX31A few days ago. Display is just purely awesome & my unit got minimum backlight bleed. Honestly that dosent even bother me a little since i dont even notice in normal usage, not sure why everyone is complaining about it though. Perfectionist perhaps? But i do agree for the price that we are paying there shouldnt be any issue at all!

Secondly it came with a sandisk ssd & its my first ssd so i am not so sad that i didnt get the Adata ssd. I did a fresh install of win 7 & optimize my ssd so now i got about 90gb free space compare to 60gb when i first got it out of the box. Plus the boot time improved from 17sec to 14sec.

Thirdly i admit the touchpad is bad but after using it for couple of days & playing around with some settings it isnt that bad except for scrolling. Asus smart gesture driver is quite good or am i adapting to it? But they could have made it better & i am guess there will be a better driver since asus label the current version as "beta".

Didnt encounter any random shutdown so far which is good news & i like it but disappointed with their touchpad. Thats my only problem with it & none with what most of you guys reports because its not really a serious issue. Yes i did get the fan issue when i first unbox it but after flashing to the newer bios that issue occurred once only after that but i kept my zenbook to sleep & woke it up so many times already. But it isnt a issue even if the issue occurs because i found a solution to it. Just close your lid & let it to sleep & reopen it. The issue goes away like that for me which takes 2sec only.

Awesome laptop overall if touchpad gets fixed.

 

And the other 40% of the time it works all the time.

 

I have an old x61 (not tablet) and it is one of the best laptops I have ever owned. The battery hasn't worked in years but I just can't see buying a new one. I keep thinking about the u300S but I need a backlit keyboard and don't believe that has one. I would also like to see one up close before ordering it.

 

I have this same issue too. One thing I've noticed, if I do FN+F2 it will say "all wireless devices disabled" or something along those lines. The bluetooth is disabled fine, but the wireless will not disable until you either log off/on windows, or come in and out of sleep mode.

Turning it back on with the function key requires no restart (wifi + BT).

You will want 1 8gb SODIMM with preferably CL11 timing so the memory doesn't drop to 1333mhz.

 

Does the UX31A have vents across the bottom like the UX32VD? How about T5 screws? I thought the different construction meant no screws.

 

Sounds like you both did clean installs and didn't reinstall everything that's needed.

 

I had a UX32VD that I was pretty happy with, but it had some pretty bad blacklight bleed in one area, so I set it back to Newegg last week. Well now it seems that its out of stock EVERYWHERE (except for a few places that have questionable return policies or a no-returns-allowed policy). Anyone know what the heck is going on?

 

They are popular and selling faster than demand. They were OOS everywhere last week as well.

 

Once I switched to the Elantech driver I no longer had any problems with the touchpad. Add touchfreeze and you've got yourself a good trackpad I'd say.

Drivers for touchpad can be found here: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download Touchpad

Keep in mind asus update utility will think it needs to update to smart gesture drivers however I just chose not to install them. Elantech is far superior.

I followed the guide located on this Asus forum, even installed some other things on top of what was in the guide. There is just nothing left to really install other then bloatware. Got any ideas?

 

You will need to install "ASUS Wireless Console 3" for FN+F2 to work as intended.

 

I tried a UX31A out today. I'd say my major complaints about the trackpad were (1) I seemed to click it down or something while I was typing a couple times and it messed up my text, and (2) I actually had a heck of a time trying to just do things like open the control panels and adjust a few things. Got errant clicks and imprecision. I assume these sorts of things are alleviated to some degree by adjusting settings and/or using different drivers. I don't care about multitouch support; I just intend to use the trackpad for basic point and click. Which driver is better, assuming I am concerned with having some functionality that'll filter out palm movement?

Also, it seemed like the unit was using some sort of dynamic dimming function. Is there a way to disable it?

 

I did this and now my FN+F2 keys will only enable/disable Wifi. I have no ability to enable bluetooth with the function keys, only by using the utility and clicking on it to enable it.

Honestly, I'd rather this. I will never use bluetooth so having it disabled all the time is fine to me. The ability to control wifi is invaluable to me.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download Touchpad

Download and install the latest Elantech driver from that page.

touchfreeze - Utility for Windows to disable touchpad automatically while you are typing text - Google Project Hosting

Download and install touchfreeze. This disables the pad while you're typing.

This combination works flawless for me.

 

Newer drivers definitely work much better. I would use both drivers and then make a decision for yourself. In regards to the automatic brightness -- yes, it can be disabled.

 

What is a dynamic dimming function?

 

i tried that & went back with asus drivers since i feel that is much better. Touchfreeze just dosent work as good as the asus palm detection feature. That is what i experience...others might have different view on this.

 

Sorry for the off-topic but power users use the start menu this way :

Press Windows Key, type a few letters, enter.

No time to grab that damn mouse !

 

I'd have to agree, to the point that I use the search heavily to find apps. Often click from the items chosen though.

That said, I've been using windows since... v1.03a and the UI changes from time to time so I'm sure i'll adapt to win8 as well.

 

Just wanted to give my input regarding the backlight bleed issue for the new Zenbooks. For me, I can deal with a bit of backlight bleed -- it's not that much of an issue, since you don't notice it unless it's on a dark or black screen. My UX31a from Best Buy when I first purchased it had some backlight bleed, but it was pretty acceptable to me (Although I would say I probably had more than many people in these forums would be willing to accept). In any case, over the last couple days, it has gotten noticeably worse. there is backlight bleeding all across the bottom, most of both sides, and in three of the four corners -- with one corner having backlight bleed going a few inches into the center of the screen. I haven't seen many photos of others backlight bleed issues, but I would be willing to bet mine now has one of the worst instances. I am pretty sure it has to deal wit how the screen was attached to the cover. Not only that, but so far I also got one instance of the fan cycling issue as well. This is completely unacceptable for a machine at this price.

I might wait until Best Buy has more in stock (there are none in stock at the moment at any of the 7 Best Buys in the area), but I'm highly considering just returning it and getting the Samsung Series 9 instead (even though I would be giving up a 1080p screen and will have to shell out almost $200 more). I may also wait and get the UX32VD variant that has the 500GB hard drive (where I would upgrade the RAM and swapping the HD for an SSD), hoping that I get a screen with an acceptable amount of backlight bleed). My only hesitation however with getting a UX32VD is that I have heard reports that it can get almost an hour less battery life than the UX31A under similar use -- can anybody confirm this? (FYI, I want to know the avg. battery life for the UX32VD in doing things like web surfing, using Word, etc., where the discrete graphics are not used at all). Thanks for your input.

 

What you hit on is the biggest fear I have in trying another of these. The bleed may be acceptable when you get it but what will it be like in a few weeks, a few months or a day after the warranty runs out and you can't even send it back to ASUS. People can poo-poo the problems with these all they want but they are real and they are widespread.

 

Hmm, this is kind of interesting, to see how different the consumer laws are in different countries.

In Norway, through the law on consumers (directly translated..) we have on every item purchased as a consumer a two year time to state a claim. On items which are supposed to last longer than two years, PCs fall under this category, you have 5 years to state a claim. I would say with a 99% chance that even after three of four years of having this PC a claim on backlight bleed, if it turned real bad, would go through and the retailer would have to give you a new laptop.

Now this is in a way EU-law codified in the EEA, so from my understanding it should be about the same for all EU-states. (I haven't properly researched this though...)

Anyhow, thanks for the tip on the Elantech-driver. Scrolling on the smart gesture-driver was a bit choppy but now on the elantech-driver it's fluid and nice.

And btw the fan on my UX32VD sometimes just cycles up for a few seconds and then cycles down. Anyone here experiencing that? The temperatures are quite low, around 45-50 celcius, so I see no reason for it spinning up. It's audible but not loud at all.

 

Well i received my UX32VD today. Updated all the windows and ASUS live updates that i got offered. First 2 things i checked was the lightbleed and that fan noice after returning from sleep.

There is some lightbleed, but it is only noticable if you go black screen . I also put the brightness on max. I took a pic of it with my camera phone so not the best quality. It actually looks worse on the picture, than when i look it myself.
http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/3534/asusux32vdlightbleed.jpg

I also tested the fan thing by closing the lid of the laptop 4 times and opening it and logging back in. When it resumes from sleep the fan kicks in and spins for a while, but seems the spinning is exactly the same as when i restart the laptop. It aint very loud and i can only hear it when i put my ear on my laptop. When it spins for a while it stops.

There doesn't seem to be any pattern that it would keep spinning, only when i start to do something a bit more heavy, like watching youtube vids etc it might start spinning again. So seems i dont have the fan problem, or if i have, the spinning aint loud at all and i cant hear it.

 

I went to a Microsoft Store today to check out the UX31A (and also went to the Apple Store to check out the Macbook Air).

First thing I noticed was that the screen was indeed amazing. The resolution, IPS technology, framing, and matte display all made it look absolutely gorgeous. Even after I set the DPI back down to 100%, text was still very readable. I wanted it then and there, it was awesome.

As for the SSD, it was listed as a Sandisk in the device manager. Eh...

The keyboard was nice and I had no trouble typing on it. The only issue I thought of was the fact that the power button was right above the backspace key in the upper right corner. That was where I was use to having the delete key, and I could imagine myself hitting it a lot by accident. I guess I would have to be careful if I was trying to delete something quickly.

Next came trying out the touchpad. Where to begin... I noticed right from the beginning that I was having trouble scrolling up and down. One issue was the surface itself, since my fingers didn't seem able to move over the surface smoothly, like I could with the Macbook Air. My fingers were making little bumps up and down as I was trying to scroll them. Not horrendous since I could really focus and try to make it them glide more, but still not good. Next was the fact that the touchpad driver/software just couldn't do was I was trying to input. Every time I tried to scroll, it would zoom in and out all over the place. It was really annoying, so I disabled zooming with the Elan software. This didn't help anything. Every time I even placed two fingers on the touchpad, it would still erratically zoom in and out. I was dumbfounded and had no idea what else I could do to prevent it from doing this. Three finger gestures up and down seemed to work ok, but they didn't really have much use (go to desktop and switch between windows). Three finger gestures from side to side were supposed to page up and page down, but sometimes they were still randomly zooming in and out. I kept sitting there for a while trying to figure it out, but eventually just gave up.

My old Asus had the regular old small touchpad with scrolling along the side of the pad and separate left and right buttons. This was perfect and all I ever needed. Now that they're trying to use giant all-in-one touchpads, they should at least be able to make it work. Nevermind the fact that clicking and dragging is much harder without a separate button to hold down while you move the cursor with the touchpad. I couldn't even get this new touchpad to scroll properly, and if it did work it was slow and jerky. If I can't use the touchpad, it doesn't matter how good the rest of the hardware is. I was actually angry about how bad the touchpad was working. I really wanted to like it and wouldn't really care if it only had bad palm rejection. Has anyone else had issues like this and was able to resolve them?

I guess now I'll have to figure out how well Windows works on a Macbook Air. I need to get a new laptop for school soon, and all these issues are making me want to kill myself.

 

Is there a firm release date for the UX21A in the U.S.? What's taking so long?

 

All I can tell you is you better look really close at that apple keyboard before you decide how well windows plays on it. I am looking at this and the Samsung S9 because after a year running windows on a MBA I still can't live with the apple keyboard.

 

Possible opportunity for expandable storage via SD slot: The Nifty MiniDrive by niftydrives — Kickstarter

 

I know exactly what your talking about with mac keyboards. I couldnt resist the macbook pro unibody when it came out, it looked so cool and the specs were great. I program for a living, do alot of typing and all I can say is between the layout issues (ctrl, delete, backspace, alt mainly) and the front edge being sharp enough to cut into you... that was the most unproductive 15 months of my adult life.

The air models are at least in a wedge so they won't slit your wrists but the keyboard is a no go for me.

 

Have the dimensions of a UX31A/UX32VD ?

 

we must have gone to the same store (santa clara?). i couldn't figure out that zoom issue either. that was very weird. for now i am blaming it on internet explorer i still picked one up though after seeing how much better the screen is compared to the samsung series 9.

the MS store 20% off plus a free xbox is just too good to pass up right now.

 

one of the reasons i ditched the MBA. no forward delete button, no end/home, and what you would do with the control key in windows (ie, ctrl-x, ctrl-arrows, etc) seemed to be mapped randomly to 3 different buttons on the MBA (control, command, or alt). i tried to remap all the keys so that it was consistent to windows machines but could never get it right.

 

Well, I had pretty much convinced myself to keep my ux31a, even though its a best buy model with higher voltage ram and in spite of it having the sandisk u100 drive. Afterall, it only had minimal light bleed and its fan worked as expected, what more should we ask for right. Then today I worked on a dark photo and noticed that the bleed looked alot worse... so I switched to high contrast black theme and sure enough the center of the screen is kinda blotchy now and the bleed at the edges is brighter and extends further. So its definitely getting worse with time, this is my second one to do this.

Then I thought about it from a different angle, three months from now machines will be shipped with windows 8 where the primary metro interface is application blocks on a dark or black background. That tells me that in 3 months shipping machines with light bleed won't be nearly as easy to get away with and it also tells me that anyone with a ux31a bought now that upgrades to Win 8 in the fall will be disappointed by their display daily.

Since I develop for windows and will be supporting windows 8, I'll be running it. So that track of thought pretty much put any thoughts of keeping a ux31a or exchanging until i get one with minimal bleed out of my head.

I haven't seen any with no bleed, only minimal bleed that in two cases ive seen got worse over time. So as beautiful as the screen is all lit up, its not a good solution for me long term.

So, My UX31a (4th one) is going back for a return.

If I find a ux31e or ux21e on clearance somewhere cheap I may pick it up to hold me over.

 

Hi,

I've had my UX32-VD for some weeks now, and I'm pretty satisfied.

However, today I discovered that my unit might have some problems with it's integred Sandisk i100 SSD. I can't find it in Windows Disk Management, or SIW, CPU-Z or HWiNFO32 as I can see.

Here is a Print Screen showing 3 different programs indicating the iSSD is either defect or just don't mounted:


Do anyone have any suggenstions for how I can solve this on my own, without having to send in the unit? Because I really don't want all the efford with reinstalling everything on a new unit....

 

The screen is different than the Samsung S9 but not necessarily better. Both are IPS, the Samsung is true matte and the ASUS is not. Color reproduction is better on the Samsung and resolution better on ASUS.

 

Can you confirm this? I heard it isn't stackable? Its either just an xbox or 20% off?

 

After testing an Asus UX32VD for weeks, I can also confirm the backlight bleed spread to other areas of the screen (sides and spread inwards) and became worse over time. Plus, my UX32VD has HORRENDOUS VIDEO TEARING problems during any video with fast movement, like combat sports. I returned it.

 

No, different store, I was in NJ, hah. But yeah, it was happening in internet explorer, I'm not so sure about other applications. I don't know what the driver version was, I forgot to check in the device manager, but I was changing the settings through the Elan software.

 

Is the UX32VD available anywhere? You can't even order the thing through newegg anymore. Amazon is back-ordered. Xoticpc still hasn't received their shipment. I wonder if demand for this thing is really high, or is Asus pulling the plug on this model after so many complaints?

 

confirmed, i was in store today (santa clara ca) and got both 20% off and an xbox

 

the samsung screen looked terrible if it was not pointed right at you. i thought it was the newest models but maybe it wasn't

 

Ok I will definitely visit the store before Sunday, I think it ends Sunday. I will refer back to the Santa Clara store. Even though I am not in the market for i7, but I will get since it give me an xbox plus 20% off! If they have UX32VD by then it be even better!

 

Took some measurements and these are still too big. On the UX31A, there is a touch over 15mm (15.08mm) based on my inaccurate measurements that gets inserted into the slot. The smallest one of these is 24mm, so it will still stick out about 9mm.

It would physically fit, just still stick out.

 

The 15 inch Samsung series 9 doesn't have PLS (IPS equivalent) LCD panel that's why its viewing angles and color reproduction are not as good as Zenbooks.
Get the 13.3 models, X3B or X3C.

 

I Austin, TX, no dice with the 20% off and xbox. Only one or the other not stackable.

 

BestBuy has it available for order.

Check my previous post regarding some hands-on experience.

 

Asus' quality control is as always excellent.... :/

The physical power button is slightly loose. Only problem is that if I send it back they will probably use a while to repair it or send me a new PC so I'm not sure I CBA to do so. Anyone else with loose buttons? The rest of the keyboard is as it should be so no problem there.

 

Maybe that was the first generation or the 15 inch. Only the 13.3 has the IPS display and you can look at it from almost 90 degrees from center and still see it clearly..much the same as with the ASUS.

Oh, and I just noticed somebody already said that.

 

They told me they only plan on carrying that one that have now.

 

If anyones interested that has a UX32vd, I opened her up today and repasted the CPU and GPU...reduced the temps a little. Less fan on/off cycling on the GPU. Photos of the i7 3517U and 620m GPU are included... My post is here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...87-asus-ux32vd-owners-lounge.html#post8755394

 

I asked them on their facebook page if this product will fit in the UX31A and they said it would not be flush.