Ivy Bridge Zenbook with FHD IPS screen UX21A UX31A UX32A UX32VD

When I first got the laptop, I burned the recovery DVDs. Then I switched out the RAM and SSD and restored the recovery from the DVDs, which of course installed all of Asus's applications.

From there I just widdled away the applications I don't need. I don't have any troubles with hotkeys not working or the wireless dropping; but I did notice the fan cycling repeatedly so I uninstalled the Intel Thermal Framework.

I also replaced the touchpad driver for the newer Elantech driver for the Samsung Series 9, but I'm not all that sure I like it (YMMV):

http://www.samsung.com/us/support/owners/product/NP900X3A-A03US

 

Yes, I'm almost 100% positive they will, you just have to register the laptop. Many retailers are not "asus authorized" but still have the coverage. Asus only lists sellers that do NOT qualify on their site (on the left hand side): Best Buy, Costco, Microsoft Store, Wal-mart, Staples, Office Depot, and OfficeMax.

 

Wait MS is not compatible with Asus accidental warranty?

 

Thank you for the feedback. ASUS has a list of their US Resellers. Here is the link ( ASUS Where to Buy - US).

 

Nope, hope the people that bought theirs there know that.

 

No wonder the rep tried to sell me 2 year warranty.

 

I had the EXACT same problem, just happened to me a few days ago.

Called ASUS and am sending it in for repairs....

 

I just ordered the UX32VD from Jittles. Their rep said that they are an authorized reseller for ASUS and manufacturer warranties should apply.
Their order confirmation e-mail did not include the product description. Weird.

 

Anyone else having their power adapter get hot after a bit while charging? Slightly worried here.

 

I haven't noticed it myself, on the UX31A, but I am not sure which model you are talking about.

 

The ux31a model I have does that. Sometimes the h,u,i keys would not really work but hold them for a 3 sec and they will be back. These two issues puzzle me.

 

That's not a problem...lots of laptops have chargers that get hot. Only worry if it melts.

 

I had an issue with the M key on my UX31a. Unlike all the other keys, the M could not be depressed all the way down. I pried the top of the key off (very carefully) and found after a little searching that there was a tiny screw stuck under the little white scissor-like thing that is underneath the key (I think it acts as the spring). Once I removed the screw, M was just fine. Of course, I don't know where the screw goes... That unit has already been exchanged for another reason and now I'm on number 3!

You might want to take a look underneath the space key. Just be very careful if you choose to pry it off.

 

Thanks for your reply... so just to check though, that means your space key definitely doesn't exist the same issue... and your B and N keys don't also slightly depress when you press the space bar?

 

holy cow does ASUS even do QC?

i've never seen so many different issues from owners before.

granted, the specs the zenbook offers for the price has definitely attracted a lot of owners, but it seems like asus is beta testing here.

 

Now my touchpad stopped working too. It actually was working intermittently out of the box (and doing the fn F9 toggle didn't help). I just did a complete reinstall of the system, and the touchpad's been working fine. But just about an hour ago, it stopped working again. I have no idea whether it's a hardware or software issue, though I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling drivers to no success.

Anyone else have this issue?

 

No; my B and N keys are okay and my space key seems fine as well.

 

I totally agree. I haven't had anything deal breaking on mine, but have had a few little things It sucks even more since, overall, it is such a nice ultrabook. If Asus would just spend a few extra dollars on QC, this would be the perfect ultrabook without question.

 

Hey guys, first off I haven't read all 372 pages of that MASSIVE thread, so please bear with me here if I'm asking questions that have already been answered.

So my local Future Shop (I'm in Canada lol) just recently got the UX31A DB51 (that's the i5 and 128GB SSD with the normal 4GB RAM and IPS display).

Now, I've read enough from that thread the know that the light bleed on this thing is supposedly terrible, and that there were some inconsistencies in the backlighting of the keyboard etc.

Now, having thoroughly gone around that machine from top to bottom, front to back, side to side (on separate days too), I just have a few questions I that I'm hoping you guys can help me answer.

1. The machine on display at my local Future Shop had NO light bleed AT ALL. None whatsoever. I checked the bottom right and left of the screen to see if I could see the lights and I couldn't, it look completely sealed. I put a black background on it and there was no light bleed visible there either (note the store did have it's lights on). So does only the UX32VD experience this backlight bleed or does the model on display somehow have a perfect screen?

2. The top of the keyboard close to hinge when I used it was getting pretty hot. I wasn't even doing anything on the computer either (I had just checked the WEI score and what SSD it had) and that part of the laptop was already pretty hot. Note that it probably has been on the whole day, but there was no heavy usage on the laptop. Heck it didn't even have the Wifi on so there was no internet. Is this normal for the UX31A? Can any owners post their findings on their own machine?

3. On the left hand side of the machine (the desktop is shown), when I rested my hand flat on that side (touching the keys gently), I could actually FEEL the vibrations of the fan spinning below it. I was there for seemingly 15 minutes holding my hand there (and trying not to look weird lol), and the fan just kept on turning. The computer was on the desktop. Is this some sort of a bug/problem or is this normal? I then checked how many processes were running and found 100. Holy that is a LOT of bloatware. Could that be the reason the fan is seemingly always on?

4. The trackpad. Feels nice, but the one they had on display was barely usable. I would try 2 finger scroll and I'd be able to scroll most of the time, except after I remove my 2 fingers from the trackpad the page I'm on would just zoom in to about 250%. I tried to zoom out using the trackpad and couldn't. This trackpad was horrendous. I tried to find where I could adjust the Elan Pad's settings but I couldn't find it anywhere on that machine.

Note: That virtual keyboard or whatever thing was turned on the whole time, maybe that was causing all of this? And just for reference, where does one find trackpad options/settings?

Anyway, I'd like to get a few owners' opinions on this trackpad. Is it really this bad?

5. SSD was a Sandisk U100 SSD. The S9 right next to it had the same exact SSD, yet the UX31A's rating was 7.5 while the S9 was 7.6. I didn't bother asking the Rep's if they had Adata SSD machines as I probably won't be buying from Canada. Does anyone know why the UX31A's SSD get's a slightly lower WEI score? And the same happened with the Graphics. UX31A is 5.9, S9 is 6.4, that difference is pretty big. Is the 1920*1080 IPS display the cause of the lower score or what?

And finally:

6. I'll be going to the US shortly, and was wondering which stores have discounts for the UX31A. I know Best Buy sells it, Microcenter does as well (I think?) anymore? But I would like to, if possible, get a discount or deal for the UX31A.

Any help answering these is GREATLY appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

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Have a thread open about this but thought I'd post it here anyway.

 

Hi all,

New to the forum and enjoy the thread and I hope this is posted in the right place.

Did anyone get the i7-3517UE processor @ 1.7GHz 2.8GHz as it's advertised on many of the seller sites with their Zenbook? I made my purchase of a UX31A-DB71 based on this advertised specification and I'm wondering why it was shipped with the i7-3517U processor @ 1.9GHz 3.0GHz. Would it be considered an upgrade? That's what my seller was saying when questioned but backed off on that and said that it was an error in Asus's marketing packet to them.

I realize it's faster and perhaps a little noticeable due to the UE supporting ECC memory but with them both clocking to 2.8 when needed, wouldn't the UE processor, having the benefit of dropping to 1.7GHz save a little battery? That's what I was thinking anyway.

 

Mine is the Intel Core i7-3517U CPU @ 1.90Ghz 2.40Ghz

 

The retailer telling you its an 'upgrade' just shows that the retailer had no idea and was hoping you were misinformed so they could just give you some answer you'd be happy with. They had no idea why and probably still continue to have no idea.

Second, no you are not losing out on some secret benefits. Intel processors are not idling at 1.7/1.9ghz. You have to keep in mind these processors are both idling at around 800mhz and move up in speed depending on the load presented on the machine. I never see my CPU at 1.9ghz. Its either idling at 800mhz or shoots up to the turbo boost speed at 3.0ghz for a moment to load whatever needed to load.

 

Just picked up a UX31A from NCIX today. Also experiencing some problems with the fan revving up and down continuously. Even just web browsing, it seems too eager to wick away the heat from the machine. A quick restart made it a little more tolerable but I'm going to try and delete the Intel Thermal Manager and see if that does any good. Hate to have to return such a great machine so quickly. Also, not seeing too much light bleeding. Nothing from the top or sides, just a bit that is noticeable near the bottom right in really dark scenarios. Will report back on any luck with the fan issue.

Also, does anyone notice any lag/stuttering when streaming through the micro hdmi slot. I had the machine hooked up and streaming a movie on a Sony 1080p LCD and the frame rate really wasn't quite up to par with what I was expecting. Not sure if it's the TV, micro hdmit cable, or machine :S

 

**Update**

So after a quick delete of the Intel Thermal Manager, it looks like it did nothing. There isn't any more of the ramping loud ups and downs that I was experiencing before, but regular web browsing still causes the fan to turn on. Now, it's just a more steady off, then on(normal fan speed), rotation that persists non-stop. As I think this is a regular issue with a lot of machines on here, I'm going to wait and see what a few commenters like yourselves have to say before returning it and trying out a new one.

Cheers boys, and let's all cross our fingers and hope that ASUS comes up with a solution to all our problems

 

More than likely it absolutely has bleed but you will never see it in a store with the lights on. Take it into a dark area and look again. And I had three UX31As and all of them had it. Some people have had it get much worse after a week or two as well and to me that was what scared me off for now.

Also my S9 gets 7.4. When you do a clean install of windows it gets 5.9. In my opinion 5.9 is the only correct reading.

 

Is the UX31a suppose to hibernate?

 

I figured I would give some feedback since this forum has given me some good information.

I received my Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A I7 (1.9GHz) with the 256 GB drive this week from Best Buy in Atlanta. I have been waiting for this laptop for two months now and BB just had them available this last week at their web site.

First I would like to say that this is one fine Laptop, exactly what I was looking for in a 13 inch. Its light has a backlit keyboard and the screen is beautiful. Everything else doesn’t disappoint.
On the inside box it has the sticker stating SanDisk SSD. From what I gather from this thread, it looks like the 256 version only comes with the SanDisk and not the ADATA. For what it’s worth, I did a speed test on it and it has a sequential read of 450 MB/s and a write of 325 MB/s. At that speed I can live with that.

I also own a Samsung QX411 and put a Samsung 256 830 Series SSD in that. Yes the Samsung has a faster sequential write, but to be honest, running them side by side I can’t really tell much difference, other than doing a speed test between the two. That being said, I feel a little better about the drive now.

The track pad seems to be fine and I didn’t change any drivers for it. I tend to use a mouse about 90% of the time, so the pad isn’t an issue to me. It works better than my Samsung and I didn’t really have a problem with that one.

There appears to be no issue with the fan, as I have been reading here. I have been testing it pretty extensively the last few days and I have no problem with it. The bottom does seem to get somewhat warm but then again, still not a problem for me. I can live with that since it’s on a table most of the time and not my lap.

Now to the screen backlight bleed. Yes it has bleed, at the bottom and on both sides. To be honest after a few days of use, it appears to have gotten worse. It only appears when watching movies and all other times it’s not really noticeable. But I do watch a fair amount of movies when traveling, so it is an issue to me. This laptop cost $1600 with tax, and at that price point I feel that it should have a near perfect screen. I compared it to the Samsung with the same movies and there is absolutely no bleed from the Samsung. The QX411 cost half as much as the UX31A. Of course the screen is not in the same league as the Asus.

So at this time I will keep the Asus for another couple of weeks and use it, but I will be returning it back to Best Buy before my 30 days are up. This is hands down the best laptop I have ever owned, and the most expensive one too. I will monitor this thread to see if they seem to be correcting this issue. I’m probably not going to order another one from BB for a while, to see if the stock gets cleared out. I was probably the first one in Atlanta to receive one of these. That could be a reason too.

David

 

Since I've just registered on the forum, I figure I might as well add my own experience with the UX32VD.

In short, it's not been a happy one. I've had five of the machines, all of which have been returned.

• Two machines had bad bleeding. All of them had bleeding to some degree, but the bleeding on these was visible even in a lit room with backlight as low as ~60-70%.
• One had two patches of red-tinted miscolorations in the display.
• Another two had pixel faults. Three green pixels stuck on one and two on the other.

To add insult to injury, several of the machines also had spongy keyboards. Not to the point that it would actually be a problem, but bothersome all the same since at least one of the other machines I tried had a perfectly firm keyboard.

I still really want one since it's the only machine with a really good display that is both small and light and capable of fitting a decent amount of RAM in it, but I'm not willing to compromise on the feature that is the main reason for purchasing it in the first place (the display). I can't find them in stock anymore though, regardless of whether I was willing to gamble on yet another one. According the the retailer I bought mine from they've been discontinued by Asus until the upgrade to Win8 is available in October.

 

Should the UX31a hibernate after a time in standby mode after the lid is closed? I left my computer on, but closed the lid when I went to sleep last night (8 hours with the lid closed in standby). When I woke up it acted like it was just in standby the whole time because when I opened the lid it automatically went right to the Window's logon screen.

Any ideas?

 

Hmm, in this case my laptop upgrade plans are postponed for several months... Does anybody else have any info on this?

 

Been an owner of the UX32VD for about a week now, ( bought in Canada, came with 24gb iSSD), and here are some of my thoughts:

-Screen: I have barely any backlight bleed, on the bottom there are like two spots where you can find about 1cm of bleed if you really look for it. I tried to take a picture of this, in order to see it, I had to lock myself in a pitch black washroom and turn up the brightness to the maximum. Honestly, I don't see a problem. I don't think anyone should use their laptop on full brightness in a dark room, it would just hurt their eyes.
I took around 5 photos and this was the only one where I could actually see the bleed: http://i50.tinypic.com/29wwnsx.jpg

-Keyboard: keyboard flex is noticeable when you press hard down on the J key. However, I never press that hard on any key and I would never have noticed the flex if no one mentioned it. It does not affect my typing experience at all.

-Touchpad: Definitely not as smooth as the one on my macbook pro, but with the elan drivers and a couple days, you can definitely get used to it.

-Battery: On low brightness, surfing and playing some music, I manage about 5 hours. This is without the SSD/RAM upgrade, everything in stock.

-Heat: After playing Mass Effect 3 or Skyrim for 2 hours, the laptop gets pretty hot at its bottom. Nowhere near as hot as my old macbook pro though. You can still put your hand on it without getting burnt. Once the computer returns to its normal load, it cools very quickly.

-Fan: Yes sometimes after opening the lid, the span jumps up to around 5500 rpm for about 30 seconds, and then everything returns to normal. Under normal conditions, I can only hear the fan when I'm using the laptop at 3am where it is dead silent. Most of the time during the day I do not hear it at all.

-Gaming: The gaming ability was a bit less than I have expected, but I'm not a hardcore gamer so I'm not too picky. I can play skyrim at native resolution and settings low at about 30-35 FPS. Or @1366x768 at medium settings for a constant 40-60 FPS. Mass Effect runs on 1280x800(?cant remember) with AA on at aroud 29-35 FPS, very playable. The one problem I've encountered though, I get an incredibly low FPS on both Assassin's Creed Revelations and Team Fortress 2. Hoping if somebody can give me an explanation on that.

-Build Quality: My unit has top notch build quality, everything is tightly packed and works as it should. The "belly" of the laptop does have a bit of flex however.

The only issue I've ran into so far was a problem with the wireless adapter. When I first received the machine, I was only getting a speed of 0.25 mbps. After searching around for the answer it seems like the wireless card was incompatible with my router. However, I fixed the issue by downloading the newest drivers from the intel website.
Also, I had a super laggy scrolling within google chrome at first. This was caused by setting the zoom scale to 125%, that somehow made the screen tear when scrolling through images. Installing a plugin called "Zoomy" and setting the DPI scaling in chrome to 125% fixed the issue for me.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with this laptop. It was exactly what I was expecting, minus all the scary issues people have been reporting about. I'm waiting for the prices of SSDs to drop a bit more before putting in a 256GB SSD. The release of the X1 Carbon is really tempting for me however, absolutely love the sexy thinkpad look. One last issue is that the lid of the laptop is somewhat of a fingerprint collector, one will need to constantly clean it to retain the beautiful disk look.

 

Hi, the issue with FPS dropping is when the GPU throttles itself down. Thst what your no doubt seeing in Assassin's Creed Revelations. If you want to try and boost things. You can download MSI afterburner and overclock a little to help raise those FPS. I've seen upto 15 fps in games liek BF2 more. The issue is it won't last for long before the GPU is throttled

Using throttlestop you can stop any CPU throttling, but unfortunately I have yet to find a fix for the GPU.

 

I believe this is normal with Asus's InstantOn software installed.

Not sure exactly what it does, but in their desktop gadget there's a "performance" option which I think is just regular standby, and then something like a "deep-sleep battery saver" option that I'm assuming shuts off some extra services/hardware, but is still a type of standby and wakes almost instantly to the desktop. The only difference I notice is that after, say, sleeping overnight I need to actually hit the power button to wake it up instead of just opening the lid.

 

Update from jittles... I just contacted them through Live Chat and they haven't even shipped it yet. I got scared because I saw on their website "This Ultrabook is in short supply across the US. We will ship your order as soon as we receive stock." My "guaranteed" delivery date was the 20th and now it was pushed back to the 23th -_-. Two days before college move-in... She said "It has been delayed for one more day, and is supposed to arrive to our customers on the 23rd of August." They don't have any shipping info from FedEx, but they'd forward it to me once they got it... Apparently there was a delay in the item arriving to their "warehouse", even though when I spoke to one of them on the phone they said they didn't have a warehouse. But even with the delay she said I should definitely receive it by the 23rd and that I should get my $15 refund in 5-7 business days... Not sure how I feel about this, I JUST WANT MY LAPTOP. I guess now I paid 1229-15=$1214. I suppose this shipping issue is what happens when you pay so cheap. =/

 

Download Asus Smart Gesture. It will replace Elan. It makes the touchpad 100% better.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download UX31A

I have it on my ux31a and the touchpad is honestly better than the macbook air I have.

 

The problem with the Sandisk SSD isn't large block read and writes, it is 4k writes which are horrible. What this means is that if windows decides it needs to page while you are also needing more data it basically comes to a halt until the page out is complete.

 

Page? I'm not familiar with that term so .. if you wouldn't mind explaining.

 

Disable the light sensor by doing FN+A

 

Operating systems (like windows) access data from disk in blocks (pages). Pages need to be read in RAM before a program can access them. So a page request loads a page from disk into memory. A typical page size is 4K.

 

When the apps you are running require more ram than your machine has something has to give. To keep the whole pc from blowing up in your face windows starts moving pieces of apps out of memory to make room for more. That is paging. Contantly moving "pages" of applications in and out rather than have them abend. It is why you have a page file on your C partition. That is the file where all of this takes place.

 

woohooo! my unit just came in from circuit city. No signs of bad bleeding backlight, but havent used in the dark.
Love the trackpad and keyboard, not sure why people complain.

Screen is pretty amazing. Now just gotta remove the bloatware. Also glad it's the ADATA SSD.
And best of all, it was 1099 for the i7 and 256GB SSD

 

How did you get it for 1099? That's a steal! Also adata on 256gb?

 

Merchant had a price mistake listing. I ordered and got a DB51. Returned it and complained. Took awhile to get their management to approve it but they let me re-order and get the price adjusted.

confirmed that it is indeed the ADATA which I'm assuming is better.
Kind if wish the warranty was more than 1 year though

 

Oh I remember your story! It was like dozens of pages back.

 

Is there a list of the asus programs that are actually necessary to keep on? Not fond of the bloatware.

 

Isn't this the opposite of what everyone is saying? I thought that most people recommended switching to the elan drivers, some people even uploaded them so that others could get them.

Is the new Asus driver that good?

 

I tried the Elan driver and on reading this decided to try the newest Asus one. The latest Asus one seems a bit better than the one that came with the notebook but I am not convinced that its better than the Elan one. The Elan driver was a lot better than the stock one that came with my PC.I haven't had much time though to really test it. However I expect based on my experience that the Elan one will be better.

 

So I honestly don't know if my unit has the fan problem or not.. When I am using the laptop, the fan is on. Its not SUPER loud and it goes off sometimes but most of the time it is on... Is this normal? or do people actually have units that are completely silent most of the time?

Going to experiment with a few things. Installed the thermal framework from the UX31a have not really seen an improvement. Going to go back to the UX32Vd version and then try it again by uninstalling.

 

Chances are that all the laptops have the same fan noise more or less. The difference is probably that some people don't have the same threshold for loudness. Someone who says theirs isn't loud probably just doesn't consider it loud. Other people who say it is loud probably are just used to near silence. Like you said, it's not super loud, but then again, what you and other people consider super loud is probably quite different.

 

People need to just post SPL DB's from a meter so there is no subjectiveness in noise level.