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Wow, it's been a busy week. I just wanted to update on my new Z63A. I got the CPU, HD, RAM and wireless card in on Monday evening, and had it up and running that night. Rumors I heard were correct: it's much easier to build a laptop these days than a desktop... it was a dream. Asus makes it all very logical and simple to install all the components, even the CPU!
I opted for a Pentium-M 740, since battery, price and heat were my primary concerns. So far I have one 512MB module of Kingston Valueram 533 DDR2 memory in, will be grabbing a second module in a couple of weeks.
After much flip-flopping, I decided on the Samsung MP0603H SpinPoint 60GB 5400 RPM harddrive. Seemed like a decent mix of speed, temperature, noise-suppression, and power management. I just don't think I could handle a 7200 RPM palm burner like some of my friends have.
Anyways, my impression:
First off, I have to say I was caught in laptop indecision hell for about two months. I read so many reviews and made enough trips to local computer joints to make my head spin. I didn't even realize ASUS had an option until I read a newsfeed about Dell signing with them for end of 2006 delivery. Found out Sony, Apple, and others have used them. Came down between a Sony S480 and the Z63A, strangely enough. There were some crazy threads dated this summer that argued the quality of the screen. They made me fearful to make the plunge, and I almost didn't. Let me say, I'm glad I decided go with my gut...
Style / Build Quality - I don't think I can say anything everyone else hasn't already said. This is one beautiful machine! And I've seen this statement many times as well: the pictures don't do it any justice, it looks much better in person. I had complements galore this week. It is very solid, with no flex anywhere that I could find. A *huge* difference from my hulking 3 year-old HP Pavilion ze5470us. This thing has curves in all the right places. And the touchpad is very well placed, with quiet and responsive buttons.
Performance - The benchmarks have been run by many others, so I didn't waste my time. For everyday use thus far, I have been very satisfied. I haven't had to do a whole lot other than use of MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint. As well as Firefox and Real Rhapsody...but its been one business week, and I don't have all of my apps installed yet. I'm curious to see how DreamWeaver runs. The Intel 2915ABG is very responsive, recognizes networks as soon as I expose the laptop to a new hotspot. And that's with default Roaming Aggressiveness. I am very impressed with its performance over my previous experience with a Broadcomm card. The harddrive is as quick as I expected a 5400 RPM with 8meg cache to be...not as fast as my 7200 desktop drives, but much faster than my previous laptop's 4200.
Screen - I think some others have really done this system a disservice. The screen is gorgeous. Yes, the vertical viewing angle is narrow, but that's true for the 14" widescreens I saw at the stores... but its no huge deal like people made me fear. Some people made it sound as though I'd see good color at the top and inverse colors at the bottom, or at least faded colors. When I had this laptop side-by-side with a collegue's Sony S460, I preferred my screen, and so did she!Mine was brighter, and of course the 14" was easier to read than the 13.3". No dead pixels here either. I am very pleased with the screen.
Keyboard - Just as others have said, the keyboard is great. It is full-size almost everywhere that counts. The right shift key has gotten me a couple of times, my pinky expected it to be bigger, and I found myself up-arrowing in the middle of a document.... but easily corrected. I've seen that mentioned before. Also mentioned several times is the function key; still getting used to it... I use a lot of keyboard shortcuts, so I find a lot of letters being typed in where I thought I was pressing the ctrl, but was pressing fn instead. I'll get used to it though, a small matter. There is almost no flex, just a slight give in the areas that don't have the screw mounts against them, and that's only under moderate to heavy pressure. It has an excellent feel to it when typing. It's nice that the right palm rest doesn't heat up on me like many other small laptops do. It only gets slightly warm.
Heat - This is another area I think people have exaggerated greatly. Of course there are a myriad of configurations that can be set up for this system, and when you have a shop build it for you, you may not get much choice what components to put in. If you go for all-out performance, you're going to deal with a lot more heat. The 7200 RPM harddrives are going to turn your palm rest into a veritable hotplate... and some of the 5400's may as well, from what I've heard. Also, if you put the fastest CPU in your lappy, your fan is going to have more trouble getting out all that heat, and there's going to be more build-up, as well as more fan noise. That's all conjecture on my part though.... here's my observations of my system.
I chose the 740 CPU because I wanted the Sonoma architecture, but wanted a lower speed to ensure a lower battery usage and heat production. Price wasn't bad either, of course. The Samsung harddrive was supposed to be fairly cool running (not the coolest from what I've heard), but it also is supposed to be one of the quieter ones out there, and also a power miser as far as 5400's go. All that being said, I only feel a little bit of warmth on my right palm rest, and its fairly pinpointed to one small region...feels like the area where the platter may be. Underneath it gets pretty warm on the harddrive compartment, but not hot by any stretch of the imagination. My old HP around the area where the P4 2.66 CPU was... now *that* was hot!!
Noise - Yes, the fan is on all the time. I forgot to look at my BIOS version, but I have noticed that its dated in August. I'm guessing that is since the update discussed that caused the fan to then be on all the time. Regardless, the fan IS on all the time...but at a very low speed, it is very quiet. When I am in my living room all alone late at night with no other sounds, I can hear it. Even then, it is not distracting. In class and the library I don't even notice it, so it is nowhere near loud enough to disturb others. My old HP had a fan that sounded like a quiet dustbuster when it was at medium speed (the speed it normally operated at) and sounded like a plane taking off at high speed. Now THAT laptop got me dirty looks! Back to this laptop : I wouldn't recommend using the optical drive in places requiring quiet, however, as its pretty noisy, one of the louder drives I've heard. Sounds like a loud desk fan.
ETC - I have already run the battery calibration in the BIOS. I have only ran down the battery once thus far, and it lasted about 4 hours 30 minutes running mostly in Battery Saving mode in Power4Gear. I have noticed the time estimate goes lower by between 30 - 60 minutes when running in Email/Office mode (allows throttling). The unit is quite light after hefting a 10+ pound desktop replacement around for over two years. It feels heavy next to the Sony S series, which are on the low end of 4 pounds, while this one is realistically in the low to mid 5 pounds. A big plus for the Z63 is the power adapter is a midget when placed next to the Sony super-sized brick. I suspect the adapter almost makes up the weight difference for those needing to haul around the adapters. And btw, my friend consistently gets about 2 hours on her Sony S series with the basic battery it shipped with (I think a 4 cell).
All-in-all, I am very pleased with this laptop. If there were any stores that sold them in San Diego, I probably wouldn't have had to struggle over the decision for so long. Yes, this one doesn't have the discrete graphics like the W3V, but it doesn't have the heat associated with discrete graphics either. God, you should feel how bad the S460 is....
Final word - If you're on the fence on this one, I'd say you should go for it. Try out some 14" WXGA's at the stores... if you like the size, and can deal with the glossy screen, you'll love the Z63A!
Thanks to everyone that gave their impressions and advice regarding their ASUS laptops. I have gained a LOT of knowledge lurking in the forum!
Cheers,
Paul
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Congrats and thanks for the quick but very informative and descriptive mini review
I had the chance to personally witness the birth of a Z63a and it looked so easy. The Z63a, like its twin the W3v is indeed a fine machine. -
thanks for the review, i cna't wait to get mine whenever i get my loan money in
My take on the Z63A after 1st week...
Discussion in 'Asus' started by Potto007, Dec 2, 2005.
