New UX31A at BestBuy - Win8/touchscreen/black finish

Do you think someone will make a replacement battery for this laptop that we can buy and install ourselves?

.Saw on a youtube video it wasn't that difficult even though I'd have to open up the laptop myself

 

hey there I just bought the zenbook touch the build quality like everyone else has said is incredible the black finish is beautiful the only problem I have is that the screen seems to have a yellow tint/hue I have played around with intel display settings and windows calibration and I have made the screen more tolerable but its still has a yellowish tint compared to my 3 year old netbook I am wondering if I got a defective unit or if this is normal and if I should exchange it for another one. just trying to get feedback from other zenbook touch owners if this is a widespread issue

 

I no longer have my ux31a touch, but I had one for 45 days (returned for lack of need, not dissatisfaction!) and I had absolutely none of the "warm" colors or yellowing that others - including you - are reporting, and I never touched the color calibration. Tends to make me think there is a software/driver glitch with a driver newer than the one I had (I purchased mine Dec. 1) or, I guess, a screen problem, but as I believe it's the same base screen as used in all the IPS 13" Zenbooks, I don't recall an overwhelming number of reports of this color issue. In fact, with mine and many reviews (user, not pro) the whites were as pure and bright as anything I've ever seen on any monitor of any kind. Same for the colors - amazingly bright and crisp with little or no noticeable distortions. If you check out the reviews on Notebookcheck dot net of the UX31A (touch and non-touch) and UX32VD I believe they report reasonably accurate colors and very wide gamut - 100% of sRGB and about 80% of aRGB. While you're at it, check out Anandtech dot com's review as well. They do even more measurements and have comparisons to a large number of competitive models.

So, in sum, while it's hard to ignore the reports here of discoloration, I believe it is a driver issue or hardware, but will turn out to be the rare exception rather than the rule. Thus, returning/replacing your unit is the easiest way to go and recommended. You may want to take a glance at the unit in the store, but the lighting is so bad and artificial it may not tell you much.

 

thanks for the advice I am going to return it to best buy and hope the next one is better also I have screen bleed on the sides and that's where most the screen has a yellowish tint/hue

I have also taken pictures of the screen quality between my iPhone 4 that is over 2 years old and the zenbook touch as you can obviously tell the iPhone 4 has a better screen the whites are more vibrant. both the zenbook touch and the iPhone 4 are at max brightness it just seems like a shame the zenbook touch has a full HD panel while the iPhone 4 has bellow HD and its more colorful/vibrant to me at least it seems like asus cant get its quality control right like any decent company. like i said a few post above i calibrated the screen so it could look a bit better but it still seems warmish
before calibration after calibration

 

Very good pictures you took. Uneven backlighting and a yellowish tint, giving an overall 'dirty' look to white screens. Also, I've never seen a Zenbook without backlight bleed on the edges. This is the same on mine. I've had 3 units, and all exhibited these problems, so I've just resigned myself to keep the laptop because there's nothing comparable out there.


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I'm lookiing at purchasing the UX31A Touch. However, I'm not too pleased with the 4GB RAM or 128GB SSD. On the Zenbook website it says up to 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD. ZENBOOK Touch UX31A

Does anyone know a retailer selling the beefed up version? Or if it's available in the US? I chatted with an ASUS rep earlier who claimed the 8GB/256GB was available in Canada with no release date for a US version. I can't find any confirmation of that on the internet.

Any info would be apperciated.

 

Just found out they are currently being sold in Australia. Model UX31A-C4043P. Same as our Touch, but with i7, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM. Outrageous that we don't have access to it.

 

I also wish that they sold this version here in the US. I would buy it in a heart-beat.

 

Has anyone ever ordered from a Canadian retailer? I found the UX31A Touch with a 256SSD here: Asus UX31A DH71T CB Ultrabook i7 3517U 4GB RAM 256G SSD 13 3" WIN8 Touch | eBay

 

Hello, I just purchased this laptop and have a question about it. When it is in sleep mode, should the led on the side of the laptop be blinking? If I go to sleep mode from within windows, the light blinks, and when I close the lid the light continues to blink. However, when I just close the lid, the led will turn off and back on (only once) and then stay on. Should this happen? I can't tell it the laptop is in sleep or not when this happens. I think that the laptop is staying awake when the lid closes. If anyone can help that would be great!

Thanks,
AC

 

Just purchased this laptop from BestBuy as well. I was worried when I saw the SanDisk SSD logo on the box, due to reports of SanDisk U100 SSDs in prior UX31A models having horrible performance compared to the ADATA XM11 drives. However, I ran the benchmarks and found my SanDisk drive (model SD5SE2128G1002E) performs better than the ADATA! You can see my results in the comment section at this article:
ASUS Zenbook SSD Review - Not Necessarily SandForce Driven Hits A Speed Bump | The SSD Review

My machine also has some light bleed at the corners and bottom edge, but I can only notice it when the display is completely black (such as start-up). I can't detect it all otherwise. My screen also have a warmish hue to it -- the white background of this webpage appears dirty compared to the MacBook sitting next to me.

The other thing to report is the range on screen brightness! At maximum setting, it achieves same brightness as the 66% brightness setting of my 3 year old MacBook pro. Also minimum setting is about the 25% brightness level of my MacBook Pro. Good grief! ASUS could have done a better than that.

Are others experiencing this very narrow brightness range??

 

I no longer have this machine but you need to return yours! It was the brightest , whitest screen I've ever seen and so say all its reviews as well. Over 400 nit and white white - way moreso than any mac screen. Sorry you have to go to the trouble but at least you found out in time.

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Wow, thanks for the feedback. After posting I discovered that the lower 5 / 10 brightness settings were not having any effect on the brightness level. After opening up a few ASUS apps (camera and power setting apps) the rest of the brightness range kicked in and my screen went to almost twice as bright at peak. Now I have similar max brightness with my MacPro. At peak brightness, the whites are much better as well, but I still think they look gray compared to Mac. I'll take my computer into BestBuy again and run a comparison with the display models to see if they look whiter. Thanks for the tip!

 

Has anyone figured out if you can use a stylus on the zenbook ux31a and, if so, how? I'd like to use one for presentations, where I can circle or write something for demonstration purposes. I'm not sure if it's possible. Any information would be greatly appreciated - thank you!

 

Has anyone figured out if you can use a stylus on the zenbook ux31a and, if so, how? I'd like to use one for presentations, where I can circle or write something for demonstration purposes. I'm not sure if it's possible. Any information would be greatly appreciated - thank you!

 

There is no active digitizer on the touch screen version of the Zenbook UX31A, such as Wacom or ntrig so you can't do precise drawing or writing, but as with any capacitive touch screen (as some 95% of Windows 8 touch screens are) you can make useful broad markings, such as a circle around or an arrow towards a portion of text and even large somewhat crude writing to draw attention to a section of text or a picture using either your fingertip or a rubber-tipped stylus msde for writing on a capacitive touch screen. There are even some apps which enable you to create a reasonably detailed drawing credibly described as "art. " What Im not sure of is how you can use these more precise capacitive art apps on top of a document you wish to annotate. I cant cite the specific apps but they are easy to search out in the Play store and I have used a few just to test the capability.

The short answer to your question then, is "yes!"

Edit: this is just an example of an app that will enable you to do whay I think you are looking to do:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/...android+app+to+annotate+document+with+drawing

Oops! This is an Android app!! I'm out of time but Im sure you can find Windows appd to do the same.

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I purchased this computer a couple weeks ago, and was originally very disappointed to see the dreaded "SanDisk" logo on the box. But I'm glad I took a closer look, because my SanDisk drive is not the poorly performing U100 but is instead a SanDisk SD5SE2128G1002E. This drive has awesome performance -- even better than ADATA X11 drives that everybody would cross their fingers and hope to get. My benchmarks for this SanDisk drives are below.

Also, my Zenbook Touch has a cold boot time into Windows of 2 seconds!!

 

I've had my ux31a touch since december and I just noticed after messing with my router today that it doesn't connect using wireless N. It maxes out at G speeds. I know the wifi adapter supports N and in the advanced tab for the adapter in device manager wireless in is enabled. I also noticed at the bottom of the list in the advanced tab that the option for which network types it can connect to only has options for abg. Using the latest drivers from intel on a fresh install.

Anyone else noticed this?

 

You can buy an Intel ac Wi-Fi card for around $32.00.

 

Asus is having me take it to best buy under warranty. Never thought I'd allow best buy to touch my hardware, but might as well since it's covered.

 

Thank you so much for your response - it was helpful and I appreciate it!