SPK -> Asus Z71V Review

Here is a quick review after 24 hours of usage. After a little over a year of scouring the forums and internet sites, this is what I end up with. I had seriously considered several other laptops such as the Acer 8100 series and Acer Ferrari 3200.

I had specific need. I wanted something with wide screen so I could do photoshop and webdesign on. I wanted something configurable so I could pick and choose the components I want. Lastly I wanted something with enough juice at a reasonable price so I wouldn’t have to upgrade too quickly down the road.

I ordered this from www.proportable.com. Justin @ proportable has been one of the very few people you see anywhere that is helpful, quick, friendly, and responsive to all your need. Hats off to him and the proportable team for putting this together for me quickly!!!!


Ordered: Asus Z71V
Pentium-M 1.86Ghz w/2MB L2 Cache
nVidia GO GeForce 6600 w/128MB Video Memory
60GB 7200RPM HD
2x1GB Corsair DDR2-533
Intel Wifi A/B/G
DVD+RW Dual Layer
Total Cost Under $2100.00
Purchased: http://www.proportable.com

Standard Specification:
Built-in SD/MMC/ Card Reader
5 USB 2.0 Ports
One VGA port
One Modem Port / One RJ 45 Network Port (gigabit)
One PCMCIA Type II slot
One 1394B Type Slot
SATA/PATA Support. Adapter included

Design:
The Asus Z71V have a rather round corner, gun metal color design. It seems fairly well built with no open cracks or spaces around the notebook. Upon first impression, the color looks very conservative and pleasing to the eye. The laptop is two tone gun metal colors. The darker shad makes up most of the laptop while the lighter shade offers a nice trim around the laptop. Another noticeable feature upon booting up this laptop is the cool blue color LED surrounding the power button. Similar to the Asus M6 series, the power button offers a nice distinctive look to the Asus laptop series.

In the center above the keyboard is the power button with a blue light around it. To the left of the power button are 6 led status lights. To the right of the power button are 5 quick keys control for email, wifi on/off, etc. This laptop has a touch point pad with a side scroller.

In front of the laptop in the center you have the LCD lid latch. To the right of that are 5 controls for the CD/DVD Rom drive. The battery is situated right below the palm rest towards the front of the laptop. This design allow the hard drive to be situated more towards the middle and back of the laptop where the heat from it would not cause the palm rest an uncomfortable heat feeling some people noticed with other laptops, such as Uniwill 258KA model. In the front on two side of the battery, are two well equipped speakers. Though they are not Harmon Kardon, they do output a nice solid sound.

LCD:
The LCD on this laptop is a 15.4 WSXGA+ with high resolution of 1680x1050. To team up with this high resolution LCD, the laptop comes with a nice nVidia GO GeForce 6600 128MB video adapter. The LCD is clear, non-glossy texture with pretty decent viewing angles. I am not sure is it due to the wide screen type, but it looks best at max resolution compared with any other resolution. At any other resolution, the screen looks a bit distorted. This laptop does come with a feature called A.L.S. (Ambient Light Sensor). This feature is rather useful in the sense it extend your battery life. In a notebook, the one component which takes up a huge amount of power is your LCD. The ALS will detect the amount of light around you and adjust the LCD brightness accordingly to help you conserve battery. If you are in a dark room, the LCD will auto dim down a bit to help you conserve battery. From Asus, this could assist in extending your battery usage up to 6 hours. So far, I prefer using it with the ALS feature enable as it is much easier on the eyes while using this laptop in low light condition. One thing to know is even in a total dark room with ALS active, it is still pretty bright. You don’t even know it was even active.

The 15.4” wide screen is extremely beneficial to those who use spreadsheets or photoshop. You have the extra wide space to utilize all the tools you enjoy in those applications. After 2 hours of usage at high resolutions, it doesn’t seem to take a heavy toll on the eyes.

Last note on LCD, no dead pixel found yet. This is awesome! But compare this LCD to a Sony, Sony still win hands down. But compared this with others, I think this LCD have a pretty good chance.

Height / Weight:
This laptop as you can see is a 15.4” laptop. With that, most laptop of this screen size out there are usually pretty heavy. While the specification says it is less than 7lbs, it seems rather light when carrying it around. Comparing it to IBM Think pad T30 or T22 for that matter, this is lighter. The documented dimension for this laptop is: 14” x 10.75” x 1.38” and weight approx 6.5lbs.

System Performance:
On the system performance, it is rather fast compared with the AMD-XP 3000+ desktop I have. Keep in mind one thing the Intel processors have always been superior to AMD in the fact of the additional multimedia instruction set. Though in benchmark AMD might be head in overall speed, in multimedia area, Intel is still the king of the hill. What I would like to see is someone else’s Sandra using the DDR2-400 memory, how would that compared to the DDR2-533.

Sandra 2005 Benchmarks CPU:
Benchmark Results
Dhrystone ALU : 8035 MIPS
Whetstone FPU : 2593 MFLOPS
Whetstone iSSE2 : 3315 MFLOPS

Sandra 2005 Benchmark Memory:
Benchmark Results
RAM Bandwidth Int Buff'd iSSE2 : 3032 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buff'd iSSE2 : 3041 MB/s

Int Buff'd iSSE2 (Integer STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2995MB/s
Scaling : 2978MB/s
Addition : 3107MB/s
Triad : 3048MB/s
Data Item Size : 16 byte(s)
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 71% (estimated)

Float Buff'd iSSE2 (Float STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2984MB/s
Scaling : 2995MB/s
Addition : 3101MB/s
Triad : 3084MB/s
Data Item Size : 16 byte(s)
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 71% (estimated)

As you can see above, the numbers are pretty good.

Video Performance:
On the video performance, this is a bit interesting topic. It seems Asus have underclocked the nVidia card on the Z71V for the purpose of long battery life. Due to this, the numbers seem lower in comparison to ATI X700. Through gaming and normal usage you would not notice these differences, but in benchmark you would. Keep in mind the 3D Mark number below is based upon stocked clock speed. I have not over clocked the video card for these numbers.

Using stocked nVidia Driver v71.13
3D Mark 2005: 1720

Using XtremeG nVidia Driver v71.84
3D Mark 2005: 1780

Now let’s see the overclock benchmarks:

Using XtremeG nVidia Driver 71.84 (300 Core / 500 Memory)
3D Mark 2005: 1970

This seems to be the best setting. It is rock stable and still offers great performance.

In comparison to a Toshiba Tecra S2 that also uses the same nVidia GO GeForce 6600 w/128MB

Toshiba Tecra S2 w/nVidia Go Geforce 6600 128MB...

3DMark05: 1548

As you can see, even the stocked driver from Asus still beats the Toshiba up and down. I am interested to see other laptop using the same video card and some benchmark spec around it.

One thing to keep in mind is the current 71.84 version drive available on nVidia website does not support the GO GeForce 6600, due to this you would have to use a mod such as Omega or XtremeG which edit the INF file to include support for the GO GeForce 6600. You could download the Xtreme G from www.guru3d.com which contain the official nVidia 71.84 driver w/mod INF file for support on the GO GeForce 6600

Heat / Fan:
I have used this laptop for a few hours now. I have not noticed any heat issue and the fan is very quite. Given the fact I have a wife who is a light sleeper; using this laptop next to her at night doesn’t seem to be a problem with waking her up. In my previous laptop, IBM Thinkpad or Toshiba Satellite Pro series, the fan could be quite loud at times. The palm rest is very comfortable with little to no heat after a couple of hours of usage. This is due largely in part of them being able to situate the HD a little further back than most laptop out there. Someone nice is the fan ports are actually suction ports. They intake air and ventilate out to the back of the laptop, so the heat blowing on your lap isn’t hot air!

It is actually quite comfortable typing this with the laptop on my lap. No heat problem in the palm rest area or any heat problem on my lap. The fan is very faintly on you could barely notice.

Other Comments and Information:
In my opinion, this laptop is a great well designed laptop. Most of the pictures you see here or anywhere doesn’t do any justice to this laptop. It is solid built laptop with a lot of features for the price you pay. I consider it as one of the best bang for the buck type laptop. Since it is a true barebone (whitebook) laptop, it is pretty much configurable depending on there you purchases it.

This notebook comes with 5 USB 2.0 ports. In my opinion, I think this is overkill. Having 3 at most is good, but beyond that is overkill. If anyone who needs more, get a USB hub and use it on a docking station. I would rather see the slot be covered up to give it a more sleek design.

One thing about this notebook which is rather annoying is the brightness of the LED light. Granted it is nice, but when the laptop goes into standby mode and you have the laptop lid closed, at night the flashing blue LED light could get rather annoying.

On average usage with writing email, surfing the internet, etc, this laptop could dish out a nice 3.5 and up of battery life. Which is pretty nice compared with other laptop out there today. Of course, you could also purchase a 2nd battery kit to be used in the space where the DVD drive is located.

Summary:
Overall after 24 hours of usage and benchmark, I have to say this laptop is pretty good. While the nVidia GO GeForce 6600 was not as I expected, it still perform fairly well on EQ2 and other games. A mental note is that all of these benchmarks are mainly for bragging rights, to the average users playing games or any sort of function; you will rarely notice any differences between this video card and ATI X700.

It also seems Asus wasn’t the only one unclocking the video card for battery reason, as Toshiba Tecra S2 performance was pretty sad as well. In stocked drivers and clock speed, the Toshiba Tecra S2 actually performed over 200 points lower than the Asus Z71V in 3D Mark 2005.

Setting up this laptop was a breeze without any problem whatsoever. I was able to installed Windows XP SP2 in less than 20 minutes. All the drivers came with this laptop were simple installation. The wireless wifi was an easy install as well. Plug in my WEP key and off I go. It has pretty strong signal compared to the linksys wifi 802.11b card I have.

In the accessories department, you could purchase a 2nd battery kit which fit nicely in the place where the DVD drive is currently at. This gives you the option to go on full day usage w/o having to be plugged in. Another nice accessory is the dual hard drive kit. This allows you to use two hard drives, this is great for those who rarely uses their DVD drive and could live on the external version.
==========================================================
Revised Comments: 04/19/2005
Okay, after over a week of using this and putting it to the "REAL" test, here are my updated comments.

Before the comments, a little background on my usage. I bought this laptop primary as a laptop for me to do photoshop, webdesign, and play games with. I recently had to do a wedding photoshoot so I used the laptop for that purpose...

LCD:
On the LCD piece, there was talk about sparkle screen and such. In the past couple of weeks, I've done some research. In order to understand the LCD you much first understand the LCD technology. There are WSXGA, WSXGA+, XGA, and WUXGA to name a few of the many out there. Each of them have a max resolution it can support. Usually this max resolution is also their native resolution. Meaning the screen will only look crisp, clear, and nice in this resolution. Any other resolution out of it will look a bit blurry and sometime distorred. You have to be aware of this when deciding on a laptop. So if you are getting a 15.4" screen, the WSXGA+ runs at 1680x1050. Which is pretty small fonts and icon. If you get a WUXGA on a 15.4" screen, expect it to be even SMALLER!. So before you go out and get a Laptop, keep in mine just because it say it is UXGA or WSXGA, etc make sure you are able to bare the small size of the resolution. Especially when it is on a laptop with 15" or smaller. If you are getting 15" or smaller, SXGA and XGA is plenty for it. Don't even bother with SXGA+ or higher because you will complain about it being a bit small if you are weak eyes.

Now as for the Asus Z71V LCD. After you understand LCD Technology, I have to say the Asus Z71V LCD is a very good LCD. It is not glossy like Sony or as bright as Toshiba TruBright, but it does hold up on its own weight. The quality is super. Clear, crisp, and no sparkle. Yes you do see a faint rainbow effect against a white background, but after looking through at least a dozen laptops that are non-glossy, non-trubright, non-all those fancy stuff, you have similar screen as this one. So it is not sparkle.

The screen performs very well with Photoshop. I used a Nikon D70 and a Canon 20D over the weekend. The D70 was a 6.xMP and the Canon 20D was a 8.xMP. So both of the files are fairly large and high quality as you can see. Both shown on this LCD very sharp, correct color contrast, and perform beautifully.

Weight:
This laptop was extremely comfortable to lug around. I also bought a nice Swiss Gear laptop from bestbuy to use with it. It was not heavy, but in fact it was extremely portable to use.

Heat / Noise:
This was an important factor. I have several IBM thinkpad and a few Toshiba and Gateway in my time. All of which have this little heat in the palm rest area after long usage, which is annoying. Since I will be doing a lot of photoshop and multimedia design / authoring, it will utilize the system CPU a lot. In this laptop heat wasn't an issue and the palm rest area was not hot one bit. The fan was on, but you have to really listen to it to hear. It is very quiet!!


Others:
The DVD drive performed nicely on this laptop. It burned at 8x fairly fast given I had to do a few SLIDE-SHOW DVD on the fly, which worked out well. I used this laptop to link up on a projector for a few slideshow, it performed nicely as well.

For Asus Z71V Support Thread, please refer to: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=72349

Where To Buy:
http://www.proportable.com
http://www.rjtech.com
http://www.geared2play.com
http://www.hypersonic.com
http://www.xmeld.com
http://www.istnc.com
http://www.agearnotebooks.com

And of course the nice expensive painted version could be purchased at http://www.voodoopc.com. Which is known as the VoodooPC M:515 on their website.


Overall I give this laptop a 9 out of 10!

















Now off to sleep, I have a serious flu and typing this out is making me tired :saywhat: :$ :uhoh: :scratch:


Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

I have some news...

Someone have leaked out the latest and greatest nVidia driver version 76.44. That is a good news.

The bad news is the inf file doesn't support the GO 6600 on our Asus Z71V...

The good news from that is, someone updated the INF file so you could use it with this latest driver!!!

nVidia Leak Discussion: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=3761

INF File To Support our Lappy: http://laptopvideo2go.com/infs/7644inf/nv4_disp.inf

Here is a sample:

3D Mark 2005: 2080!!!! ofcourse that is with 300 Core / 500 Memory, but still an improvement over previous version with that same core speed!!!!!

Woot!!!



Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

WOW... congrats!!!!.. thanks for the review.. great pics.. beautiful laptop.. great review!!!!

A customized Asus Z71V is at the top of my list of laptops. But since I am in Canada.. I think I will go for the V6 "ensemble" and take advantage of the included 2 years of global warranty from Asus.

If there was a nice Justin with a PROPortable store around the corner.. I will go for this lappy in a sec.. [ ]

 

Ahaha...Trunks! Old school DBZ.

[l]ikwid.[f]uzion

 

I used to love animewallpapers.com [8D]

ASUS M6800Ne, P-M 1.5 Dothan, 512MB Ram, Toshiba Combo drive, Samsung Spinpoint M 40G HDD with 8M cache, Mobility Radeon 9700

 

I still love animewallpaper.com LoL!

Sad I can't find a wallpaper to fit this wide screen format now ehehhe

Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

Can you disable the ALS (Ambient Light Sensor) function? I want to calibrate the screen via a Spyder and also do photo retouching in Photoshop, so a screen that changes brightness on arbitrary ambient light levels would not be too desireable.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Unicorn

 

Yes -- thats actually one of the only reasons I might ever suggest dissabling ALS... however, try it out first because you'd be surprised and how it helps compensate for the ambient light to make the screen readable no matter what the light... I don't suggest doing photoshop retouching when you're outside on a sunny day... but the light sensor would compensate..

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

Okay, finally got the 76.50 driver installed. It was able o boost approx 20 points on the 3D Mark 05 for me.

Download the nVidia 76.50 from www.laptopvideo2go.com and download the INF file. Extract the 76.50 into a directory and copy the INF file to that directory...

To install, right click on your desktop and go to properties. Click on settings, then click on advance.

Click on Adapter, click on properties, Click on driver and then click on update drivers

Click on NO to autosearch, blah blah blah..

When you get to a screen which ask you to

"Please Choose your Search and Installtion Options.."

Click on Don't Search, I will choose the driver to install

From there click on "Have Disk" and chose the location where you had extracted the 76.50 w/ the mod INF file.

It will list all the nVidia card, select yours and install...

This seems to be a very stable version and worked well so far.



Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

What's this I hear about the sparkle effect?

-Victor

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by lytener

 

Hi,

I ordered Z71v and for a couple of days I will write my opinion about it. I ordered it from Star Tech at www.stipc.com.
John, thank You for everything [ ]

Hubi

---------------------
Life on Earth may be expensive but it includes annual free trip around the Sun

 

Directly from Asus:

I asked, who is the manufacture of the LCD in the Z71V:

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Hi:
it depends ,could be CMO ,could be hannstar.<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'></font id='quote'></blockquote id='quote'>

Enjoy!

Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

Neither..... Asus only uses screens that fall into the same specifications as originally spec'd.... so the comparison between two or more of the screens should yield a similar experience..... If they are going to be drastically different... they won't use them... However, some people prefer one over the other.

Thanks,
Justin
PROPortable
www.proportable.com
[email protected]

 

Hi, is it good or bad?




Hubi

---------------------
Life on Earth may be expensive but it includes annual free trip around the Sun

 

My reason for finding out the manufacture and more info on the LCD is I want to see if I could find the INF driver info for the LCD. Other companies out there like Fujitsu offer the INF driver for their LCD which specific exactly the resolution and refresh rate it supports and which looks best.

Since this Asus Z71V don't have one, the only one I could see work best now is the max resolution 1600 x 1050. At this resolution, it looks sharp and clear. However it is a bit small as well. This monitor is the first monitor and LCD I've dealt with which only look good with one resolution. Any other it will look blurry and distorted. Which is a bit unforunate, especially for those who want a little lower resolution for clarity due to their eyes.

There must be a way around this...the search continues...if anyone find anything pass it along...

By the way, I spent the day @ Bestbuy, and Fry's Electronic looking all of theirs LCD and Notebook. I have yet to find one that give the look the Z71V is currently giving. Not saying it is good or bad, just can't seems to find anyone of it close.

Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

I found a resolution that works well for me and not blurry!!!!!

1360 x 768!!!!! I am using it now as I am typing!! Woot!

Also, the sparkle is less apparent in it as well!!!

Also if it is a little blurry to you, you could calibrate it using this:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ClearTypePowerToy.mspx

Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

By the way....

GPU @ 300 / 580 using XtremeG's nVidia 76.41 driver

3DMark05: 2210!!!!

This is about what Acer 8100 X700 output..heehhe

From my understanding the GPU in the Asus Z71V is somewhat underclocked as the spec from nVidia said the GPU should be @ 400ish core and Asus Z71V is at 250ish....

Been using in EQ2 for 24 hours. Sheer performance baby! But then again, at stock setting the performance rocks too...

Here is the article that lays out nVidia Clock Speed
http://www.bit-tech.net/feature/75/

Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505