W7J, the review.

Greetings, humans. I have now had the W7J in my possession for 6 hours, and as promised, here is my detailed review of the system.

Build quality/design:

Positives:
Looks very slick in person, and there isn't a picture I've seen that does it any justice whatsoever. It feels pretty solid, with very little flex to be found anywhere. It's also VERY light, compared to the W3V I'm used to toting about. The various ports and card slots are well laid out, and very functional in if you like to keep a clean desktop

Negatives:
Touchpad looks great, and it works perfectly as long as your hands are dry, but sweaty handed humans may have some difficulty. Another potential problem, depending on the user, is that the palmrest area is quite thin, at least compared to the W3V I'm used to. Most probably won't mind it, and I probably won't even think about it once I've become more ajusted to it. I also think they went a bit blue light crazy... **** lights all over the place. Some people will probably love this, but for me it was a bit overkill.
​

Overall, nothing resoundingly negative... just potential concerns.

Performance:

This is NOT a gaming notebook, or a desktop replacement. If that's what you're looking for, you will not find it here.

Positives:
Performs right on par with similarly configured notebooks. The core duo is a good chip, and its performance is quite snappy. 3D performance seems to be very close to the x600 in my W3V, so its perfect for the size of the notebook.

Negatives:
None... although a T2500 would've been a nice compensation for the relatively low-powered graphics.​

Heat/Fans:

Positives:
Very comfortable on the usually troublesome palmrest area. It does get warm, but not nearly as much so as the W3V. Same thing goes for the underside of the system. The CPU fan is VERY quiet, and in a normal operating environment, I can barely hear it working even when it cranks up under load. Big improvement over the W3V, which could be a bit on the loud side.

Negatives:
None.​

Display:

Positives:
Screen is bright and crisp, with acceptable response times. The higher resolution over the W3V in a smaller screen probably helps with this. There is some motion ghosting, but it isn't anywhere near to the point of being distracting. Colors seem to be very vibrant, and gradients are well represented. Viewing angles are much better than those on the W3V. Whereas the former had a nearly non-existant "sweet spot", the W7J's is definitely there, and is fairly generous. My system arrived with no dead/stuck pixels.

Negatives:
The screen is what most people will probably piss and moan about the most. The sides of the screen are somewhat darker, with the lower two corners being the darkest. People who do alot of graphics work and need to utilize every bit of available display area may want to pass on this one. It IS there, and it IS easily noticible. It definitely looks different from traditional light leakage, and is far less obtrusive.​

Keyboard:

Positives:
Quality, with no flex. Keys are nice and firm, with adequate spring. I personally like the reversal of the Ctrl and Fn keys.

Negatives:
It feels a little on the cramped side, probably due to the more restrictive size of the palmrest than the actual keys themselves. The backspace key is smaller than what I'm used to, so that will require some adjustment.​

Features/Peripherals:

Bluetooth - works as it should. I despised the Toshiba bluetooth in the W3V, but this one uses a Broadcom chip. Pairing with my Microsoft mouse and my Motorola V550 cell phone was quick, easy, and painless. I'm really looking forward to trying out one of the new PS3 Dual Shock controllers with it.

WLAN - Working... for now, although I have little doubt that the Intel 3945 card in this thing will get screwy in short order. I've already had some issues with it dropping connection left and right after I made some changes to the power settings. Centrino is a nice buzzword and all, but Intel makes garbage WLAN cards. If it starts acting up on me, I'm shelving it without a 2nd thought and replacing it with an Atheros based card.

Memory Card reader - Working fine.

Expresscard slot - No clue if its working, as I don't have any express cards to try it out with. The forward thinking is great on Asus' part... and completely unexpected, considering they're still sticking parallel ports on some of their notebooks.

Video Out Port - Works with up to S-Video only. Does not support the HDTV dongle most of the 6 and 7 series Nvidia cards do. Kind of blows, considering it only has a...

VGA port - Come on, man... DVI, lets get on it already shall we? You'll put an Expresscard on this *****, which is looking like its going to be about as useful as a PCI-E 1x port the way its going, but not a DVI port... which nearly every modern monitor and HDTV has support for? *MY* personal biggest pet peeve.

DVD drive - Samsung DVD-RW DL drive, drive is pretty quiet when watching a DVD movie. I'm hoping that it will burn discs well, as the drive is not swappable, and the bezel cannot be removed. I will have to say at this point that the drive cannot be upgraded.

SPDIF out - Works.

Volume control - Little dial on the right hand side. Very slick, and a nice non-standard addition.

Camera - Works. Quality is ok, about what you would expect. Can't figure out if it actually does do video, as I've only been able to take a few pictures.

Speakers - Don't sound good. Buy headphones.​

All in all, and with very few minor issues, I think this is an excellent piece of hardware. It's light, it's powerful, and its well designed. As long as you aren't expecting it to be a desktop replacement, or a graphics workstation, it should be perfect for just about anyone else.

I applaud Asus. They made a good one. If my post survives, I will provide some comparison pics to the W3V here... or over on Notebookforums.

Peace out, humans.

Kai

 

Thanks for the review, Kai. I want to see some pics!

The W7J is a sexy machine...

 

thanks for the review. There was a comment made earlier that it feels kinda sticky? does it feel that way to you?
how's typing on it? i just noticed the space bar is slightly off center (from the mouse pad) due to the placement of the |\ key on the bottom row

 

You need to post some pics

Oh, and I think you left out something very important for many people...the battery specs

 

Thanks. Any word on battery life?

 

battery liiiiiiife.... i think we all need to know this. =/

 

The touchpad surface quite literally made of the same material as the palmrest that surrounds it... the entire noteook appears to be made of the same material. Whether it is carbon fiber, or just a high grade plastic, I couldn't tell you. It's polished to what I would consider to be a "semi-gloss", it's not shiny enough to be reflective, but not flat either. There is a very faint texture to the material which keeps it from being completely smooth. That's the best I can describe it. I can imagine that with consistant use, that slight bit of texture may eventually file down, which would result in what would look like discoloration of the palmrest. Of course, time will tell on that one, and hopefully it won't turn out that way.

When my palm sweats a bit, it tends to stick to the palmrest. This would more than likely hold true to the touchpad as well, although it hasn't been a problem to the point where it interferes with the pad's operation for me yet... and I've been using it on my kitchen table with the afternoon sun blaring down on me.

As with the W3V, I've found that underclocking the GPU through the driver's power management settings to be a quick and easy way to reduce palm rest heat (and the sweating that comes along with it). Using the "game" setting in Power4Gear is recommended as well.

I'll give some "battery specs" for normal usage after I've calibrated the battery, which is an option in the bios. Based on my usage so far, it looks like 2 1/2 hours on 100% brightness will most likely be what I'm going to get with the stock 6-cell battery. I won't be doing multiple run downs of different screen brightnesses and WLAN and Bluetooth on and off and all that junk, because I simply do not use my system that way. You'll get the worst case scenario, with everything on, under normal usage. From that, you should be able to get a pretty good idea of what to expect.

Kai

 

sounds good enough. it'll atleast be a rough estimate. Alot of the reviews so far (about the W7J) mention with like... 100 features disabled, and brightness at like 0.05%.

I'd rather get a run-down in battery life with brightness at easy level... and with most settings on. Wifi, bluetooth, driver, etc etc etc.

 

The W7J is a good machine but I can get an XPS 1210 with similar components for a few hundred less (I know the quality isnt as good but its not bat at all).

 

Any chance you could load CS:S and shoot some people for a while. Tell me how the 13.3" feels after you've adjusted. Spike the settings way up and see if it boggs the card down. It's pretty much the only game i'd care to play.

I can imagine... all the pics on I've seen are garbage quality or have dim lighting. Can you take it outside on a sunny day and take some pics. I'd really like to see what it "actually" looks like.

 

Thanks for the review! I've been considering the W7J and from your review, it sounds quite promising. If you don't mind my asking, who did you order it from and for how much?

 

Ok, here's the word on battery life:

LCD Brightness - 100%
Power4Gear Setting - Game
Nvidia Powermizer setting - Balanced
Wifi,Bluetooth, Camera - On
Usage - Internet, Email, Program Installations and Updates (from hard drive, and from DVD), Image Viewing

Got 2hrs, 23 minutes.

Kai

 

Some pictures... I am not a photographer.

 

your kitty likes the w7j more

thanks for the review/pics

 

That's not too bad. I'd assume you could squeeze 3:30 out of it.

 

That's pretty thick for a 13.3".... but considering that it has the dedicated graphics card, it's ok I guess.

Does your cat reccommend centrino duo mobile technology?

 

To solve the mouse pad issue increase the senitivity as mentioned in earlier posts.

Enjoy.

 

:LOL: Probably trying to figure out where the mouse is ... smart cat.. knows that the mouse is usually on the right side

 

I think my cat nearly mistook Intel's marketing nonsense for a litter box...

It is kind of stocky, and is nearly the same thickness as the larger W3V.

For the poster that asked how much and where I purchased, I got it for $1449 at Geared2Play. I highly recommend them, Eddie's a good guy.

Kai

 

yea 2:30 at those settings is decent....