Zenbook U500 Announced: 15.6" HD IPS, GT650M, Quad-Core i7...

If there's image retention i'll just swap the unit. As for the tinting: i can choose for red color issues on asus, or yellow color issues on rMBP .

In any case, I've seen the rMBP screen, I've worked with it and I never saw anything I didn't like. So if there was any yellow tinting, I guess it just didn't bother me .

 

Well, you know that if you use Windows you don't have Optimus, so you will always use Nvidia. Do you think it can handle heat generated by the discrete graphic card active 100% of the time? I strongly doubt it.
From what you write SSDs are not a factor in the choice, because MBP has already the best SSDs possible, the only factor is OS. I don't know how well windows will run with crappy drivers on a 2880x1800 screen, but you can always try...

 

I think such huge problem like image retention is unacceptible on a such high prized laptop. And i suggest that if you get an LG screen, replace it in the no questions ask period wether it has IR or not. Because even it doesn't have IR, it develops in time no matter what, if it's LG(this is what i understood from the discussion in apple forum)

And don't forget if a salmon talks you take it seriously .

 

If you have the money and would rather get the rMBP, then go ahead no one is stopping you. There is no need to keep arguing that the rMBP is a better computer if you really want that one.

Results are not decisive yet, but the "asymmetrical" fan design is as much market speak to me as "retina" display. People can run the rMBP for 20 days without going into 85 degrees+, and they could run a heavy duty game like Crysis for 25 minutes and run intu 95-105 degrees. Right now, we aren't sure how the Zenbook heats over time, but it looks like it is prevented from doing that with bios lock.

I also believe that you need 16GB for the rMBP to last 2.5 years or more due to the massive resolution. Now why would I say that? Well, massive resolution, means larger artifacts for UI and images presented in higher resolution take more space. Presenting that quickly, you need bigger memory. Especially since the graphics card has only 1GB of memory.

So if I had the money, I would probably choose the 16GB ram + 256gb SSD's. I am an advanced user and I know how to optimize my storage space on my laptop and I have an external home server that I can use for large files. But I would rather have the Zenbook since it is cheaper and I don't have the money. It is more convenient (keyboard layout) to use with Windows, and quite possibly a little bit more efficient. If you add the possibility down the line of a touch screen, no question in my mind.

And I lost all interest in being a user of OS X after 10.6 - so at least we agree there.

 

SSD: even on rMBP you can't choose SSD and it's a another time proprietary format, Actually it doesn't use Samsung 840Pro, but who say that Apple don't use a Toshiba model or a simple 840 next time?

Better cooling design? Only with prime95 rMBP hits 104°C throttling at 1.2GHz this is simply ridiculous.
When you run Prime95+ Furmark the system throttles by insufficient power supply for me on 2300€/2700€ system is another time ridiculous.

If you have intention to use with Windows a rMBP you loose almost all the advantages:
Optimus is not working on Windows installed on rMBP so no longer battery life, and Windows doesn't support properly the retina display.

 

Hi you lucky UX51vz owners...please do not forget to make this 1080p movie test @ 50% brightness to check the battery life time. Sorry to ask again if you just did not have the time to do that or because it is just too much fun to play around with your new machine ;-) I just wanted to put a discreet reminder in here. Thank you very much, again!!!

After knowing that I do get the feeling that I will have to check idle noise by myself to decide. I am pretty sure that I can live with the SSD speed (which will still be huge in practical use. SSD benchmarks are overrated in 99% if practical use if you do ask me. Check some real life benchmarks and you will easily see that there are hardly any differences between "mid-range" and high end SSD in terms of copy speed, boot up and program launches....so what!? Just my own little opinion. Same goes for throttling....I am not that interrested if the CPU clocks down while running prime95 + furmark. 100% load on both CPU and GPU just does not happen in real life. Not even if I render movies on GPU and CPU what I am doing sometimes. I just want to make sure that the machine shows no relevant framedrops when you are playing games .... even if it is for 10 hours straight. That's what matters to me most, apart from noise and display quality and some other things which I mentioned previously!

P.S.: I am also not much interrested in any detailed further discussion about S15, rMBP etc. I know what these machines cost and what they are able to accomplish or not. If there is any other competitor which we could have forgotten (don't think so) I would be happy if you could mention it.

 

I would quote every word you've written :thumbsup: I still have only one more concern (besides the battery test playing a movie), an it is related to the reliability of Sandisk SSDs. Do you guys know something about it?

 

Only can totally agree with DvP. The all-day usage would be very practical to find out, i.e. battery life, noise as well as the discussion of alternatives / what makes this model superior compared to the others

 

You can choose the res that you want on windows. And most dont look blurry at all. I use the full res with 150% dpi. I also have no problems of heat build up, specially after I repasted it and that is really stressing the gpu + cpu.

The RMBP use the best available SSD for the form factor, the samsung 840 pro and the new intel S3700 are better, but anything is much better than those sandisk.

you understood wrong, people like to live on hyperboles. The LG screen has more accurate colors and the tint dont go towards the yellow, but the usual green as has been the usual for mbps. I do have a LG screen, and no I dont have ghosting.

The assymetrical fans do make a different kind of noise, its indeed more distributed across the spectrum. And the retina is great thing for people that can use the res.

Agreed, we have to wait and see.

you are confusing things.

Apple uses a toshiba sandforce 2281 model for lower capacities like 128gb, we never saw it appearing on the 256gb+ and even that is not a done deal, we are seeing a lot of 128gb samsung 830 in the rmbp 13.

you never thrust notebookcheck for results. I have no problems reaching the turbo speeds of 1, 2, 3 and 4 cores on this i7 3720qm. I can actually overclock this thing with throttlestop. So no, it doesnt throttle.

The 85w adapter does supply higher than that, its around 100w, but indeed its not enough for the machine, they should have used a 120w psu for this one and pass the 85w to the rmbp/cmbp 13 and the 65w to the mba. When you stress the pc enough it starts draining the battery in conjuction of maxing the psu. I dont like that. I have mentioned this already.

To complement, I do hope that this one makes a turn on the current Q&A issues that asus has been going through, and that the performance is indeed what we expect. Too bad about the SSDs, I saw right on that one, size is at a premium there, although I would have shot the engineer that made that flop of internal layout, there is wasted space there.

 

@ Jo00di
Your pictures do not work.

@Karamazovmm

:hi2: - We do know that it is a nice machine. You do have one? You still want a UX51vz? No? What's the point then?


UX51vz storage options:
I think I can live with 256gb. I could not store anything on 512gb either and the most important things will fit on the smaller SSD solution for me. If I need a little extra I will use the card-reader to get some extra GB. Might be also possible that I will directly put my MP3 or photos on a (64GB) SDHC card

 

I'm just trying to make up my mind whether to go for the mac or the asus like many other people here have stated before.

I was going to buy the asus for sure, until I saw the news about the heavy throttling. Jumping immediately to 1.2 Ghz is a big drop and will affect my daily work. So will the fan noise. I currently use a Dell xps 1645 and the noise is annoying me a lot.
I have read that the you can hear the fans from the mac, but that they are not annoying in any way.

It would have been a big advantage of the asus if you could replace the drives. That one would have been a winner for me.

Regarding battery usage: if you virtualize windows it shouldn't matter. (Correct me if i'm wrong). I do intend to use dual boot.

Also it seems from what i read from support forums that it's a lot easier to have your mac replaced, than your asus (which has to go through your local computer store or online shop). Perhaps it goes just as easy, I'm not sure.

In any case, I'm open to discussion on any of the topics. I just try to look at things objectively: see the problems and see how they can be resolved if they do appear.

For the asus: if the throttling would be fixed with a bios update, that'd be great and might just make it a proper choice again. Like other people stated also: pure prime benchmarks don't really matter. All that matters is day to day use and (for me at least) gaming performance.

 

ahh shut it. Its the only competitor of one of the most commented notebooks of this year, you dont expect people to compare one another? as has been done several and several times, with or without me.

But I can only see and post here if I want the machine? get a grip.

btw you can install windows on the mbp and have switching gpus. look for my thread in the apple section.

 

I wrote in red, easier

 

I'm not considering rMBP as alternative for the reasons that I have explained around 1000 times.
Unfortunately I'm not happy neither with ASUS choices, it's true maybe performance are not different between different SSD, but why I have to pay premium price for something that not have premium performance?

Sony S15 is practically the same laptop even the display panel is the same, and its price is lower than 500€ respect of U500VZ.
With 200€ I can buy a Samung 840PRO 256GB and so I can upgrade S15 by myself, also I have another HDD that I could use like external hard disk or I can use it on a caddy to replace ODD or simply resell it.

SSDs are in market from few time, who knows if in three years the Sandisk SSD used in U500VZ may break, will I be able to find a replacement? Or Will I have to throw this premium laptop in the trash?
Maybe in two years there will be a 1TB SSD with a ridiculous price, why to upgrade my machine I have to change it?

Flexing keyboard is not an issue if it doesn't affect the typing performance, who say the a notebook must to be inflexible, maybe a flexible notebook can have a better resistance to small bumps instead a rigid aluminum chassis becomes quickly dented or scratched.

I would remember that this thread is a speculation thread, so for me meaningful comparison are welcome, to speak only of U500VZ, some owner should start the U500VZ owner thread.

 

You keep saying that they have the same display...The ID is the same but the display clearly isn't. On Vaio Red=orange, it's very evident. Here red looks like red, maybe not 100% accurate (like in most notebooks TBH), but it's red.

 

Actually, Frozer said that ambient temperature was slightly over 20°C when he tested (obviously he used it inside his home, not in the garden )
Besides, can you please tell me when did it throttle? If you look HWinfo's log you can see that after 13 minutes cpu disabled turboboost, but it stayed always at nominal frequency (2.1 GHz), so this is not throttling

Yes, but look at this

Besides, if I open the page with the red images on Google with my brother's L502x (with 98% gamut) and compare to the following, then it's not so different, considering the low quality photo (and for sure it's not orange)


EDIT: Dear owners, is there a key to turn off the LCD? I'd really appreciate this feature

 

U500VZ-CN038H available in Ukraine has 500GB HDD + 128GB SSD and has HM76 chipset and no RAID. Looks like there are two motherboards.

 

Hybrid configuration?? Man, you brought hope in my life!! Can I ask you the retailer's site?

Dear DvP, the 128+128 configuration is available for 1699 € on Amazon.de!

 

U500VZ-CN012H - 3612, 500GB HDD + 24GB SSD - rs
UX51VZ-CN021H - 3612, 500GB HDD - cn
UX51VZ-CN023H - 3612, 2x128 - ch
UX51VZ-CN025H - 3612, 2x128 - pl
U500VZ-CN032H - 3612, 2x128 - uk
UX51VZ-CN035H - 3612, 2x256 - de
UX51VZ-CN036H - 3612, 2x128 - de
U500VZ-CN038H - 3612, 500GB + 128GB - ua
U500VZ-CN046H - 3612, 2x128 - North Europe

UX51VZ-CM039P - 3632, 2x128, 8Pro, Touch - za
UX51VZ-CM042P - 3632, 2x256, 8Pro, Touch - cz
UX51VZ-CM054H - 3632, 2x128 - cn
U500VZ-CM055H - 3632, 2x256, Touch - hu
U500VZ-CM055P - 3632, 2x256, 8Pro, Touch - pt
U500VZ-CM064H - 3632, 2x256 - es

U500VZ-DH71 - 3612, 2x128 - US
U500VZ-XH71 - 3612, 2x256 - US

 

what do you mean with low quality photo?
Are you saying that the low quality photo transforms red in orange but only for U500VZ display?
If you see well there are others 2 monitor in the picture and they are showing red not orange for the same image,
I can't really understand how is possible that someone is thinking that LG has 2 different fab for the same monitor and one has in production a faulty panel only for Sony and another one for good display only for Asus.
The panel is the same, maybe changing calibration the perception can slightly change but the issue is still there maybe on a different color.
For that price, it's not good at all.

 

How do you explain the other 2 photos? With low quality photo I was speaking about the "Google images" page, which does not show any orange...

 

Another one in Portugal U500VZ-CM055P with new CPU and another from Spain U500VZ-CM064H

 

Great. Guess I'll have to wait on my S15 order. Just when I was giving up on Asus...

 

This one is strange, U500VZ-CN012H with 500GB HDD and 24GB SSD and available in Serbia.

 

Actually the photo of the Google images are kind of orange if I compare it to my cheap ViewSonic LCD.

 

If I check - It is listed on Amazon.de since about one week but not on stock....should get available on 10th November. Strange to see that the big markets (UK, GER, US) get the "old" CPU and smaller ones the new one.

 

Well, maybe it's better to wait some reviews with professional colorimeters, but to me it looks better than Vaio's display

You're right. However, they have 2 512GB (with optical unit included) in stock if you're interested

 

HM76 means no RAID 0 at all and neither intel RST.
According to internal image of Asus U500, I think even battery could be different.
If Asus sells hybrid configuration only in Ukraine means there will be duties for import it.
I think this was the most messed up launch I've ever seen

 

for me all of those pics including one featuring the phone are orange instead of red.

and btw you can have several revisions of the same panel that have very different caracteristcs. For example there is one AUO panel that can have the higher than average 70%ish percent of sRGB and there is another one in the same line that can have 95%ish of aRGB, there are other variants as well.

But in this case its clear that its the same panel, so yes orange gate.

Lets think that any notebook is going to have flaws for someone, this one is going to have. Lets hope those flaws arent the same for everyone (throttling)

 

Amal77 has already answered

 

Configurations with letter P at the end have multi touch screens.

 

The only chance to buy one could be if exist a version with 3632QM and a single 2.5"bay with reasonable price (practically like S15 :laugh

 

Why don't you buy S15 then?

 

And Windows 8 Pro instead of Windows 8 "Home", I think.

 

In fact it's very likely.
I'm waiting that Windows 8 version with 3632QM is available for retailers.
I'm still considering even Gigabyte P2542G (Win 8+3630QM version).
After I have seen the SSD Asus choice for U500 the possibility of buying one is drastically dropped, but I will wait until all will be much more clear.

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Finally, the UX51 is also up for sale here in Switzerland ( ASUS Zenbook UX51VZ-CN023H - brack.ch).
What confuses me is the graphics card, which is described as "GDDR3". I thought we learned here, that all models come with a GDDR5-GPU? Could this be just a mistake from the reseller?

 

They also put in the bullet-point specs:

Retailers are usually wrong

 

I finally ordered this laptop since it just came up as in stock in one of the bigger retailers in Sweden. I dont think that the proprietary SSD solution is a dealbreaker (256GB SSD is enough for me) and I dont think I would use a touch panel much anyways (and I dont want that glossy screen). Also, the screen seems good without backlight bleeds and I think the reds will be good enough. Regarding possible throttling and fan noise it does not seem like a big issue in everyday use, and it looks like if any throttling problems should arise there should be workarounds considering the temperatures are not the issue.

 

Can any of the owners take some photos of the laptop in general (opened, close, top, bottom,...) and post them here plese?
Can you also open this page and take the best photo you can with the most accurate colours possible?
Can you confirm that the battery is 70Whr?
Thank you very much for any contribution!

 

Have you already ordered?

 

You are correct, there are touch models without P so it must indicate W8 Pro

 

Yes the RAM was/is there! Look at the green label and there you have the RAM, it is hidden with heat protection cover so thats maybe why you didn't see it.

 

I must say that this Zenbook has very good cooling design, maybe the best I have ever seen in a laptop and it is very cool...

 

Is the SSD:s really better on the rMBP?? My friend has one and we ran a benchmark on both the Macbook and my Zenbook and the Zenbook kicked some rMBP butt really hard... I Think the Zenbook has the advantage because it is RAID-0....

And also my friends rMBP came with a 512GB SANDISK U100 SSD...

 

Oh, so the soldered ram is just right under the replacable ram slot under the white cover?

What I originally asked though was if there was a stick in the replacable ram slot or not when you got it, but I assume there was a 4GB stick there?

Thanks! Im getting mine on thursday

 

Yes It was a 4GB stick... You will have a nice thursday I believe....

 

Not yet... still struggling with the decision between Asus Zenbook and Sony Vaio. Since this price difference doesn't matter much for me, I'm still waiting for some concrete comparison regarding noise and heat (especially on the bottom) of the Asus, since the Vaio was reported to be rather loud...

 

I think so too I just got an email from Dustin though saying that they just shipped the laptop, so hopefully it will be here tomorrow already! Great success!

 

Is there any word or specific model number for the touch screen version in the US?

Also, on the touch screen versions, I would assume they are using a different panel altogether, correct? So maybe the orange issue wont exist on the touch devices? Or do they just add a touch layer on top of the current tech screen?

Any and all info is truly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

 

Would love it if someone could comment on whether there is a way to actively manage the fan (noise). I won't be gaming on this machine, so I shouldn't hit any insane temps. I am fairly easily annoyed by fan noise, so want to see if I'll be able to turn it off/limit it without there being a heating issue when running a bunch of tabs in firefox, listening to spotify, editing some photoshop images, etc.