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

Sweet! :-D

 

I'm wondering if any higher wattage power supplies will fit (and will not damage) the UX51. It seems that this computer is power limited, not thermally limited, anyway.

I guess it is safe to say that these proprietary SSDs are hard or impossible to purchase elsewhere?

 

Thank you very much for your insight, koeman!
Have you been able to compare the noise of the two laptops?
I assume, the weight difference of around 0.1kg is not remarkable, so this shouldn't be a topic...

 

Vaio Z is not Vaio S15, weight difference between Vaio Z and U500 is much more than 0.1Kg because Vaio Z weights 1.2Kg, chassis is made in carbon fiber,and it could be more pricey than U500, is a totally different kind of notebook even because it's a 13".

 

About the fans again, since someone asked: Switching to a passive CPU cooling policy in Windows did not help, and the BIOS offers NO options whatsoever. So at least for the time being, it seems the fans cannot be prevented from turning at idle.

Another small comment about temperatures; someone said that these might be underestimated because all owners are in Northern Europe, but I am in the Netherlands, which is not that Northern, and not that cold at the moment really. 19.5 deg C indoors anyway.

For those of you still pondering the Red vs Orange thing; let's do a test and look at the picture below (compare with the first side-by-side one I posted a while back if you will). Can you tell whether this is the Dell screen or the Asus screen by looking at the red?

 

It's useless to answer at you question Dell or Asus, because there is not reference in your picture, so changing ambient light and camera setting everything is possible...

About temps:
5°C of difference in ambient temp is a remarkable difference, also no one is considering air humidity, When first test was made it's was practically summer, now is practically winter, so I think this difference has a significant impact.

 

Agreed. The white balance of the camera is critical, as well as any fancy processing in the camera to "enhance" (screw with) true accuracy of colour, contrast etc.. For example, assuming the "white" parts of the image to be intended as white, they are very far from it. They look blue and measured with the colour sampler in Lightroom they are indeed very blue. Who can believe that any other colour in the picture is an accurate representation of the facts?

Perhaps the closest possibility of getting somewhere near the truth is to create a custom white balance from the camera from a pure white background displayed on the screen. Then maybe there is a little hope of getting something approaching a more balanced view. Even then, depending on camera brand, model and settings there can still be much shenanigans to make the colours look lively (wrong).

However, unless the monitor you are using to view these photos is itself colour calibrated then once again there is room for more doubt.

 

Maybe I'm not the right person to ask because I am hard of hearing. But if I compare With other laptops I think the Zenbook is quiet. I checked the Vaio in a store and it was noisy in there so I Can't really say Wich of them is most quiet.

 

Pretty sure he was speaking about build quality...

As i said before, the quality of the photo can actually make a difference if this is the Asus, red is good. Everyone ready to say "Orangegate" looking at a photo, but if another photo shows the opposite then suddenly photos are not reliable...:thumbsup:

 

maybe the best thing would be comparing an s15 to the asus side by side, it would make it clear if there was an improvement made on the display.
still, it looks red enough even on the comparative picture.
I would´t recommend this display for photographers tho, very small color space.

 

Dear Terpen Tijn, you have the laptop and the other displays to compare. Since your eyes will certainly judge better than a photo, what do you think about red/orange?

 

if you read My post I talk about the Vaio S and just saying My previously laptop was a Vaio Z. I checked out the Vaio S out and I mean for that kind of money about 15-16,000 swedish crowns that the Zenbook Cost comparing to What The Vaios costs after you have configured it at the online Sony store it is a Easy choice. I didn't like the build of the Vaio S at all.

 

That would be a nice comparison, unfortunately I think will be not so easy to find someone with a new S15 (3632QM maybe it's better a comparison between product with same age) and with an U500VZ.
For sure we can't define this panel a panel with premium specs gamut, contrast etc. but I think will be very comfortable for normal use.

 

As you can see I was answering to Master_Sepp, because I have understand that he had understood that you have owned S15 and now an U500, instead you have owned a Vaio Z and now an U500.
I tried to explain because it seemed to me that he was asking for comparisons between S15 and U500 from an owner of both, and you are not an owner of both.

 

-Mac-: I indeed was referring weight-wise to the Sony S, which weighs around 2kg, whereas the Asus weighs about 2.1-2.2kg.
But still, noise is my main consideration, but since the Vaio S isn't very silent as well, I think it shouldn't make a difference, although I'd like to have some confirmation from any one who has tested/used both.

 

In fact, this is the reason because in comparison pictures we need other display as reference near at U500.

 

The discussion is taking a strange turn. Obviously I have NOT manipulated any of the photos I posted here, why would I do that?

Now I've already shown the two screens side by side, and this photo I posted just now was taken minutes from the others, in the same conditions, with the same camera and settings (Nikon DSLR, ISO 100, 1/8 sec shutter speed).

I also already said that I thought that the red on the Asus was acceptable, but did not appear to be its strongest color nonetheless. But the best I can do is to give you another "blind test" to get a feeling of what level of color distortion we are talking about. Here is screen two, for reference. Dell 2407 or Asus, can you tell?

 

Yes, I have understand that you are referring to S15, but you were asking to someone that did not own an S15, but a Vaio Z.
If someone hasn't owned an S15, it's very hard that he can answer correctly at your question about noise, because in a shop, where is possible to find and to test briefly an S15, there is much background noise.

 

Can someone please explain to me what RAID 0 means?

Also, can any of the lucky owners please let us know the specs of the charger and battery?

 

I don't doubt that your efforts are sincere, but I downloaded this new picture and scrutinised it in Lightroom. The "whites" in the centre do look and measure as close to white, but the "whites" on the left are still very blue toned. What effect does this have on the rendition of the warmer tones I wonder. To try to find an answer I applied a manual white balance adjustment to the photo based on the "white" on the left hand side. Viewing the before/after versions of the image the difference is immense. Which is one is more correct or accurate - who can say? The eye can be very self-deceiving. It applies its own white balance correction. Faced with a photo taken in unknown conditions it is really hard to draw an objective conclusion.

Here is the photo with and without the white balance adjustment.....



I know the colours look richer, brighter, more vivid, after the change, but all that has changed is the white balance. Whatever the white balance setting in the camera (auto being quite useless) this can have a significant influence on the photo.

In fact to try to establish a better baseline for comparison I have added a red fill in Paint to put alongside the two versions of the photograph. On this basis I think it fair to say that the "red" actually does look very close to "red", but the more orangey hues further to the left can give a very misleading impression. It is quite important to be certain what colours are supposed to be shown. If the original content is a little bit orange then there is no reason for the display to show pure red.

 

Asus just released the Zenbook Touch trailer:
ASUS ZENBOOK

Maybe we'll get news about the touch version soon!? (hoping)

@ OverDrive90
Standard RAID levels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raid 0 = 2 storage devices combined to one logical drive with doubled read and write rates. Same access times and double the chance to lose all data ;-) Should not be that bad with SSDs to be honest.

@ tdodd
Who said that white was white on the screen ;-) All screens have some tint. If you would re-do the white balance on a photo of a amoled display for example then you will mess up all colors on the display. And even the rMBP has some tint.

 

RAID0: RAID - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It's a way of combining two disks into a single storage volume that gives you access to all of the space on both disks and can increase speed, but has no fault tolerance.

 

In fact, you double your chance of a failure in raid 0. The filesystem is spread across 2 drives and if either fails the whole filesystem is lost.

 

I have put the 2 pictures side by side, I don't know what is the right one (to say it I need the original one), but for sure one of these display has very bad color reproduction, as you can see where is the big man, one display show purple the other one show violet (It seems that same problem of HP Envy 15 that uses the same IPS panel, but after the recalibration made by HP):

 

Looks all very red to me, haha. In all seriousness though, if the DSLR somehow changed the white balance internally and thereby skewed the individual photos, then please examine my 2-screens-at-once photo. Here it is again:



FWIW, here is an additional close-up of the two screens (these were taken from the individual-screen photos) placed side by side. This time I adjusted the brighter one to equalize the luminance a little (brightness -60%).



Select the lines below for The Solution.

The first individual photo was the Asus, the second one the Dell. In the last picture the Asus is on the left.

 

Anybody know which U.S. online retailer has the best open-box return policy? i.e. open box, don't like laptop, return it in 2 weeks. Restocking fees, paying for shipping, etc.

 

@krayziehustler - owning a hp envy dp6 72... and following this thread:
How would you compare these two? As far as I can see:
- Panel seems to be of same quality: IPS matte LGD037...
- External Monitor (+): Seems not to be based on Optimus which would be definitely a + when connecting external monitors - but could not find details
- Weight (-): It is heavier but maybe gets lighter when removing drive (and might then get even extended with an additional SSD)
- Disk (-): Unfortunately a HD but might get replaced with a SSD (if not proprietary connectors as it is the case for zenbook)
- GPU (--): GT320M seems to be 50% slower than GT650M
- CPU: Seems to be same
- Noise?
- Keyboard?

 

If the white balance is set to "auto" then the camera may well make alterations to the image based on what it thinks the white balance should be. This will be influenced by any strong colour dominance within the image. If the subject is of very warm colours (reds, oranges etc.) the camera will try to make them less warm. If the subject content is of cool colours (blues, purples etc.) then the camera will try to warm up the picture. Either way there is the risk of colour distortion.

Now if both screens are included in one shot the white balance will be the same for both, but it may actually be incorrect for one or both of them,thus leading to inaccurate representation of the true colours. As you know, the camera as well as auto white balance also has presets for daylight, tungsten, flash, fluorescent, cloudy etc.. These all adjust the way the picture is represented based on the prevailing ambient lighting. But for these examples there is no prevailing ambient light. The light is coming from the panels and the source is the backlight for each panel. So to try to make the best representation of accurate colours, or comparable colours at least, I think the white balance should be set based on the colour temperature of the backlight for the panel, which is why I proposed setting a custom white balance based on a "white" screen displayed on the panel.

 

Good, now we are om the right track.

 

Correct so a good backup solution is recommended. But the speed you get having raid and especially raid 0 is really nice. I did a benchmark test with HD tune and got minimum 650-700 MB/sec and maximum over 1000 MB/sec with the Sandisk drives.

 

Can the owner take a screenshot of the link below?

File:Auto Racing Red.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Coz that Newgrounds image might have confuse the orange color. The red on it are also close to orange. I think.

Thanks!

 

For those of you in North America, Asus responded to my Facebook post about the launch date here...

"Sorry, but there's been no official announcement of an exact release date. All I can say is to stay tuned for when we do make an announcement. Thanks for your patience and loyalty!"

Not what I was hoping to hear since all the retailers are constantly pushing back the release dates as they are reached. Newegg now shows availability on the 10th, but this is now the 3rd time they have pushed it back.

 

Again, the cheapest price I have found for the dual 128 GB SSD model is $1800 at Adorama. Free shipping and no taxes, except for New York and New Jersey. They appear to be in stock. Of course, I think Adorama has made a price mistake as the laptop should cost $2000.

 

Previously, the estimate had been Nov 21st for Adorama (even though it didn't say it was pre-order. Not sure if that has changed. I don't remember who said it, but I think someone had said Adorama wasn't shipping for another week.

 

Does anyone know if it's possible to disable Raid 0 and just have a non-Raid setup?

 

Yes it is possible to change that in system bios.

 

@ koeman
THX that is interresting. What will happen to the Os then? Of course it is lost. How to recover/re-install it if your UX51 comes without DVD-Rom? Do I have to have my own stick? Does the OEM Win8 come on a DVD?

@ All
What comes to my mind right now is that some guys here already do have the UX51vz and we are all a bit freaky if we are honest. But so far nobody found any real issues (apart from "maybe" slight orange/red and potential storage upgrade issues). Depending on our high expectatations that is really quite remarkable. I think I will wait for 2 more testing results (1080P movie battery test and throttling/framedrop test in long gameplay sessions) and then I really might go for it pretty soon

 

I'd be very interested to see those results.

 

I was thinking the same thing, since I'm interested in disabling the raid too.
1) Does the laptop come with a partition for the OS or there's just a big 256GB unit with everything in it?
2) In case there are no partitions, I guess that even though I make an image with Acronis, I won't be able to recover it to a single 128 GB SSD, because the destination partition would be inferior to the original in the image. Am I right? So what can we do? Is it possible to find a clean ISO of Windows 8, install it and activate with our license (if there is actually a key in the box...)?

 

@ afling
This is no problem. There are tools which can clone a partition to other destinations without matching sizes. What I clearly don't know is how the Win8 boot partition looks like and how it reacts after such changes. In Win7 you just need the system partition and then you can rebuild the BCD - done. The option of a clean install would still be interresting.

@ all
One UX51VZ sample is on the way to computerbase.de for a review. I am sure that we can translate the most important parts for you. I also will ask them to include our major concerns. I also know that the tester seriously wants to use a standard size SSD. Would be great to get some internal pictures of a variant which does have this 500GB mechanical HDD. How do they fit it into the case? Is the battery smaller eventually? On the pictures of the dual SSD UX51vz it looked like you just cannot fit a 2,5" drive.

 

Hi.

Can anyone tell me, which wlan card is used. And can i set the standard graphic card in the bios.

 

This is great news! Will you keep us updated on this review please?

I'm pretty sure it's an Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 with bluetooth and WiDi, but wait a confirmation.
There is a software called Optimus in the laptop which automatically turn on the Nvidia GT 650m only when it's needed for performance. The default graphic card is already the Intel HD 4000. In any case, there is a control panel (not in the BIOS) from which you can set your preferences, and decide for each application what graphic card to use.

If you never want to use the Nvidia GT 650m you can always disable it through the Device Manager, but in that case I suggest to look for another laptop: there are plenty well built alternatives without a discrete graphic card and much cheaper

 

No, i want the discrete graphic card. Thank you for the information.

 

The partitions are a bit weird. There are two main partitions, one of 112GB (data) and another of ~88GB (OS), as well as several additional small partitions, including one which seems to be unallocated space, and a 20Gb recovery partition.

I'm actually keen on performing a clean install of Windows 7 on this laptop. So I reckon I just need to make sure I can store and preserve the original OS (and its license) before I destroy it. I think there is no license key in the box, but I may have overlooked it.

So I think all that needs to be done is to clone or copy the contents of the recovery partition to a USB drive. After that the disk space can be re-allocated and a new OS installed (I'll be using another license for that OS anyway). I may have some driver problems, though... I wish Asus would put up its product support section already.

 

Might be there to treat the SSDs with care and to extend their life times. But there is another thing...trim and so on normally does not work in Raid mode also. Some intel chipsets support the combination but if it is necessary depends also massivly of the SSD internal garbage collection. Honestly, I don't know ANYTHING about these SSDs which are used in the UX51.

Asus told computerbase.de that no HDD/SSD version is planned for Germany within near future.

 

That partitioning sounds messy.
-One for OS
-One for recovery
-One for "data"
Do you know what the other partitions are for?

From which country did you buy yours?
I'm located in Norway. Hopefully I don't have to wait for ages to get U500VZ with Norwegian OS and keyboard.

I have followed this thread since october. Had to register now to ask questions!
Right now, U500VZ looks like my next laptop (My old (very old) laptop stopped working this spring, so I've been waiting since then for something like U500VZ - good display for photo editing, powerful, and good enough build quality - hopefully).

 

As with the above user I too have been following this thread closely, looking for a machine that is up there in performance but without being a big, bulky, honking beast of a machine. It seems very much to be either this, the S15 or rMBP.

This release does seem to have been terrible however with lack of information. I'm in the UK and it appears the only vendor at the moment is PC World.

Buy ASUS U500VZ-CN032H 15.6" Laptop - Silver | Free Delivery | Currys

I'm assuming the i7-3517U stated here is wrong and it is actually the i7-3612QM.

Still, a titbit of information for anyone interested, as i have been intrigued by the possible touch variants that might be out there. From asusuk twitter: "The U500 in @CurrysPCWorldUK is the only version in the UK at current. There are no plans to release a touch at the moment."

 

I went into Currys yesterday to try to eyeball a machine on display. None on display and none in the store in the whole East London region. They are in central stock and can be ordered for next day delivery, but not reserved for collection since there are none in the stores.

Looking at their inventory system at the counter the impression was that the Currys stock might be the touch version, as it came up on the screen as "U500 Touch" or something like that. It's anybody's guess what the truth is since the processor is clearly misdescribed on the website.

 

I don't want to buy this and then the touch version comes out next month....

Anyone gotten this in UK yet?