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

A friend of mine ordered the latest version of the UX31 and returned it because of strange loud fan noise and because of the touchpad quality. The second one was even louder. So he returned it again and ordered the Samsung Series 9 -> no problem and happy

 

It should´t be a problem for games tho.
MBPr manege to work with 85w adapter and a 45w cpu, asus should be fine with is 35w cpu.

Smaller adapters are much more practical too, my toshiba came with a 120w one, but i have been using a small 65w one for weight reasons and it works fine.

 

doesn't it seem strange for Mike to report usage of around 20mAh while idling? from my ASUS U41SV experience, torrenting, sidebar disabled idling is around 12mAh.... shouldn't IVB + Optimus be lower?

 

Also, lets remember using an optimal thermal paste can noticeably decrease cpu / gpu temperature. One user applied a better thermal paste to his Asus UX32VD and saw a 7 degree Celsius temperature decrease, that is huge on the same heatsink design!

 

I also dont think thats a problem as well. It seems people want to put notebooks on unrealistic loads just to be sure of something that isnt that needed.

Rarely I see people putting 100% load on gpu + cpu, but often I see people game and think that they are doing that. for the former scenario you go for workstation class, for the latter, you go for whatever fits your needs and your bills.

I do put 100% load on the cpu, but that is done on 24 core server

 

IVB have crapy idle batery life compared to sandy bridge duo to the higher idle frequency (1200Mhz) and higher vid ( some 0.1V higher)

only the ULV IVB have lower power consumption duo to the lower unlocked frequency of 800Mhz

something tell me that intel did this on purpose to promote ultrabook sales..

Anyway 20Wh is to much, even with an ips display and quadcore, the battery life should be more similar to hp envy 15 which have similar components.
maybe the brightness was set too high or the graphic was activated by some application?

@Mike, could you do some tests like minimum brigtness, wifi off and gpu off (you could chek if it is off if it doesn´t appear on HWinfo64 when you open it) just to check the idle power consumption.
thanks.

 

It's truth that stress test (prime95+FurMark) is an unrealistic scenario in real usage, but it's a standard way to test and to know the limit of a cooling system.
A notebook that have cooling problem can't resist for neither 15 minutes in this test (just to see XPS 15 L521X reviews, it shut down in 10 minutes during this test, not only it have a lot of problem while gaming).
For example The Gigabyte U2442N is a ultrathin notebook that perform stress test very well, keeping Turbo active on CPU and GPU without any problems.

 

again workstation class, there is something nice to be said about apple, they know what they are doing, the copy that was the xps 15 was done poorly.

the u2442n also has the same weight as those thin and light 15'' notebooks that we are discussing.

 

There really should be a better way to test a notebook cooling without being unrealistic.

Something like no throttling with turboboost off during bf3 on 30ºC ambient temperature (normal temperature on my country during summer)

It´s not easy to evaluate a notebook cooling performance, and i´m not against using prime95+furmark, even if it just for the sake of comparison with other notebooks, because right now this is the most common test used and there is a lot of data out there to extract some conclusion about the cooling.

 

GIGABYTE - Notebook / Slate & Device - Notebook & Netbook - U series - U2442N

U2442n weights 1.6Kg
Dimensions: 339(W) x 233(D) x 18.5~21(H) mm
Review Gigabyte U2442N Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

Apple rMBP has not so good cooling system, when it runs only Prime95 hits 104°C on CPU.
Review Apple MacBook Pro 15 Retina 2.3 GHz Mid 2012 - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

my dell never gets warm, i downloaded both those tools just now...will run them tonight to verify my theory that yours shut down due to quality control and not design

 

Have you read reviews about XPS15 L521X of Anandtech and Notebookcheck?

AnandTech - Dell XPS 15 L521X: A Detailed First Look

Review Dell XPS 15 (L521X) Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

 

yes but i have A06 and want to see if I can force a thermal shutdown, though i doubt it

 

This is last post about L512X, (it's becoming to be a very large OT) but if you read owners thread of L512X you can find a user with A06 that has had a thermal shut down.
Even if Thermal shut down could not happen always with BIOS A06, you must consider that GPU can underclock itself until to 130MHz (base clock is 645MHz, Turbo clock is 709MHz) and this is ridiculous.

 

Any chance we know if this bad boy will have WiDi incorporated into it?

 

If it use a Intel Wireless card, WiDi is present for sure.
Mike, what's the model of Wi-Fi Card, it's included bluetooth 4.0 like 6235 or simply it's Intel 6235 ?

 

The 3-3.5 hours of battery life reported by Mike was what I expected in my previous post. Quad core i7, 15.6" IPS, back-lit keyboard, two disk drives. This is with the gt650m off. You will get 2 hours at most with the dGPU and secondary fan turned on.

Asus simply sacrificed battery size to achieve this thinness, and unfortunately the company is not quite there yet in terms of battery technology compared to Apple. I think I'll be keeping my Envy 15t.

 

Hello...74WH!?!? No, they just did not sacrifice battery size. Do you know ANY 15" Windows laptop which has a battery that big? Sony Vaio SV-S1511 runs 4:30+ with a 49WH battery while surfing the web or watching movies @ 50% brightness....

 

Maybe there is some problem with the unit of Mike (he says that it's still a prototype).
If U500 has a 74Wh battery means that battery is not small, XPS15 has 65Wh battery and in notebookcheck test Surfing with WLAN hits 4h:39 min.
I don't know if Mike uses U500 connected to external monitor or uses WiDi, but if it's so then Nvidia GPU stays always ON.

 

the u500 should have similar/slightly better battery life than the envy since the envy has a 8 cell 72wh battery. im getting around 4.5 hrs with wifi surfing and brightness at 30%

 

I'm agree with you, also because in this item there is some info about battery:
ASUS Unveils 15-inch Zenbook U500VZ Notebook With Nvidia Graphics, Dual SSDs

"The company claims that the U500VZ’s battery life is “impressive” and that its Super Hybrid II software, which controls system speed, will provide 25 percent longer battery life “when it’s needed most.”

 

Yes the rmbp has a good cooling system, if you were an apple user you would know that when you stress the machine in windows, its advisable that you use some form of fan control.

and you were right on th weight, it seems that its been awhile that I dont look at my own thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...-11-14-notebooks-gaming-worth-compendium.html

 

I forgot to say that rMBP hits 104°C with only prime95 and contemporaneously it's throttling to 1.2GHz.
Moreover under Windows its power supply is insufficient to cover the power request.

 

under any OS that psu is not enough for the hardware, its a great complaint that I have regarding apple, the 85w should be used for the mbp 13, the 15 should use a 120w, and the mba should use 65w. Btw the 85w can supply more power than 85w, read last year notebookcheck review, apparently they dont even know that they published that

However given that I know a lot of users, and we have run routines loading all cores on the cpu, we havent found the alleged throttling, turbo wasnt as high as it could be on 4 cores, but never throttling.

but enough with this, we are OTing this thread again, if you want to discuss more pm me

 

Can you please stop this rMBP discussion again?

@ [-Mac-]
Hope that this Super Hybrid II software turns out to work in later reports or that Mike had some "strange" settings or higher workload when he reached so low battery times.

 

If you guys need more storage capacity for the U500, Western Digital came up with this really thin Hard drive.
Engadget

 

Yes 20mah is too much for idle. I wonder if the gpu is not disabling itself?

 

This is a nice announcement, it will replace two of my needs a gaming laptop and a very portable one. Was hoping they would up the screen resolution to wuxga 1200p or something but stuck with 1080p again. 8GB of ram would also be nice being standard.

 

@MikeTLB
Have you already benchmarked SSDs?
Having RAID 0 this should be the biggest performance advantage of U500 against the competitors, even the ones with single SSD.

Could you please check again what's the maximum installable RAM and how?
If, as you suspect, there is a 4 GBs bank soldered on the mobo and an accessible slot for upgrade this not only would force (at the moment) to just 12 GB (which is not paltry anyway) but would possibly lead to compatibility problem when mixing soldered bank with a different kind in the upgrade (at least, it should be an issue to take account of).

Thanks for the work you are doing.

 

I use an iphone and i'll try to find some app, but i just don't know how conclusive or accurate it will be.

As for the thermometer, I've been planning to find one but over here you can't find anything under 100 euros, which is more that i'd want to spend.

One more thing: battery eater does not work on this Windows 8 unit, it always freezes immediately after opening it, I've tried several versions and they all performed the same. so if you have any suggestions of other good battery testing software, let me know please, otherwise, we'll just have to stick to my non-standard daily use scenario and multimedia playback tests

 

I'm pretty sure this could be a drivers problem. I've also talked to my contact at asus and they too said that 20 mah in idle is way too much, i was expecting something like 12-14.

And even with the screen's brightness set to 0 and Power Saving mode, Battery Bar never shows anything less than 17-18 mah.

This is a sample, so don't forget that, there might be some issues with the battery, etc.

So please, I must insist, take all the things related to performances, battery life and maybe even temperatures with a grain of salt, things might get better with the final products.

 

I cannot open the device, so unless there's a better way to show things that with cpuz and hwinfo, i can't say more. In these programs i get 8 GB of RAM and only one viewable 4 GB HYnix module (SPD in CPUz). that's why i concluded the other 4 GBs are soldered and only one module is available. Was I wrong?

As for SSD benchmarks, I'll have them in my review which should be available tomorrow, but like I said, don't expect that many numbers, I've promised Asus that I'll only post the scores for 3dmark 11 Performance and PCMark Vantage, plus HDDTune bench, although I've ran plenty of others and the results are good.

I'm only doing that because this is probably the first u500 that gets out and it's a prototype. In case it'a a faulty unit, that might have a severe negative impact, based on a lie, and that would be unfair...

 

thank you Mike, everything you've done now is extremely informative and encouraging for us potential buyers!

 

I could care less if it came with 4GB as long as they make it easy to upgrade to 16GB myself....which, from what I get from this thread, this laptop will have an artificial "cap" on RAM to 12GB

 

I'm in the same boat as you but if they had to solder one module it would be to save space which is hardly an artificial cap. I also really wanted to put in 16gb but was worried this might the case.

Mike you can download software called system information ( Buy SIW Pro or Download SIW Home Edition) scroll to bottom for free version. After you have it open pick memory on the left and it'll tell you how much memory you have installed, what's the maximum supported and how many slots there are. If you could post screenshots from both memory and hard drives that'd be great.

 

MiKe, can you tell to us, what is the model and brand of SSDs?

 

Purchase it, use if for one day and then send it back :thumbsup: I would understand if that is not worth the effort and I really appreciate the time and effort which you do already invest to give us all available information which you are allowed to publish.
Please keep us also up to date about the power consuption if there are any news. Really nice to hear that Asus already states that this is not correct.
Btw. for the UX31/UX32 many touchpad issues have been reported. Hope to read something in the (p)review which tells us if the problems are solved.

 

Mike, judging by the location of the upper vents, I would guess that running this laptop with the lid closed (attached to an external monitor) would severely restrict airflow. Would you agree?

 

I think you're right regarding the upper vents but i hope that the airflow from the fissures in the bottom will be enough granting enough ventilation

 

I think that the bottom grid are for fresh air while the upper grid is for exhaust air, so I guess they must be open simultaneously, in special way if you connect to external monitor procedure that active the Nvidia GPU.

 

Exhaust hot air on user's hands? Hope it's not like this

 

You are usual to type with your hands near to low part of display?

 

Straight point

 

is this software trustworthy? it says that the maximum amount of memory would be 32 GBs

also, the HDDs are made by Sandisk.

Will post print-screens in the reviews

 

I think that software has wrong, because 32GB means 4 ram slots.
At best we can hope in 2 slots for 16GB max.

I have made some research to Sandisk SSDs.
Seems that there are 3 lines:

Extreme : best performance, but there isn't 128GB version, there are 120GB, 240GB and 480GB version, it don't seems the Asus choice.

Ultra: only Sata 2 and there are 120GB and 240GB version.

No name: they are Sata 3 and there are 64GB and 128GB version, I believe this is Asus choice.

www.sandisk.com/products/ssd/sata/

Supplier for 2X256GB SSD probably is not Sandisk.
I hope Asus chooses Samsung PM830 for all versions (128SSD +500HDD, 2X128GB SSD , 2X256GB SSD)

Inviato dal mio GT-I9100 con Tapatalk 2

 

Okay, so the laptop gets hot under gaming. I was expecting as such. Even the N56VZ gets hot, and there's a lot more space for a better cooling system. I'm more concerned about temperatures during everyday, casual use, like web surfing.

I can't see the price being lower than $1900. Besides the Retina MacBook Pro, there is no competition for a luxurious gaming ultrabook. Gigabyte's rebranded Clevo has a low-quality screen, rickety keyboard, loud noise emissions, and average build quality, which is why the price is lower for one. I might just wait for more Retina clones from other electronics corporations and let competition drive the price down a little bit. Still, I admire Asus's ambition to match Apple step-for-step by producing high-quality laptops in ever. They answered the MacBook Air with their Zenbook Prime, made a solid multimedia laptop in the N56VZ, and are now on the brink of combining the best qualities of both into their Uberbook 500, which may yet again defeat Apple's equivalent RMBP. And I haven't even mentioned their G55/G75 series yet, which I prefer over Alienware due to having a better cooling system. In short, Asus rocks.

 

The software essentially only shows information as provided by bios so in short it is trustworthy. I think the 32gb is a theoretical number, what's more important is how many slots there are which it does show. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to find out whether any of the ram is soldered without opening it up. So it might still be 12gb max if 4gb is soldered. I'm wondering the same about storage. Really hoping none of it is soldered or proprietary and that we'll get access to two 7mm bays.

In any case the screens will be helpful as it shows a lot more information like ram speed, brand, etc.

 

I returned a Samsung chronos 14 inch because it got really hot on the keyboard near the vent. I think these lighter laptops tend to super heat up near the vents so they just need to keep those away especially from the WASDs...

 

Do we have the exact weight of the monster ?

 

Some good info popped up.
Asus Zenbook U500, the first ever 15-inch Asus ultrabook
Asus Zenbook U500 unboxing and quick preview - YouTube

-an external optical drive comes bundled with the unit
-i7-3612QM
-gets hot
-unknown if user upgradeable (special screws)
-includes Widi