A couple of weeks ago, I reviewed the Acer Aspire S3, one of the three ultrabooks available in the Indian market. This week, I get my hands on the ASUS Zenbook, the most high-end Ultrabook available in the market today. For a laptop that boasts of inbuilt Bang & Olufsen speakers and sticks to the ethos of the Intel Ultrabook, does the ASUS Zenbook justify its premium price tag?
Design details
One look at the ASUS Zenbook and I was in love with the design. The brushed aluminium body, patterned with barely discernible concentric circles, makes the lid look absolutely classy. Measuring in at 9mm at the rear and just about 3mm at the front the Zenbook is seductively sleek and weighs just a little more than a kilogram.
The brushed aluminium design is not just restricted to the lid, it continues all over the body. Resting on four tiny rubber pads under each corner of the base, the Zenbook has an array of air vents facing outwards to regulate the air flow. To further facilitate heat dissipation, ASUS has also used unique beryllium copper alloy in the components of the Zenbook.
Finger talk
As was the case with other Ultrabooks, the Zenbook, too did not have a backlit keyboard. The chiclet layout and brushed aluminium keys were certainly pleasing to the eye but keystrokes did not register easily, and I often had to use a bit of extra pressure while typing.
The unibody trackpad on the ASUS is demarcated from the bezel by a slight depression on the sides. Although the tactile feedback on the clicks was solid, sometimes it would get confused between plain scrolling and multi-touch gestures. So scrolling down web pages was a pain because the touchpad would end up zooming in to the screen instead. Similar problems occurred while we were working with text documents as well. Highlighting something to ‘Cut+Paste' was a bother. Overall, the trackpad wasn't exactly a pleasure to use as much as the feel of the smooth unibody held its appeal.
Music to the ears
The screen spans 13.3-inches and sports a 16:9 widescreen ratio. I watched the Jack Nicholson starrer ‘Chinatown' on the Zenbook and the glossy, reflective screen was a bit of a bother. The viewing angles on the display aren't great either, but Ultrabooks don't really boast of displays as their forte.
Taking a leaf out of its higher-end laptops, ASUS has integrated Bang & Olufsen speakers in the Zenbook as well. It was no surprise then that the audio quality was par excellence and for most of the media we played, the acoustics rang loud and clear through the room. Even when the volume had to be pumped up to the max, there was barely any distortion in dialogues or music that I listened to.
Custom design includes an oval voice coil for clearer vocals, oversized shielded speaker magnets for more impact and better bass, plus aluminium rings to secure speakers and reduce vibration. The choice of aluminium in the construct helps conduct and insulate sound well, thus preserving the quality of acoustics in the Ultrabook. The proprietary Smart Dynamic Range Control also lets you tweak settings to adapt to the kind of audio you are listening to.
Performance and connectivity
The strongpoint of the Zenbook, as is the case with most other Ultrabooks, is the battery life. I was constantly hooked on to the Web, playing back videos, streaming music and typing away on it , and it only flashed red after 6-odd hours of usage.
The Zenbook wins a bag of brownie points for the decent range of connectivity ports it offers - one USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.0 port, a 3.5mm audio jack, a micro HDMI slot, a mini VGA port and an SD card reader slot. Way more options than the Acer Aspire S3 or the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s (the other two Ultrabooks currently available in India) had on offer. The USB 3.0 port is also marked with a USB Charger+ icon which means you can plug in your USB-powered devices to charge them quicker then with the ordinary USB port.
Powering the Zenbook is an Intel Core i5 processor clocked at 1.6GHz, with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD. The combination works to make the laptop deliver low boot times. Coupled with the proprietary ASUS Super Hybrid Engine II, it also makes sure that, even after hours of inactivity, the Zenbook can resume from sleep in just about two seconds.
Apart from the instant resume functionality, the Zenbook also backs up your data to the SSD, should the battery level drop below 5 per cent thereby eliminating the chances of you losing your data due to a drained battery.
I ran the standard NovaBench test on the ASUS Zenbook and it hovered around a total of about 453, quite a low mark when compared to the Acer Aspire S3 at 476 and the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s at 473.
Final word
With a Rs 89,999 price tag, the ASUS Zenbook is currently the costliest Ultrabook on offer, topping the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s which sports almost as attractive a design and similar tech specs. If you are searching for just another lightweight and powerful but slightly more affordable notebook, you have two other options to choose from. However, if you want to pay the premium for excellent audio quality and a slightly better build quality, you know where to look!
Love: Attractive design, good battery life, great acoustics
Hate: Unresponsive trackpad and keyboard
Rs 89,999
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