Review Of The ASUS UL30A Laptop

ASUS UL30A – Definitely A Performer

Sum n substance:

Thumbs up: Good price,  excellent endurance, good keyboard, loud and clear speakers.

Thumbs down: Graphics performance isn’t that great, glossy screen.

Inside the trunk:
Display Size :13.3
Native Resolution :1366×768
Graphics Card :Intel GMA X4500MHD
Video Memory :132MB
Wi-Fi :802.11b/g/n
Bluetooth : Bluetooth 2.1
Operating SystemMS Windows Vista Home Premium (32-bit)

THE WHIZ-KID SPEAKS: This one marks the entry of the leaders into the low cost portable notebook market. ASUS is most of the times criticized for their high prices. But with this one it promises high endurance without burning a hole in the pocket. Anyways lets move ahead and take a look at what this  one really has to offer…

Razzle-Dazzle: “ Less is more” and surely with this one I think ASUS is hell bent on proving this one true. As far as the looks are concerned ASUS have definitely gone forward and added a touch of elegance keeping with the minimalistic design. Its got an aluminium lid and fortunately isn’t a fingerprint magnet like most of the other notebooks being launched.

This one isn’t spattered with loads of buttons, instead it just has one button for launching the ExpressGate and another one for the Power on thhe right.

The keyboard has a diamond wave pattern all over it and the keys are evenly spaced which make for a comfortable typing experience. This diamond wave pattern extends all right through the end till the palmrest and throughout the touchpad. One has to be a bit careful while typing though, because one might accidentally just slide his hands over the trackpad. Also what I didn’t like about the keyboard is the single rocker button which atleast I for one am not comfortable with.

Its got a 13.3 inch display which is a bit too glossy, though the 1366 x 768-pixel display is vibrant and the colours are deep enough. It offers a good array of vertical and horizontal angles which are pretty good. Atleast three people can watch a movie comfortably.

As far as the overall dimensions and the aesthetics as concerned this one is quite similar to Apple’s child… the Macbook. At 12.7 x 9.2 inches this one is a bit thicker by .94 inches but that offers space for more ports. It weighs about 4.0 pounds and is pretty much portable, sliding easily into most of the carry bags or pouches. The left side houses the HDMI and VGA ports along with an USB port, while on the right we have the Ethernet, a 5-in-1 card reader, mic and two USB ports.

Inside Dope: The speakers of this one were loud and clear quite contrary to what I expected it to be. Anyways the volume of the speakers even at 50% volume can easily fill up a small room and even when the volume was at maximum it did not create any kind of blaring sounds. This one probably is one of the very few laptops which come along with some real good speaker quality.

The video quality of this one is pretty much average. Streaming a video of the famous ‘70’s show’ was not much of a problem. The video quality though not a total ace was pretty decent. Still I would advice downloading the videos and then watching them for better performance. It comes loaded with a 0.3 megapixel webcamera which again is not that efficient. During video calls there over Skype this one exhibited some video stuttering and the videos were a bit grainy and  choppy.

This one produced average results in our overall system performance test and I would definitely attribute this to the underpowered 1.3-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 ULV processor, 4GB of RAM. This one could definitely been better.

It took 3 minutes and 39 seconds for this one to successfully transfer a folder of  4.97 GB of  mixed multimedia, thanks to the 5,400-rpm, 500GB hard drive which is pretty much above the category average. Multitasking with this one while writing this review was also a pleasant experience.

This being loaded with  Intel’s GMA X4500MHD didn’t exactly have anything much exciting to offer in the graphics department. So I won’t exactly recommend this one if your looking out for some good gaming or video watching experiences.

Living upto its claims of  high endurance, this one offers a battery life of  9 hours and 55 minutes which is simply FANTABULOUS. Its almost double the category average. It took almost 3 hours and 55 minutes to get fully recharged during which it consumed aa power of  36.3 watts.

Nitty- Gritty: This one definitely outperforms most of its competitors. Though this one isn’t exactly for those who are looking out for a high end multimedia loaded performer, this one is for those who want to use a notebook for everyday tasks. Plus at $799 this one is definitely worth every penny being paid for it or even more.

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