Shame they are taking so long to release them. Uni starts at the end of this month and I know me and other will be much likely to part with the cash before we go. I hope the i7-4558U is available without the WQHD display, as a cost saving measure if anything.
I know. It's the only compelling Haswell CPU, yet nobody's doing it. I don't care about quad core in my laptop, I want discrete class GPU on my CPU. 4558U. We want it.
I've been looking for a 13.3" ultrabook that can do some medium res gaming when I travel and this seems to fit the bill nicely. A couple of questions if you don't mind: 1) I'm assuming the 730M has more raw gaming power than the Iris 5100 since it doesn't have Crystalwell? 2) You mentioned the 730M is essentially a lower clocked 650M. From your experience are these chips typically easy to overclock and will the gain in performance be worthwhile?
The overclockability of the 730M will depend on how nice they are in the BIOS, unless people manage to produce a modified BIOS. I could get +135MHz on my Clevo with 650M, limited by the VBIOS, now with an unlocked one I can run at +250MHz.
I doubt on the 730M here you will even be able to get it up to 650M clocks with the stock BIOS.
Considering that the Iris Pro 5200 runs neck and neck with a 650M .. there's probably no way the 5100 is going to touch a 730M.. probably a rung below it in the performance notch.
Ugh I guess the TDP of the Pro 5200 is just too high for this form factor? Man, I just want a moderate gaming ultrabook that I can pack with my work laptop without increasing my carrying mass.
The Iris Pro 5200 is currently only available in the quad-core chips, so that's one big reason it's out of contention. I also think the GT 730M won't overclock that well in a chassis like this -- overclocking simply increases the heat output, and a 13.3" Ultrabook is going to be pretty thermally constrained.
One can simply use a tool like nvidia inspector to change the clockspeeds on the chips. You don't need to mod any BIOS. However most of these ultrabooks/thinbooks are set to lower than recommended clock speeds because of heat and power, so the headroom varies or is simply not there. You should stress test all overclocks to see what is stable. Simply setting a high clock that works in some games may not work for others and lock-up your system or burn it out by a sudden surge of heat during which the system will shut-off and the heatsink will heat up drammatically.
1. Don't care about touch (touch on a laptop is stupid). 2. Running Win8 on MacBook Air right now, works fine. 3. The old MacBook Pro is only 0.5lbs heavier than Asus and Samsung, and the new one might be even lighter.
And btw, I'm not interested in how Intel's marketing department decides to label laptops.
Notebookcheck dot net tested win8 on a MBA(11") and found the battery life slashed to almost half the OSX count. I don't imagine any windows exclusive user making that kind of a compromise. But hey circumstantial windows use is fine as you said it is.
BTW I wasn't making a case for Intel's labels but for the CPU differences(low voltage/perf. vs regular voltage/higher perf.) - for the sake of comparing apples to apples(no pun intended).
My MBA is almost 3 years old, Windows 8 lasts around 3.5-4 hours of movie watching, and around 5 hours of regular work (browsing, typing emails, linux running in a vm, etc). That's good enough for me. Enough to watch a movie on a couch, or to work in a coffee shop for a few hours. A new battery running Haswell would probably double those times.
As far as differences in performance between 'ultrabooks' and 'laptops', the Asus in this article will have i7-4558U. According to a leaked benchmark scores for what appears to be the next MBP 13" it will have i5-4258U, which is a pretty much identical chip with a lower clock rate. So, again, labeling laptops this way does not make much sense.
No, "netbook" is the term for a notoriously underpowered, ultra cheap laptop with a crappy display. And Ultrabook is the term for a laptop made so thin that its performance and price suffer (along with being light and faster than HDD storage).
I've been waiting so long for a 13" machine with at least 1600x900 and i7-4558u to come along. Christ, just do it already. Nobody else is doing anything interesting at all.
Damn I'd love to replace my 2012 MBA 13" with a UX301 w./ the WQHD display. I want to see some benchmarks for the HD 5100 first though. I'm hoping it's significantly faster than the HD 5000.
I'm also concerned about battery life. A 28W chip and a 2560x1440 screen will be quite difficult to support for an Ultrabook. If it can match or beat the 2012 MBA's battery life, I'm happy.
I'm a UX32VD owner. Personally, I think the keyboard is quite decent. I can hit about 90 WPM on it without much trouble, and typing long papers/blog posts/forum responses/etc. doesn't bother me at all.
HD5100 is just clocked a little bit higher than HD5000 - even Intel doesn't want you to expect any wonders from this. And yes, a larger pixel count will hurt battery life. And will be pretty much invisibly at 13".. but hey, it's hip!
And yes again, if you actually use a 28 W CPU in an Ultrabook the fan is going to scream and CPU will most likely throttle. But battery life won't be affected much by the CPU being 28 W instead of 15 W, because it's idle most of the time anyway. And if it works it works faster, i.e. "races to idle".
But without the 15W TDP limit, the HD 5100 won't have to throttle as much or compete with the CPU for resources like the HD 5000 does. Intel's charts showed a pretty big difference between the HD 5000 and HD 5100, and I'm pretty sure that's the reason why.
I am looking for a portable (prolly not ultra book) laptop with iris graphics; it seems these are rare, any front runners ? I see this one has gt3 which rules but I want my cake and eat it too, I want dual core 35w or so with iris...is this possible?
I'd love to see someone put crystalwell in an ultrabook. Yeah, it would need to be throttled unless plugged in, but once plugged in, and attached to a cooling unit (whatever happened to THAT initiative, Intel?) it would be great, with no need for a discrete gpu. Also, why gorilla glass? That thing falls on a corner and it shatters. Who cares about fingerprints or scratches?
Dunno about the glass -- don't drop it? As for the Crystalwell in a laptop, we have one coming (not an Ultrabook though). I'm curious to see what power use is like; in theory, the TDP includes everything -- iGPU, CPU, eDRAM, etc. -- so something like the UX302 with a 15W CPU and a 25-35W GPU is already in a higher power envelope. Cost is probably the biggest factor keeping Crystalwell out of most systems.
Looking at everything else about this system I don't think CPU SKU cost is a huge factor for high end ultrabooks. I think the issue is that crystalwell by default is a 45W TDP configuration. It's hard to power and cool that in a 3lb 13" form factor which is where the money is. Not many people are going to spend $1500 on a 5lb laptop anymore.
cpu-cost will always be an important factor, even in a 2000$-machine, since the high end parts are always quite expensive for the performance benefit they bring, just look at i5 4670k vs. i7 4770k.
That's why you throttle it when not plugged in, and it would be nice if there were a separate powered heatsink that attached to the laptop to handle the extra power. That's what I really want. A single laptop that just sips power when on the go, but can scale up when plugged in and ample cooling.
That crystalwell is only available in a 45W part is Intel's mistake, as crystalwell itself adds very little to the TDP and so is perfectly suited to boost performance on low power SKUs.
Don't drop it? Will do! The cost would go up, but you'd get a much more integrated, and dynamic, experience (especially for linux users). It's really too bad no one ran with the configurable tdp options, but it's still great to hear that a laptop is coming with crystalwell.
They look really nice. Too bad about the bleeding 16:9 displays, though. I'm actually seriously considering the 2013 MacBook Pro [1], when it's finally released, as the MacBooks seem to be the only things out there that offer 16:10 displays.
[1] This is a huge departure, for me, as I can't stand Apple's "our way or no way" philosophy. Needless to say, I'll be installing Linux on the beast as soon as I get it.
The overall UI experience w/ OSX really grates on my nerves. The color choices, the hiding/obfuscation of configuration options that Apple deems "confusing," the always present (even when not relevant) menu bar at the top of the screen, Apple's not-invented-here issues, the list goes on. I grew up on Apple II and early Mac computers. Loved them. These days, about the only thing I like from Apple is some of their industrial design. My requirements for a GUI are that it be present when I want it, otherwise, it needs to get out of my way.
This is great news. I've been looking to replace my UX32VD with defective iSSD and the UX302 is coming out of the blue with better specs and looks than I dared hope.
RE: Overclockability, the 620M in the UX32VD wasn't really overclockable as you could hit the 90°C limit even at stock, with turbo disabled, in shader-intensive games (even Mass Effect 1 counts there). You could get better (more balanced) performance by reducing the clock so it always turbos! Otherwise you'd have great FPS in easy scenes and then lose the turbo just when you have lots going on.
But if they ship it with shitty DDR3, that can typically be overclocked a lot (+280MHz on my system, around 25%) which really helps boost performance. And in games like Torchlight which are light on shaders, you can boost the clock too.
am i the only one just wanting a haswell upgrade to the old zenbook, with an optional doubling of storage and RAM? honestly, i'm not a fan of the 1440p screen, since i think it's too much for 13" in combination with windows' not quite perfect scaling. also it drives price and energy consumption up.
i don't need the 730m of the 302-model and also the glass-lids of the new gear isn't quite after my taste. just a cpu/ram/ssd upgrade to the old ones would have been perfect imho, but i guess i'll make the final judgement when i get one of those things in my hands.
The port arrangement seems nicer (micro DP & HDMI vs VGA), but yeah... Hopefully the basic 1080p model doesn't disappoint and it's not too far north of $1K, I could probably even live with 4GB (for now, blah).
i could also live with 4gb for now (when not currently going crazy and stitching raw/hdr-panoramas that is), but who says i dont need 8gb in two years time? remember, these things aren't really made to be upgradable most of the time.
a higher pixel count display does not drive up energy consumption by much on its own.
Once you're talking about driving those pixels in a computer game, its another matter, of course, as the GPU will really sweat for that.
But the benefit of a 1440p resolution is in the fact that you can combine 4 pixels into 1 and run games at a very GPU efficient 720p resolution in full screen and without scaling artifacts.
To those wondering about the Gorilla Glass on the outside - I have the IVB Zenbook Prime and the lid gets scratched up really easily. I have several long, unsightly scratches; I don't think the quality of the lid was particularly great to begin with. I'm looking forward to the Gorilla Glass coating just so it doesn't get scuffed up like crazy again.
Gorilla Glass isn't exactly scratch proof either tho, just resistant... Take some sand or any fine particle and it'll still scratch the heck up... Plus there's the smudge factor. Jury's out on this IMO, I'm surprised it didn't add more to the weight tho.
These look really nice but what I really want is the Haswell update to UX51vz. A 13.3" screen is just too small for me, and though the 15" MBP is cool, I'd really like a notebook optimized for Windows. Save for a Haswell processor, the UX51vz is close to perfect for me. Why is it taking Asus so long to refresh their product lines? It seems like they are pretty much dead last to the party - and given they don't have a high-end 15" Haswell notebook yet, they haven't even fully arrived. Ugh.
Are any of these gonna have a matte IPS display? That was quite possibly one of the best things about the previous models, and an increasingly rare trait on ultrabooks.
I'm really disappointed. I really wanted the 2560x1440 display matched up with the gt 730m and the full size 2.5" drive. I got the ux32vd because of the discrete gpu the ability to add my own ram stick and my own 2.5" drive and it still had the 1080p ips screen. Now Asus is forcing me to choose between the sexy 2560x1440 screen and sacrificing the discrete gpu and sacrificing the 2.5" hard drive slot and living with their proprietary 512GB maximum generic ssd's or I can have the discrete gpu and a full 2.5" drive space to put in a quality 1TB samsung Evo SSD but then I must sacrifice the 2560x1440 display.
I could of lived with losing the discrete gpu and the 2.5" drive space if only the intel chip was the gt3e iris pro 5200 with 128MB crystalwell embedded memory. I'll have to see the benchmarks of the 302 and see how much faster it is than the ux32vd. I upgraded my ram to 10GB 1600Mhz 1.35v (first 4GB runs in dual channel mode the remaining 6GB in single channel mode) 1 2GB stick is soldered on so that was the best I could do. I upgraded the 2.5" drive to a crucial 512GB m4 and on the soldered on 24GB cache SSD I repurposed it to a dedicated recovery drive.
If the 1440p display was on the ux302 it would be an easy no brainer upgrade. If the gt3e was on the ux301 it would be a no brainer upgrade. As it stands the gt3 graphics part would be too much a downgrade for the light gaming i like to do on my ux32vd. The screen is the same on the ux302 so no point in upgrading for that reason so i need to see a decent jump on gpu performance cpu performance and battery life to justify the money spent.
Hopefully broadwell 14nm shrink will bring killer integrated graphics with 128 or even 256MB to the dual core ultrabook cpu's.
As beautiful as these laptops are I think I will just get a 1TB samsung 840 Evo SSD Throw my crucial m4 in my desktop and wait and hope that broadwell is amazing.
I picked up a Sandy Bridge Core i5 UX31A (2467M clocked at 1.6Ghz) with 128 GB SSD, , Win 7 Pro, 1600x900 display weighing at only 2.85 lbs. Even with Sandy Bridge it gets 5 hrs+ and this is plenty for me. Love the construction, the charger is just a little bigger than most cell phone dedicated chargers, and a steal @ $599. I can see keeping this around for a long time.
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rhx123 - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Shame they are taking so long to release them.Uni starts at the end of this month and I know me and other will be much likely to part with the cash before we go.
I hope the i7-4558U is available without the WQHD display, as a cost saving measure if anything.
jb14 - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Looking forward to the i7-4558U benchmarks and battery life. As far as I am aware these haven't been published yet.piroroadkill - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I know. It's the only compelling Haswell CPU, yet nobody's doing it. I don't care about quad core in my laptop, I want discrete class GPU on my CPU. 4558U. We want it.Connoisseur - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I've been looking for a 13.3" ultrabook that can do some medium res gaming when I travel and this seems to fit the bill nicely. A couple of questions if you don't mind:1) I'm assuming the 730M has more raw gaming power than the Iris 5100 since it doesn't have Crystalwell?
2) You mentioned the 730M is essentially a lower clocked 650M. From your experience are these chips typically easy to overclock and will the gain in performance be worthwhile?
rhx123 - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
The overclockability of the 730M will depend on how nice they are in the BIOS, unless people manage to produce a modified BIOS.I could get +135MHz on my Clevo with 650M, limited by the VBIOS, now with an unlocked one I can run at +250MHz.
I doubt on the 730M here you will even be able to get it up to 650M clocks with the stock BIOS.
hfm - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Considering that the Iris Pro 5200 runs neck and neck with a 650M .. there's probably no way the 5100 is going to touch a 730M.. probably a rung below it in the performance notch.Connoisseur - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Ugh I guess the TDP of the Pro 5200 is just too high for this form factor? Man, I just want a moderate gaming ultrabook that I can pack with my work laptop without increasing my carrying mass.JarredWalton - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
The Iris Pro 5200 is currently only available in the quad-core chips, so that's one big reason it's out of contention. I also think the GT 730M won't overclock that well in a chassis like this -- overclocking simply increases the heat output, and a 13.3" Ultrabook is going to be pretty thermally constrained.Intellist - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
One can simply use a tool like nvidia inspector to change the clockspeeds on the chips. You don't need to mod any BIOS. However most of these ultrabooks/thinbooks are set to lower than recommended clock speeds because of heat and power, so the headroom varies or is simply not there. You should stress test all overclocks to see what is stable. Simply setting a high clock that works in some games may not work for others and lock-up your system or burn it out by a sudden surge of heat during which the system will shut-off and the heatsink will heat up drammatically.p1esk - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
It's going be this Asus (with Iris) vs Samsung Book 9+ vs new MacBook Pro.ananduser - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
1. They're mutually exclusive by design(touch based Win8 vs OSX).2. The first two are ultrabooks while the latter is a laptop.
p1esk - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
1. Don't care about touch (touch on a laptop is stupid).2. Running Win8 on MacBook Air right now, works fine.
3. The old MacBook Pro is only 0.5lbs heavier than Asus and Samsung, and the new one might be even lighter.
And btw, I'm not interested in how Intel's marketing department decides to label laptops.
ananduser - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Notebookcheck dot net tested win8 on a MBA(11") and found the battery life slashed to almost half the OSX count. I don't imagine any windows exclusive user making that kind of a compromise. But hey circumstantial windows use is fine as you said it is.BTW I wasn't making a case for Intel's labels but for the CPU differences(low voltage/perf. vs regular voltage/higher perf.) - for the sake of comparing apples to apples(no pun intended).
p1esk - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
My MBA is almost 3 years old, Windows 8 lasts around 3.5-4 hours of movie watching, and around 5 hours of regular work (browsing, typing emails, linux running in a vm, etc).That's good enough for me. Enough to watch a movie on a couch, or to work in a coffee shop for a few hours.
A new battery running Haswell would probably double those times.
As far as differences in performance between 'ultrabooks' and 'laptops', the Asus in this article will have i7-4558U. According to a leaked benchmark scores for what appears to be the next MBP 13" it will have i5-4258U, which is a pretty much identical chip with a lower clock rate.
So, again, labeling laptops this way does not make much sense.
MDX - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Amen - an "ultrabook" is just the new term for "netbook" which is a new term for "laptop".MrSpadge - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
No, "netbook" is the term for a notoriously underpowered, ultra cheap laptop with a crappy display. And Ultrabook is the term for a laptop made so thin that its performance and price suffer (along with being light and faster than HDD storage).GTRagnarok - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Is the UX301 the same thing as the Zenbook Infinity that was shown a while back?JarredWalton - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Yes, I believe so. This is now the official name.piroroadkill - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I've been waiting so long for a 13" machine with at least 1600x900 and i7-4558u to come along. Christ, just do it already. Nobody else is doing anything interesting at all.MDX - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
So truestacey94 - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
Damn I'd love to replace my 2012 MBA 13" with a UX301 w./ the WQHD display. I want to see some benchmarks for the HD 5100 first though. I'm hoping it's significantly faster than the HD 5000.I'm also concerned about battery life. A 28W chip and a 2560x1440 screen will be quite difficult to support for an Ultrabook. If it can match or beat the 2012 MBA's battery life, I'm happy.
Infohawk - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
How were the keyboards on the prior models?Electromikey - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I'm a UX32VD owner. Personally, I think the keyboard is quite decent. I can hit about 90 WPM on it without much trouble, and typing long papers/blog posts/forum responses/etc. doesn't bother me at all.MrSpadge - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
HD5100 is just clocked a little bit higher than HD5000 - even Intel doesn't want you to expect any wonders from this. And yes, a larger pixel count will hurt battery life. And will be pretty much invisibly at 13".. but hey, it's hip!And yes again, if you actually use a 28 W CPU in an Ultrabook the fan is going to scream and CPU will most likely throttle. But battery life won't be affected much by the CPU being 28 W instead of 15 W, because it's idle most of the time anyway. And if it works it works faster, i.e. "races to idle".
stacey94 - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
But without the 15W TDP limit, the HD 5100 won't have to throttle as much or compete with the CPU for resources like the HD 5000 does. Intel's charts showed a pretty big difference between the HD 5000 and HD 5100, and I'm pretty sure that's the reason why.dylan522p - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
Except that 5100 isn't OC'ed 5000, it is 5200-crystalwell.n13L5 - Sunday, September 29, 2013 - link
Your comment contradicts itself...noeldillabough - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I am looking for a portable (prolly not ultra book) laptop with iris graphics; it seems these are rare, any front runners ? I see this one has gt3 which rules but I want my cake and eat it too, I want dual core 35w or so with iris...is this possible?stacey94 - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
The 28W is basically what you're looking for. It's got a dual core with a 2.8 GHz base clock, 3.3 GHz Turbo and Iris graphics.Apple will probably put it in the 13" Retina MBP refresh as well.
tuxRoller - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
I'd love to see someone put crystalwell in an ultrabook. Yeah, it would need to be throttled unless plugged in, but once plugged in, and attached to a cooling unit (whatever happened to THAT initiative, Intel?) it would be great, with no need for a discrete gpu.Also, why gorilla glass? That thing falls on a corner and it shatters. Who cares about fingerprints or scratches?
JarredWalton - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Dunno about the glass -- don't drop it? As for the Crystalwell in a laptop, we have one coming (not an Ultrabook though). I'm curious to see what power use is like; in theory, the TDP includes everything -- iGPU, CPU, eDRAM, etc. -- so something like the UX302 with a 15W CPU and a 25-35W GPU is already in a higher power envelope. Cost is probably the biggest factor keeping Crystalwell out of most systems.willis936 - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Looking at everything else about this system I don't think CPU SKU cost is a huge factor for high end ultrabooks. I think the issue is that crystalwell by default is a 45W TDP configuration. It's hard to power and cool that in a 3lb 13" form factor which is where the money is. Not many people are going to spend $1500 on a 5lb laptop anymore.fokka - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
cpu-cost will always be an important factor, even in a 2000$-machine, since the high end parts are always quite expensive for the performance benefit they bring, just look at i5 4670k vs. i7 4770k.tuxRoller - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
That's why you throttle it when not plugged in, and it would be nice if there were a separate powered heatsink that attached to the laptop to handle the extra power.That's what I really want. A single laptop that just sips power when on the go, but can scale up when plugged in and ample cooling.
n13L5 - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
That crystalwell is only available in a 45W part is Intel's mistake, as crystalwell itself adds very little to the TDP and so is perfectly suited to boost performance on low power SKUs.tuxRoller - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Don't drop it? Will do!The cost would go up, but you'd get a much more integrated, and dynamic, experience (especially for linux users).
It's really too bad no one ran with the configurable tdp options, but it's still great to hear that a laptop is coming with crystalwell.
baronmog - Wednesday, September 4, 2013 - link
They look really nice. Too bad about the bleeding 16:9 displays, though. I'm actually seriously considering the 2013 MacBook Pro [1], when it's finally released, as the MacBooks seem to be the only things out there that offer 16:10 displays.[1] This is a huge departure, for me, as I can't stand Apple's "our way or no way" philosophy. Needless to say, I'll be installing Linux on the beast as soon as I get it.
p1esk - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
I'm curious, are there specific things that annoy you in OSX terminal, which are not a problem in Linux?baronmog - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
The overall UI experience w/ OSX really grates on my nerves. The color choices, the hiding/obfuscation of configuration options that Apple deems "confusing," the always present (even when not relevant) menu bar at the top of the screen, Apple's not-invented-here issues, the list goes on. I grew up on Apple II and early Mac computers. Loved them. These days, about the only thing I like from Apple is some of their industrial design. My requirements for a GUI are that it be present when I want it, otherwise, it needs to get out of my way.Sugardaddy - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
This is great news. I've been looking to replace my UX32VD with defective iSSD and the UX302 is coming out of the blue with better specs and looks than I dared hope.RE: Overclockability, the 620M in the UX32VD wasn't really overclockable as you could hit the 90°C limit even at stock, with turbo disabled, in shader-intensive games (even Mass Effect 1 counts there). You could get better (more balanced) performance by reducing the clock so it always turbos! Otherwise you'd have great FPS in easy scenes and then lose the turbo just when you have lots going on.
But if they ship it with shitty DDR3, that can typically be overclocked a lot (+280MHz on my system, around 25%) which really helps boost performance. And in games like Torchlight which are light on shaders, you can boost the clock too.
fokka - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
am i the only one just wanting a haswell upgrade to the old zenbook, with an optional doubling of storage and RAM? honestly, i'm not a fan of the 1440p screen, since i think it's too much for 13" in combination with windows' not quite perfect scaling. also it drives price and energy consumption up.i don't need the 730m of the 302-model and also the glass-lids of the new gear isn't quite after my taste. just a cpu/ram/ssd upgrade to the old ones would have been perfect imho, but i guess i'll make the final judgement when i get one of those things in my hands.
Impulses - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
The port arrangement seems nicer (micro DP & HDMI vs VGA), but yeah... Hopefully the basic 1080p model doesn't disappoint and it's not too far north of $1K, I could probably even live with 4GB (for now, blah).fokka - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
i could also live with 4gb for now (when not currently going crazy and stitching raw/hdr-panoramas that is), but who says i dont need 8gb in two years time? remember, these things aren't really made to be upgradable most of the time.n13L5 - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
a higher pixel count display does not drive up energy consumption by much on its own.Once you're talking about driving those pixels in a computer game, its another matter, of course, as the GPU will really sweat for that.
But the benefit of a 1440p resolution is in the fact that you can combine 4 pixels into 1 and run games at a very GPU efficient 720p resolution in full screen and without scaling artifacts.
kltye - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
To those wondering about the Gorilla Glass on the outside - I have the IVB Zenbook Prime and the lid gets scratched up really easily. I have several long, unsightly scratches; I don't think the quality of the lid was particularly great to begin with. I'm looking forward to the Gorilla Glass coating just so it doesn't get scuffed up like crazy again.Impulses - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Gorilla Glass isn't exactly scratch proof either tho, just resistant... Take some sand or any fine particle and it'll still scratch the heck up... Plus there's the smudge factor. Jury's out on this IMO, I'm surprised it didn't add more to the weight tho.GauravDas - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Can I play games at 1280x720 on a 2560x1440 resolution display and get perfect scaling?fokka - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
um, why not? as long as the game supports it, which most games should...MrSpadge - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
Sense - their naming doesn't make any.NWBarryG - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
These look really nice but what I really want is the Haswell update to UX51vz. A 13.3" screen is just too small for me, and though the 15" MBP is cool, I'd really like a notebook optimized for Windows.Save for a Haswell processor, the UX51vz is close to perfect for me. Why is it taking Asus so long to refresh their product lines? It seems like they are pretty much dead last to the party - and given they don't have a high-end 15" Haswell notebook yet, they haven't even fully arrived. Ugh.
Impulses - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
Are any of these gonna have a matte IPS display? That was quite possibly one of the best things about the previous models, and an increasingly rare trait on ultrabooks.Xichekolas - Friday, September 6, 2013 - link
"upgrade them the Haswell" is the new "set us up the bomb"Laststop311 - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
I'm really disappointed. I really wanted the 2560x1440 display matched up with the gt 730m and the full size 2.5" drive. I got the ux32vd because of the discrete gpu the ability to add my own ram stick and my own 2.5" drive and it still had the 1080p ips screen. Now Asus is forcing me to choose between the sexy 2560x1440 screen and sacrificing the discrete gpu and sacrificing the 2.5" hard drive slot and living with their proprietary 512GB maximum generic ssd's or I can have the discrete gpu and a full 2.5" drive space to put in a quality 1TB samsung Evo SSD but then I must sacrifice the 2560x1440 display.I could of lived with losing the discrete gpu and the 2.5" drive space if only the intel chip was the gt3e iris pro 5200 with 128MB crystalwell embedded memory. I'll have to see the benchmarks of the 302 and see how much faster it is than the ux32vd. I upgraded my ram to 10GB 1600Mhz 1.35v (first 4GB runs in dual channel mode the remaining 6GB in single channel mode) 1 2GB stick is soldered on so that was the best I could do. I upgraded the 2.5" drive to a crucial 512GB m4 and on the soldered on 24GB cache SSD I repurposed it to a dedicated recovery drive.
If the 1440p display was on the ux302 it would be an easy no brainer upgrade. If the gt3e was on the ux301 it would be a no brainer upgrade. As it stands the gt3 graphics part would be too much a downgrade for the light gaming i like to do on my ux32vd. The screen is the same on the ux302 so no point in upgrading for that reason so i need to see a decent jump on gpu performance cpu performance and battery life to justify the money spent.
Hopefully broadwell 14nm shrink will bring killer integrated graphics with 128 or even 256MB to the dual core ultrabook cpu's.
As beautiful as these laptops are I think I will just get a 1TB samsung 840 Evo SSD Throw my crucial m4 in my desktop and wait and hope that broadwell is amazing.
dylan522p - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
You do know that GT3/5100 is stronger than a 620m so it would not be a downgraden13L5 - Monday, September 30, 2013 - link
stronger but with memory bus issues and driver issues...Not exactly a clear upgrade
trivor - Monday, September 9, 2013 - link
I picked up a Sandy Bridge Core i5 UX31A (2467M clocked at 1.6Ghz) with 128 GB SSD, , Win 7 Pro, 1600x900 display weighing at only 2.85 lbs. Even with Sandy Bridge it gets 5 hrs+ and this is plenty for me. Love the construction, the charger is just a little bigger than most cell phone dedicated chargers, and a steal @ $599. I can see keeping this around for a long time.