So basically a fanless, ultraportable, 13" laptop with an IPS HD screen that beats the 2014 Macbook Air on both performance and battery life, has more than one USB port and costs between $700 and a $1000.<p>Seems like a winner to me.
I love laptops and follow the market quite carefully. But why is this here?<p>I can understand the discussion about the new Apple Macbook, and the Google Pixel 2015, and the Dell "Sputnik" linux laptops. Because they all have some element that's a bit "out there" for discussion. This one... is just another laptop, there are many laptops on the market.<p>Why not discuss this one instead? It's much more <i>interesting</i> IMO:<p><a href="http://panasonic.jp/pc/products/mx4h/" rel="nofollow">http://panasonic.jp/pc/products/mx4h/</a><p>The Panasonic MX4, only available in Japan, features: - 2.6lbs (same as this Asus), but it's durability-tested like it's a lightweight Toughbook, they have drop-test videos etc.
- 1920x1080 touchscreen
- Flips around to become a tablet (yoga), pen is included.
- Advertised 12hr battery life, but there are two batteries: the one that drains first is hot-swappable, leaving you with a few hours of battery life for you to swap in a replacement.
- An extra accessory allows you to charge your removed-battery from the wall via USB. So you can keep the laptop on battery forever, swapping them out and charging them.
- More connectivity options than anything else: VGA, HDMI, separate mic/headphones, SD card, 2xUSB3, and physical wireless on/off switch
- Physical touchpad buttons
- Ample-size trackpad, and the keyboard buttons are advertised as a decent 2mm of travel distance (deeper than most small laptops nowadays)
- Optical disc (blu-ray) drive. In that tiny form factor with exceptional battery, pen-included yoga-tablet, lighter-than-macbook-air durability-tested machine. Amazing!
I bought this a couple of weeks ago. Works pretty well with xubuntu 14.04.<p>I don't have it with me, so I will update this comment when I get home with specifics. Many of these may be xubuntu oddities more than general Linux issues.<p>Issues so far:<p>* wifi does not work out of the box (fixed: add /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-7265-8.ucode[1]).<p>* top of windows disappear (fixed: turn off composition in Settings/Window Manager Tweaks).<p>* most "special" keys do not work, (volume and mute work)<p>* applications menu stopped responding. (still broken)<p>Otherwise it's fine. Good battery life, and very lightweight. I hardly ever use the applications menu, and I generally use my desktop for a browser and terminal windows, so it works well for me.<p>1. <a href="https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/_media/en/users/drivers/iwlwifi-7265-ucode-22.24.8.0.tgz" rel="nofollow">https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/_media/en/users/drivers/iwl...</a>
Purchased the UX305 about two weeks ago for ~$630 (15% off at the Microsoft Store) with tax.<p>I have nothing but good things to say about the hardware - screen, keyboard, and touchpad are A+, and I'm getting 8-10 hours working in Visual Studio 2013.<p>Two things not covered in the review: HDMI port is 1.4, and the SD card reader is half-depth similar to Macs.<p>The only issue so far is the touchpad gesture software crashing Chrome sometimes when pressing alt-D to select the address bar.
I will wait for the Skylake version, that should bring the best out of these beauties. I have the Ivy Bridge version (UX31) and I love it. When I bought it I wasn't sure if choosing it or Macbook Air, choose the Zenbook for its better resolution. Same thing is happening now.
Sort of off topic, but I'm kind of stuck with Lenovo Thinkpads thanks to my love of the Trackpoint, but we're a shrinking group and there are many, many tempting alternatives these days. Anyone know if there's any way to graft a Trackpoint onto other laptops?
> "ASUS has kept the styling consistent over the years"<p>Well, they look completely different to me:<p>1. Zenbook UX31E <a href="http://www.techspot.com/images/products/laptops/org/1030632738_761952150_o.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.techspot.com/images/products/laptops/org/10306327...</a><p>2. Zenbook infinity UX301: <a href="http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ASUS-Zenbook-Infinity-Ultrabook_1-580x370.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://cdn.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ASUS-Zen...</a>
Ignoring the product which seems to be pretty nice especially for that price, I found the review which was mostly about showing charts and comparisons to be pretty poor.<p>It seems some charts they've omitted models to compare, and they're comparing it to 1-2 year old models of competitors (no 2015 MBA, sometimes a 2013 MBP).<p>It would have also been nice to see SSD benchmarks considering how Anand has typically pretty good at reviewing SSDs in the past.
Could that CPU handle lets say WebStorm, postgresql, gulp, apache/nginx, laravel(php-fpm)/rails open all at once?<p>Running on Ubuntu MATE<p>I see boost up to 2GHz, so.. yes?