Gadgetory

Hey hang on guys this is Dave 2d and this is my review of the ux305 that is made by Asus now this is a notebook that is going to be getting quite a bit of attention in the near future and currently has quite a bit of buzz around it but mostly because of its similarity to the upcoming Apple MacBook the 12-inch one and it's similar in specs but almost half the price so people are interested in this thing I've had my review unit for over two weeks I've used it very extensively now when I do a review on a notebook especially if something that is important like this one I really try to use it as a daily like I've used it probably realistically over 20 hours of extensive use I'd like to take my time with these things but here's my review so just a quick unboxing here it's a nice and simple box so when you open it up notebook is on the left and your AC adapter and Ethernet dongle are on the right I'll get into more details about the AC adapter and the Ethernet port in a bit and we lift up the notebook underneath there's a layer of pamphlets and other accessories the unit I'm reviewing is the Microsoft Signature Edition it's got a Broadwell intel core m 5y10 surprisingly only runs at 800 megahertz but it can bump up to 2 gigahertz with turbo boost got a 13.3 inch 1080p screen eight gigs of ram 250 gigs of SSD it's got integrated HD 5300 graphics and all of this for $700 in a very thin and light package that only weighs 2.65 pounds the top surface of the notebook is brushed aluminum now if you've done like a radial pattern and this surface actually doesn't show fingerprints that easily now the bottom of the notebook is also aluminum but they've done it in a different finish it's got that satin finish that's similar to the way Mac books are done it's got four rubber feet that are actually really grippy which I like and two speakers on the left and right here now this finish of the aluminum does show fingerprints more easily and you'll notice how this whole thing has a purplish tint to it under certain lights it kind of looks black or dark grey but under more natural lighting it does look a little purple they call this color obsidian stone but it's basically like a dull plum or plant color but it looks alright it's also supposed to come in white in what they call a ceramic alloy color but I haven't actually seen the white one in person so I'm not sure how that looks now in terms of its size it's a little bit smaller than a 13-inch MacBook Air and it's also a little bit lighter here you can see the two notebooks end to end the asus ux305 is also a little bit shorter now on the left side there's two USB 3 ports and an SD slot I also want to draw your attention to the finish of the side of the top lid if you look closely you'll see that there's a rough finish on the edge of the top lid when you touch it it almost feels like sandblasted glass and on the right side there's a hole for the AC adapter another USB 3 a micro HDMI and a headphone jack so something I noticed with the SD slot it is a very loose-fitting slot there's no click or any kind of friction or resistance when you put your card in so it actually slides in and out really easily I would even say a little too easily it's really not a big deal but I just thought I should mention it there was a little bit of flex on the screen nothing major but the bottom chassis was more flexible than I thought it would be there was no problems with it just unexpected this notebook uses a 45 watt AC adapter it's pretty small but the prongs don't fold in and when you're low on battery the orange light flashes to let you know I found that it took about four or four and a half hours to fully charge the battery and if you're wondering what that white light for that little light bulb icon is it lights up white when the lid is open and the screen is on and when you close the lid and it's hibernating it's slowly flashes white not very exciting so this is really nice of Asus they've included an Ethernet dongle in case you want to use one it's simple it's Auto detected by the software and it works the screen is a matte finish 1920 by 1080 it's not very bright but for a notebook this size it's adequate it is an IPS display so the colors are decent but it's not amazing but the viewing angles are pretty good overall I think the screen is decent you need a better screen they will have a qHD version in the near future but I think for an ultrabook with this processor the 1080p screen is probably where you want to be keep in mind that the 1080p version is not a touchscreen but the quad HD one will be so if you really want a touchscreen you're gonna have to hold out for that high res one this thing also has a 720p webcam up here and it works as advertised it does webcamming in 720p the keyboard is okay the first couple of days I was using it I didn't really like it it has a very short trowel I think it's less than one millimeter and it doesn't feel particularly clicky or tactile but it gets the job done it doesn't feel cramped or anything but I don't love it I think it's a very average keyboard it doesn't have backlighting but I'm one of those people that turns off backlighting so I'm okay with that the caps lock key does have a little LED to let you know when it's on my biggest beef with this notebook was the trackpad it wasn't a terrible trackpad but it was significantly worse than any other component on this notebook it really stuck at sometimes a trackpad wouldn't work at all sometimes it would skip around sometimes I was getting double clicks when I was only signal clicking sometimes wouldn't register double clicks but the biggest problem is that the right button had this weird double-click to it so I thought this might be a defect on my particular notebook so I sent it back they send me another one same problem I checked out the demo model at the store it had a very similar problem not exactly the same but there's definitely something weird going on with that right button and the thing is if you only use this notebook for a little bit it's not a big deal but if you use this thing for two weeks you definitely start to notice it I have to admit I'm very picky about trackpads but I really didn't like this one I'll just leave it at that so in the back of the notebook there these two little feet that kind of lift the notebook up when you open the screen presumably for better ventilation because remember this notebook is fanless I'm not sure what they're made it of but it's not rubber just out of curiosity I wanted to see the thermals of a fanless notebook so I use the Fleur again on the left is the ux305 and on the right is a 2014 13 inch MacBook Air both of these were running benchmarks for about an hour so they are as hot as they can get and it's pretty obvious the ux305 actually doesn't get that hot until throttles the cpu down when it gets a little warm so it's never going to get super hot okay speakers this thing has some software called audio by ice power which has different profiles for different kinds of sounds there's some slight variation when you're using headphones but if you're using speakers these different profiles all sound the same the speaker's themselves are really small and the sound quality is actually pretty poor but for an ultrabook this size you kind of expect that right they're also a little quiet it's hard to break 70 decibels with them but this is what they sound like okay so gaming I was super curious to see how an 800 megahertz CPU would play games and I guess I was kind of surprised that it could play games at all but they play really poorly okay so first up dota 2 with everything on low lowest resolution possible this thing runs at around 20 25 frames per second heroes of the storm actually did worse so with everything turned low and lowest resolution I was getting around 10 frames per second so this is actually unplayable maybe this is something that Blizzard will tune on their end to optimize for this CPU and GPU but in its current state it's unplayable and out of curiosity I ran the BioShock Infinite benchmark at lowest res lowest settings getting around 20 frames per second not very good but the one and only game that I could get to kind of run at a playable framerate was counter-strike go this is very undemanding game before the people that are curious out there you can kind of play csgo if your student and you're kind of thinking of picking this up I say go for it because you can't play games very well and you're forced to just do your work the battery life on this notebook is actually really impressive it's a 45 watt hour battery but I was able to get almost three hours of gameplay I know the frame rates aren't very good I mean I was playing at single-digit fps for a little bit but three hours of games on a notebook is really good I was able to get six hours watching movies off the drive and just for regular use with screen at about 3/4 brightness I was able to get nine hours of battery life that's you know what for a 45 watt hour battery that's pretty nice alright so my closing thoughts on this thing this is a notebook that I think is going to be an excellent option for a lot of people it's an inexpensive notebook at 700 bucks it's got a great screen it's thin it's light it's got a really good battery life it's built well the keyboard is pretty good there's a lot of things to love about it the one thing that I don't love about it is that trackpad so if you need a really great trackpad for just kind of the whole user experience you kind of want to look elsewhere but if you're comfortable with using an okay trackpad or if you just always plug it up to an external Mouse this is a great notebook it's a great value and I'm surprised that Asus could offer something of this caliber at this price point so kudos to them this is a beast of a machine for that price so that's the end of the review I hope you guys liked it if you liked it give me some thumbs and if you loved it give me some it's been nice I'll see you guys next time