Asus has answered this call for thinner and lighter machines with its own Intel Core M powered ZenBook UX305. Unlike the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro akku a1278, this Ultrabook is a truly fanless machine. The most stunning thing about the UX305 is it comes at a starting price of $699 (£649, around AU$902) with a full HD display and a 256GB SSD. This machine is also available in the UK for £649, though with only a 128GB SSD.We can't call it an ultrabook; in the end, with our Zenbook UX305FA-FB003H test model, Asus decided on a plain and simple monitor panel. But the word "simple" definitely doesn't apply to the gigantic resolution of 3200x1800 pixels. 4K panels are nothing new, even if they're relatively rare in 13-inch sizes (most recently: Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro). 2560x1440 (3K) and, of course, 1920x1080 (FHD) are more common, which is practically standard in the price class above 700 Euros (~$800).
Design You could easily mistake the Asus ZenBook UX305 for a sketchbook when holding it. It's stunningly thin, measuring just 0.5-inches thick and weighing 2.6 pounds (1.17 kg). This makes the Zenbook a tiny bit lighter than the equally-thin Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro. The 13-inch MacBook Air is by no means fat at 0.68-inches thick, but newer devices are easily overthrowing its place on the throne as the thinnest and lightest laptop you can buy.The base consists of an aluminum block; the keys stick out of it, and the ClickPad is inset. The feet sit on an aluminum plate that envelops the case from below. Asus decided on a simple arrangement with Torx screws, making it easy for users to open the UX305 pa5177u 1aca in order to switch out the battery, WLAN, or SSD modules. This was also the case with earlier Zenbooks.
Although the device is nice and compact, it does not feel flimsy at all. The machine is entirely made of aluminum. The interior deck is one solid piece of metal that features an anodized and slightly gritty finish, which is by no means abrasive and instead adds an extra bit of texture for your wrists to sit on. The laptop's underside also sports an anodized sheen, but it's a separate piece. So, this is not a completely seamless design, like the MacBook Air.
The reverse side of the lid is polished in a circle around the logo, and the surface holds up very well under light pressure. The resistance to twisting when the edges are contorted is unusually good, especially considering the thickness of just a few millimeters. This is also nice: when twisting or pressing the reverse side, no pressure points appear on the panel; the liquid crystal seems not to be sensitive to pressure (on the reverse side). Despite the small size of this Ultrabook, the trackpad is extremely roomy and extends over a third of the laptop's depth. Not only is it big, the trackpad is nigh frictionless. Better yet, clicks are tactile and audible whether you're pressing on the dedicated left and right buttons or pressing anywhere on the surface.
Connectivity The low design height doesn't prevent Asus from building in fully functional USB 3.0 ports. This is just as standard in this price class as HDMI (though this comes in the micro variant). At 1280x720 pixels, the webcam's resolution is merely sufficient. Still, we wouldn't make a fuss over it, if photos were are least reliably clear. The focus of the object is indeed good, but surfaces have grainy edges; in terms of color, they are pale and not well differentiated. Asus had to rummage pretty far back in the drawer here.In this post I’ve gathered all the available info on the UX305 series hp 430 g1 power supply, including specs, pictures and details on various features, prices and the release date.
The UX305 will supposedly have a 12.3 mm body and based on how Asus usually measure their devices, that’s excluding the rubber feet. For comparison, their previous Zenbook UX301LA top-of-the line ultrabook was 15.5 mm thick, so this new model shoves off a few millimeters from its height.Things look different with the microphone, which presents no problems with Skype chats. We're not sure if this involves a dual array; Asus provides no information here. The one opening adjacent to the webcam suggests mono, though. In any case, recording works very well; we can stand 0.5 to 3 meters away from the device and speech playback is clear and noiseless. The tone can be quite echoey, though, which also indicates mono input.
Communication The UX305 apple 23 inch cinema display power supply has an Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7265 at its disposal for wireless connection to our WLAN router (Fritz!Box 7490). Theoretically, Wireless AC should double the data flow rate as opposed to Wireless N, since it uses two channels. In the author's individual setting, the Intel chip has rather wide coverage. We were able to surf on notebookcheck.com at the usual speed over a short distance (15 meters / ~50 feet, outside of the building, 4/5 bars). The signal does not break up at distances up to 45 meters (~150 feet). We were able to reach the 45-meter checkpoint with two bars and load notebookcheck with acceptable delays. The predecessor model Zenbook UX303LN didn't make it to 45 meters (Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7260).
The UX305 is not only a new device on the outside, it also packs fresh goodies on the inside, with the Broadwell Core-M hardware being the biggest novelty here and promising fast performance and long battery life (you should expect up to 10 Hours from this one, according to Asus).An Ethernet adaptor is not integrated; fortunately, the included USB-to-Ethernet dongle can also be used as a Gigabit adaptor. Until now, the RJ45 dongles provided by Asus were always 10/100 Mbit LAN adaptors (for example, UX303LN). Bluetooth is likewise included. Asus does not offer a 3G variant with modem and SIM-card slot.Keep in mind that the Core-M is the low-power version of the Broadwell line and a successor of the Core-Y series, thus it’s not going to be very powerful and will only be available on the thinnest designs. Chances are most of them will be fanless, I can’t confirm if that’s the case for the UX305 pa5177u 1aca or not (probably not). There are cooling grills hidden behind the hinge, but that does not prove anything, Asus might offer distinct configurations for this one and some of them could indeed require no active cooling.
Keyboard Asus puts a chiclet keyboard on the flat keys. The keys are recessed so that they cannot impact the panel while the lid is closed. The stroke is naturally quite brief, but the writer will appreciate the sharp pressure point. Writers who type softly but quickly on the keys will get a firm stroke. The surface has some give, especially in the middle, if the keys are hammered down with force, and the underside of the UX305 presses toward the tabletop. The keys are of an appropriate size and have an excellent layout with offset arrow keys, large Space, Enter, and Shift keys, and FN keys for the usual additional functions (brightness, flight mode, etc.). As is usual with Zenbooks, there is also an FN key on the "A" for activation/deactivation of the ambient light sensor. Unfortunately, the keyboard is not backlit.
I even found the keyboard to be pretty good. One of my complaints with Dell's XPS 13 2015 model is a slightly compressed keyboard and small keys. Its keys measure 14.7mm wide and tall. The ZenBook's are 16.2mm wide and 14.7mm tall. That may sound like nothing, but my typing was more accurate on the ZenBook's lenovo adlx65nlc3a even though the keys felt a little spongy to my digits. If I were nitpicking, I'd note the lack of backlighting-and then Asus would just throw the $699 price in my face and tell me where to go.The trackpad on the unit appears to be an Asus design. My reference is the Google Chromebook Pixel's excellent etched-glass trackpad. This is not in the Pixel's class and has a definite metallic feel, but it's quite usable, and palm rejection on the default settings was quite good.
Touchpad The ClickPad, with a diagonal of 12.4 centimeters, is sensitive through the edges and supports the usual multi-touch gestures. The surface is smooth and differentiates itself markedly from the rougher wrist rest. The pad is also inset by just a millimeter, avoiding possible confusion in the darkness. There are no longer separate mouse keys, as is usual with these pads; instead there is just one key under the whole pad. Depending on finger position, the device recognizes whether the user intends a left or right mouse click. Here, around the right mouse key, is just where we experienced difficulty: The key only works when the finger lies far to the right and very near the bottom edge. After the BIOS update to Version 206 (which we did not run only for this reason) and a recovery reinstallation, this weak point was mitigated.
Performance The Intel Core M-5Y10 (0.8 GHz + Turbo) is standard for the UX305 lenovo thinkcentre m72e tiny ac power adapter, and there are no alternatives. While one could choose between Core i7-4510U and Core i5-4210U with Haswell, here there's only a choice between FHD and QHD+ as well as 128 GB vs. 256 GB (raw SSD capacity). 213 GB is available for the user from the M.2 hard drive. The rest is taken up by Windows preinstallation and recovery area. Asus divides the SSD up into OS (95 GB) and data (130 GB) partitions.
The Core M-5Y10 is a dual core SoC of the new Broadwell generation. In terms of performance, it is the weakest horse in a stable of shrunken architecture. Compared to the Haswell predecessors with Y in their names, the Core i5-4210Y (TDP 11.5 Watts, 1.5 to 1.9 GHz) decreased the standard speed but increased the turbo. The TDP sinks to 4.5 Watts due to the lower structural width (14 instead of 22 nm). The Haswell Core i5-4210Y usually had an active fan (Dell XPS 11-9P33), but the built-in Core M-5Y10 doesn't need one. What consequences do the structural shrinking and the energy-saving mania have for the performance in our benchmarks?
System Performance PCMarks 7 and 8 measure the usage performance. This is where our UX305 lags noticeably behind, though only in comparison to the high-performance Haswell counterparts. The Dell XPS 11 (Haswell Y) lags 8% behind in PCMark 7's computation score, but the overall score is the same. PCMark doesn't let itself get blinded by fast SSDs; in every test, it shows Haswell Y as having a more or less marginal advantage. The overall performance of the normal ULV models runs up to 20% (depending on the test) ahead of our UX305.
Users may ask whether the UX305 goes to its knees while running 30 to 50 browser tabs or doing a lot of multitasking. This was not the case; we could always skip back and forth between various windows. Meanwhile, a video was running smoothly. Even during simultaneous installation of programs and a copying routine, there were no dropped frames or wait times. Therefore, the experienced performance is in the green zone and quite appropriate for an SSD system.
Power Consumption The power consumption in idle mode isn't significantly different from Haswell competitors. The variation in idle maximum is mostly influenced by panel brightness, so the display of the frugal Kirabook 2014 (7.6 Watts) shines at just 222 cd/m2 and not 309 cd/m2 (UX305, 8.6 Watts). The Dell XPS 11 sony ac power adapter with the predecessor Core i5-4210Y has an identical power consumption profile but a smaller display diagonal; therefore its power consumption must be considered somewhat higher. The Haswell Y's consumption under load is noticeably lower than that of the UX305, which is why the battery life comparison remains interesting.Under load, there are hardly any differences between the Haswell 15-Watt and the Core M.
Battery Life As we established above, the Core M offers no improvements in terms of performance in comparison with the Haswell (ULV 15 Watt); only the 11.5-Watt Y models are easily surpassed. Hope therefore lies with the battery life. Does the lower power consumption lead to noticeably longer runtimes?MobileMark 2014 is a real-world rundown test, using off-the-shelf popular apps such as Office and Photoshop and replicating a typical work session. The test simulates a person pulling up an email and sitting there and actually reading the email for five minutes, for instance, rather than simulating a person typing like an automaton for eight hours straight.
With its 45-watt-hour battery and power-sipping Core M chip, the Zenbook lasted a healthy 638 minutes. The Dell XPS 13 2015 netzteil asus, with its even larger 52-watt-hour cell (but higher-res screen) comes in a bit worse, at 602 minutes. I also had time to test the most natural competitor here: Dell's XPS 13 2015 with 4GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and 1920x1080 screen. With a sticker price of $799, it's the most direct competitor to the ZenBook. You can see what happens to the Dell XPS 13 once you shed the high-resolution panel and touch option: A healthy bump from 602 minutes to 728 minutes.The "Core M = more battery life" equation does not quite balance out, as the graph below shows. With a correspondingly low capacity of just 45 Wh, the UX305 manages barely seven hours in our WLAN test or 13 hours in idle mode with lowest brightness. The Kirabook 2014 performs at about the same runtime with 52 Wh; the Z30t (52 Wh) improves upon this by a whole hour with its higher-performance SoC. The MacBook Pro Retina 13 isn't a good comparison with its 72 Wh; it lasts longer by three hours in our WLAN test.