ASUS Zenbook UX31

The ASUS Zenbook UX31 is a slim, stylish Ultrabook that not only packs a robust Core i5 processor and 128GB SSD into its 3-pound unibody aluminum chassis, but a high-res 1600 x 900 display and excellent audio. The super-thin laptop also wakes up from sleep almost as soon as you lift the spun-metal lid. Starting at $1,099, the UX31 is one of the sexiest Windows notebooks we’ve ever seen, and it costs $200 less than the 13-inch MacBook Air.

From the first moment we saw the ASUS Zenbook UX31, we were immediately taken with the brushed-aluminum chassis and slim design. The circular spun-metal pattern on the lid is slightly darker in color, and the deck has a linear brush pattern. It’s subtle, but it’s a nice touch. The metal island-style keys are set off by a black background.

The UX31′s unibody design is certainly far more attractive than the Acer Aspire S3, whose plastic construction felt cheap for a $900 system. At 3 pounds and measuring 13.3 x 8.9 x 0.1-0.7 inches, the UX31 is the same weight as the Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook and the 13-inch MacBook Air, but about0.05 inches thicker than both. We didn’t really notice the difference.

ASUS bundles the UX31 with a padded brown fabric sleeve, a USB-to-Ethernet adapter, and a micro VGA-to-VGA adapter. The adapters also get their own little pouch.

The keyboard’s square, isolated keys are set quite low and close together which can sometimes cause a few mistakes when touch-typing at speed. Like the MacBook Air, the trackpad is one large, clickable glass slab. It’s particularly massive on the Zenbook, taking up all available space, so it’ll be handy for those of you who love sending your cursor frantically flying across the screen.

Measuring 4.1 x 2.75 inches, the UX31′s Sentelic-powered touchpad is almost as large as the MacBook Air’s (4.1 x 3 inches) and includes integrated buttons. Navigating the desktop was fairly smooth, but it took us more swipes than we’d like to get from one side of the screen to the other.

In addition, sometimes the cursor would jump. Two-finger scrolling was almost too sensitive, and pinch-to-zoom gestures stuttered on Firefox and Internet Explorer. We also had trouble selecting text unless we were very deliberate, though we had better luck when using one finger from each hand.

The 13.3-inch screen has a 1,600×900-pixel resolution. We found it really sharp and clear, so are looking forward to letting our eyeballs dance across it in our full review.

Colours were handled pretty well, so it’ll do the job for Web browsing and streaming some TV shows from BBC iPlayer, although it didn’t have the deepest black levels we’ve ever seen; if you want a full movie experience, you might want to hook it up to a big TV via the micro HDMI port.

The ZenBook UX31 with some high performance hardware, including an ultra-low voltage version of Intel’s excellent Core i7 processor. The dual-core i7-2677M normally runs at 1.8GHz, but can Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz when extra power is needed.

Paired with 4GB of RAM and a super-fast 128GB SATA III SSD, it flew through our benchmarks with an overall score of 47. This might not make it a match for desktop machines, but frequent travellers will have more than enough power for almost every task.

Unsurprisingly given its slim chassis, Asus hasn’t been able to add a dedicated graphics card to the UX31 – instead, it uses the graphics chip integrated into Intel’s processor, which is easily powerful enough to play high definition video.

The built-in battery on the UX31 lasted 5 hours and 58 minutes on the LAPTOP Battery Test (web surfing via Wi-Fi). That’s about half an hour less than the ultraportable average (6:33) as well as the MacBook Air (6:25), but almost 50 minutes longer than the Samsung Series 9 (5:11) and well beyond the Acer S3 (4:23). You should be able to get through most of the day on a charge with this notebook.

The ASUS Zenbook UX31 takes a lot of what we loved about the 13-inch MacBook Air–a wafer-thin aluminum chassis, fast performance, instant resume, and good battery life–and adds even better audio and a higher-resolution display. Even better, the UX31 costs $200 less than the Air.

The design of the ASUS also looks and feels more premium, thanks to the brushed-metal treatment. However, while we can live with not having a backlit keyboard, the touchpad simply doesn’t work as well as it should–and you interact with that the most. The Zenbook UX31 is our favorite Ultrabook so far, but the Air is still our top ultraportable.