OK I love it. NIne month update. Lightning fast. 8th gen i5 and 256 SSD. I love the keyboard . Don't understand the complaint that the feel is too light. No problem with shutdown/restart that some people have reported. Still learning Windows 10, up from Windows 7 on old p.c. Would have liked a third USB port since I use a mouse (old school). Speaking of old school, I don't have a screen bleed problem with gaming or watching videos because, well, I don't do that. (Nine Month Update, YouTube videos play great and streaming from Prime and Netflix is sharp and clear). No ghosting. No buttons popping off keyboard. I have not yet accidentally turned it off because of the location of the power button where the delete button usually is. I am satisfied with the battery life though it is not 12 hours. But I bet I could get there if I spent some time checking what apps run at startup. recharges fast. It's quiet. It is not hot. So far, I have not had any of the problems recorded by the folks who scored this a 1. So take the chance. It's a really fast, very light, easy to use Zenbook if you simply want a good computer.
Six Month Update: I still love it. NONE of the problems some folks reported. My sister has a new Mac. We just compared features and benefits. They were SO similar, until we compared price. She was amazed at the features for so little Money. This is a great buy. Go for it.
Model: ASUS ZenBook Ultra-Slim Laptop, 13.3-inch Full HD, 8th gen Intel i5-8250U Processor, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, Backlit keyboard, Fingerprint Reader, Anti-Glare, Windows 10, Grey, UX330UA-AH55
Exceptional laptop. With that 8th gen Core i5, it's such a pleasure to use this for anything (heck, I was playing a freaking 8K video and a 4K video at the same time and it still wouldn't drop frames), all while battery life is absolutely great. The chassis is sturdy yet very light weight. Really not much to complain about. If you want a lightweight, premium, top performance ultrabook, this is the one to get.
My only gripe was that the display seemed to have a bit of green tint, very noticeable when compared to my phone's calibrated display or the Samsung Chromebook Pro I tried for a while, but lowering the Green contrast to 46 from 50 in Intel Graphics settings solved it. I also bumped the saturation just +5, and the screen looks gorgeous now–very similar to my small Pixel 2 which is very well calibrated. Only tip is to uninstall ASUS Splendid Video Enhancement Utility as it doesn't allow Intel Graphics Settings to stay after sleep or reboot for some reason, probably because both have calibration options and conflict with each other.
With the display fixed, this thing is 10/10. Fan noise is actually very low or non existent in most tasks. Only when I put it under heavy load (like syncing 12,000 files on Google Backup & Sync) do you hear it and even then it's not annoying. And the touchpad does accidentally trigger 'double tap and drag' when you don't want to a few times, but honestly I usually disable 'double tap to drag' because I rarely drag and when I do, it's more natural to click and drag instead of double tapping.
This is a great buy that will last you for a long time given the sturdy chassis and future-proof specs.
Are you on a mid to high end budget? Trying to find a PC that's lightweight and small, without compromising power? Do you care little for 2-1 computers or touch screens? Then this laptop is for you.
The specs on this little book are phenomenal. The main selling point for this computer is its 8th Gen Intel i5-8250U processor. The processor is monstrous for this price range. Its base speed of 1.6 GHz, means that your computer will be drawing as little power as possible for low demand tasks like word processing or internet browsing. But its turbo boost up to 3.4 GHz ensures that this laptop has power for more demanding tasks.
Oh, and did I mention that this processor has FOUR CORES? Yes, that's right FOUR CORES. This is unusual at this price range, as many laptops on the market around $750 tend to have dual core processors instead. This laptop's processing power rivals, and some cases exceeds others around the $1,000 mark.
The PC has enough RAM at 8 GB. Sufficient for most tasks the average consumer will face, and still enough for those looking for an edge. The 256 Solid State Drive provides a reasonable amount of storage. When combined with the processor on this PC, it boots up swiftly.
Its battery is more than sufficient for all day use. If you find yourself running low on power, the charger itself is extremely lightweight, and in my experience the laptop is capable of charging around 50% of its battery to near full in about an hour.
All of this performance doesn't even take into consideration that this laptop is a lightweight, coming in at 2.6 pounds. As a personal opinion, being able to pick up such a light computer knowing it packs FOUR CORES of power at this price range is an unparalleled high.
This laptop is absolutely stellar.
This laptop is EXACTLY what I was looking for. I needed something that was light, sturdy, portable, fast, and good on battery life.
Build:
This laptop is sturdy with hardly any flex to be found. The exterior of the laptop is metal and looks quite nice. The inside is a premium grade plastic. The laptop is extremely solid when closes and I have no worries throwing it into my backpack. It is extremely light and hardly noticeable on my back. The keyboard is surprisingly nice to use (I had expected it to be bad, but boy was I wrong).
Screen: The 13 inch ultrabook screen size is perfect. I used to have a 17 inch display but I do not miss it after having the portability of the 13. I do not have any trouble reading the display. The display gets plenty bright for me in nearly every condition. It is sharp and just all around good looking.
Battery: This batter lasts far longer than I ever expected it to. Even on the highest performance settings, I can expect it to last about 4 hours. By turning down the brightness of the keyboard and screen, I can get easily over 9 hours of continuous use of of this thing.
Speed: Make sure to get the Intel 8th gen chip. Do not settle for the 7th gen or anything less. The 8th is at least a 40% improvement over the 7 and it shows. This thing is lightning fast. It holds many chrome tabs and programs with ease. I have absolutely no problems with the speed of this device (and I am very picky).
Price: Anything cheaper than this will have a significant drop in reliability and build quality. You can get other laptops for cheaper, but I wouldn't. After examining many of its competitors (Dell XPS 13, HP Envy, etc.), I can truly say that this is the best value. Other well known ultrabooks do a fantastic job and may improve slightly over this device, but it will come at a much greater cost.
Gaming: Extremely light gaming is doable on this laptop but that is definitely not it's intended purpose. If you expect this to be your main computer as a gamer, you should look elsewhere. Ultrabooks just aren't made for that. You will still need to invest in something with a dedicated graphics card and an i7. I use this laptop when I am away from my gaming desktop.
I've only had this a week, but it's been a great week. I've used this laptop for writing reports, email, web browsing, minor photo editing, and wordpress development. It's worked perfectly for all of those tasks, with no slowdown that I've noticed at any time. Battery life is excellent, with around 10 hours of actual use, and very good standby battery life.
The only issues I've had are 1) keyboard - the keys are just a bit . . . different. Sometimes I think that I hit a key, but it doesn't register. This mostly happens when I'm typing longer emails or I'm not paying as much attention. If I focus on my typing, it's not an issue. 2) Fan - the CPU fan comes on even during low intensity tasks like web browsing. It's not very loud, but it is noticeable. I wish it were quieter, but it's really not a big deal. For how smooth everything runs, I gladly take the fan noise. And 3) the left USB port doesn't work with my wireless mouse. The right USB port works, and the left USB port works with everything else I've tried, including a USB hub and a thumb drive. Not sure what the issue is there, but I just use the right port.
I would definitely buy it again, and I think it's a great device for the price.
Feature Product
- 13.3-Inch wide-view Full-HD Nano-edge bezel display; A specially designed 50Wh lithium-polymer battery gives up to 14 hours of autonomy, with fast-charge technology that takes just 49 minutes to recharge to 60% capacity.
- Latest 8th generation Intel Core i5-8250U Quad-Core Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.4 GHz)
- Fast storage and memory featuring 256GB SATA SSD with 8GB LPDDR3 RAM
- Extensive connectivity with HDMI/USB Type C, 802.11a/c WiFi and Micro SD card reader
- Sleek and lightweight 2.5 lbs. aluminum body for comfortable portability.Built-in Bluetooth V4.2
Description
Designed for effortless portability, UX331 is just 0.5" thin and less than 2.5lbs light, with a slim-bezel Nano Edge display that makes it much more compact than a typical 13-inch laptop - with a stunning crystal-like finish and a sophisticated modern design that places it in a class of its own.
My priorities in searching for a laptop were as follows: good brand, low emission (meaning low heat and low noise), MATTE display (because the common glossy displays reflect way too much light), HD monitor, >8GB RAM and a Solid State Drive. I spent a lot of time reviewing newegg, bestbuy and amazon for top sellers, along with pcreviews and notebookcheck dot net (which does incredible detailed reviews showing how much heat and noise a laptop generates). I settled on this notebook and am very happy with what I got. The 2018 version is definitely worth the extra $50 over the 2017 version because the bezel (plastic border around the screen) is much smaller resulting in a laptop that is 10% smaller than the 2017 version while maintaining a 13" screen! The faint high pitched noise put out by the motherboard is only detectable in a silent room when you place your head within 12" of the keyboard. The battery life is stellar. Under load, the system hardly generates any heat and under light use (browsing/Word), I never hear the fan kick in. This 8th generation i5 is much more powerful than older i7 CPU's. It's incredibly thin. I was worried about the laptop looking 'gold' but it doesn't - it looks very silver with a faint hue. Very fast start-ups - I press the power button from hibernation and by the time I moved my finger to the fingerprint, I'm up and running within 2 seconds. Fully recommend.
Very nice ultrabook.
Pluses:
The startup is fast in about 5-6 secs. The fingerprint scanner is responsive also.
SSD performs quite well.
Screen is very sharp (not incredibly bright). Not sure what it'd be like in sunlight.
Touch pad is very accurate and responsive.
Minuses:
-No dedicated Insert key (might not be a big deal to most people but for someone who uses Shift-Ins for paste. It's a difficult adjustment to have to hit the Shift-Fn-delete to insert.
-The keyboard isn't the best but not bad either. Keys not hit perfectly sometimes lead to missed letters. It's fine for a laptop keyboard though.
-Not expandable for memory and SSD
I've now had this laptop for a month, and I am delighted with my purchase. There's a lot about this laptop to love too. It is lightweight, which makes it very portable, so you don't mind taking it with you. The solid aluminum body is strong, although it can flex if you're not careful. The fingerprint scanner works wonderfully. While the specs say the battery can last UP TO 12-hours, my experience has been that it lasts closer to 10-hours, which still isn't bad. The 8th generation i5-8250U processor, 256GB SSD drive, and 8GB of RAM make for a fast user experience. I've had tons of tabs in Google Chrome open, multiple MS Word documents open while streaming music with no problems.
While a great laptop, there are a few things I don't like about it. First would have to be the location of the power button, which is next to the 'delete' key. On multiple occasions, I've hit the power button while editing a document. I changed to the power button to put the laptop to sleep when you hit the power button, so I didn't lose any work, but it is still frustrating. My only other complaint so far is that neither the RAM nor the SSD drive is upgradeable. Using an external SSD drive solves the storage issue with negligible performance differences, so that issue has a workaround. As for the 8GB of RAM...
This is really my backup/travel computer. I have a high-end model that I do not like to take on the road. I purchased this model to fill in that gap. It has virtually everything I need. Backlit. Light. Good graphics. I don't game with it, so I can't speak to gaming. I only gave it 4 stars for a couple of reasons. 1) The on-off key is located on the upper right of the keyboard, right next to the DELETE key. I can't say how many times I've gone to delete something and accidentally turned off the machine. 2) The ARROW keys are in a funky arrangement, and they are inappropriately sized.
All in all though, I like the machine. Since I keep everything on a cloud anyway, I'm not too concerned if this dies. But it's been very reliable. It starts incredibly fast. Some features are much better than my Yoga. No touch-screen though. But that would have added some serious $$ to the price.
I did a lot of research and read SO MANY reviews before deciding on this laptop, and I'm so glad I did! I had a different ASUS laptop I bought 2 years ago (a 15-inch touchscreen model) and got really tired of shoving that huge thing into my backpack and lugging it around. It was just too heavy and unwieldy for college, and I didn't use the touchscreen feature nearly as much as I thought I would. So when it stopped working a month ago, I was excited to move to something that more fit what I needed. This seems perfect so far! It's just the size I wanted, small and light and definitely portable, but the screen is still amazing and I have no trouble seeing anything. The touchpad is great and I LOVE the fingerprint reader, I can have my computer open almost instantly which is so so cool! Some reviews said the keyboard is a little hard to type on and I can definitely see what they're talking about, you do have to push harder than expected on the keys to get it to register the letters sometimes. But I feel it's pretty easy to get used to after some use, and definitely not that huge of an issue in my opinion! Overall this computer is light, super fast, has a gorgeous outside, and has some really cool features you don't see everywhere. If you want a great computer for college that won't cost you $1,000+ I would definitely recommend this one!
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