Asus had our first Editor's Choice ultrabook in the Asus Zenbook UX31-RSL8 ($1,049 list, 4 stars), and while follow-ups in the UX31 series have been good, they had been passed over by other systems with better features and performance. The new Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 ($1,299 list) adds a couple hundred dollars to the price tag, but it also adds a whole lot of performance and a brilliant 1080p HD screen. If you are looking for a rival to the Apple MacBook Airs of the world, the new Zenbook Prime is a Windows 7 ultrabook for power users and multimedia creation artists. As such, it's our new Editor's Choice for high-end ultrabooks.
Design and Features
The UX32VD-DB71 is very similar looking to its Zenbook cousins, the Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A-R5102F ($999.99 list, 3.5 Stars) and Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A-DB51 ($1,099.99 list, 3.5 Stars). Measuring around 0.7 by 12.8 by 8.9 inches (HWD) and weighing about 3.2 pounds, it's about the same size, but a touch heavier than its UX31A counterparts. That's no doubt because if its extra components like a more powerful Intel Core i7-5317U processor, discrete Nvidia GeForce GT 620M graphics, and circuitry for the extra ports the system contains. Though the Zenbook UX32VD-DB71 is one of the heavier ultrabooks in the 13-inch range, it is still lighter than the ultraportable Editor's Choice Lenovo ThinkPad X230 ($1,164 direct, 4 stars) (3.39 pounds) with a 12.5 inch screen, and the 14-inch ultrabook Dell XPS 14 (Summer 2012) ($1,499 direct, 3.5 stars) (4.7 pounds). The system is solidly built, with an aluminum body and chiclet-style backlit keyboard. The "Zen" theme extends to the concentric circles etched into the system's surfaces. The one-piece trackpad is responsive, including the expected pinch to zoom and two finger swipe gestures. Three-finger swiping lets you switch open windows or pages. We had to download and install a trackpad driver installer to get the updates, but the system comes with an Asus Update app to automatically install updates like this.
The system's screen was one of the few full 1080p HD (1,920 by 1,080) resolution screens we've seen on a 13.3-inch laptop. This screen has more pixels and screen real estate than the pioneering MacBook Air 13-inch ($1,199 list, 3.5 stars), which has a 1,440 by 900 resolution screen. This means that HD videos are displayed at full resolution on the Zenbook, while it has to be scaled down on the MacBook Air and competitors like the XPS 14 (1,600 by 900 resolution). The high-resolution screen also means that you'll be able to see more detail in photos on the Zenbook Prime, a concern for photographers in the field. All three choices are good for the travelling graphics artist, but the extra screen real estate will be welcome for users that need to keep their work plus a bunch of toolbars on the screen at the same time. If there's any drawback to the high-resolution screen, it's that text will look tiny if it hasn't been scaled up to match. For example, Internet Explorer looked fine as it was set to 125% zoom out of the box, but the pre-installed copy of Google Chrome was set to 100% zoom. As a result, text heavy websites on Chrome looked like the bottom line of an eye chart. Not a big deal if your eyes are young and sharp, but this may be a problem if your vision isn't quite what it used to be.
For such a compact machine, the Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 has a good selection of I/O ports. Three USB 3.0 ports occupy the left and right side panels (one on the left, two on the right), there's a SD-based multimedia card reader, audio ports, and a full-sized HDMI port. Together, this selection of ports is excellent, particularly the full sized HDMI port that lets you hook the system up to a HDTV without an adapter. This is a system for a power user that needs connectivity. The Zenbook Prime comes with 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, so you can use a 5GHz router to cut through the congested 2.4GHz bands. Apartment dwellers or city folk will enjoy the extra choices in the 5GHz bands. Full-sized Ethernet isn't on the system chassis, but the system comes with an USB adapter for wired Ethernet plus a dongle for the mini VGA port. Bang & Olufsen speakers were both loud and clear playing back web audio and music.
As stated above, photographers will enjoy this system, since it comes with a 500GB hard drive for storage. That's plenty of space for RAW photo images and videos. The Zenbook Prime also comes with a 24GB mSATA SSD to help it get its Intel ultrabook certification. The 24GB SSD is invisible to the user, it only makes its presence known during some repetitive tasks and when you wake the system from sleep. It wakes up faster than a hard drive-only system, but it feels slower than an SSD-only system when you boot from power off. If the SSD were a bit bigger, we think the systems day-to-day performance would improve. As it is, you'll occasionally notice that the system is a smidge slower on day-to-day tasks than a purely SSD-based ultrabook. At the very least you'll wait a couple seconds more for the system to reboot or for apps to launch. The 500GB drive is relatively free of bloatware, only a short 30-day trial subscription to McAfee Internet Security mars the pre-loaded software. There are a bunch of shortcuts to Asus utilities on the desktop, and while they are on the whole useful, you'll want to drop the shortcuts in the trash in order to regain a clean startup screen.
Performance
Multimedia tasks like photo and video work are the Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71's forte. It was able to top the ultrabooks with a one-minute, forty-three (1:43) second time on our Handbrake video test and a 3:58 time on our Photoshop CS5 test. This beats the Core i5 powered Zenbook UX31A-R5102F (1:59 Handbrake, 4:33 CS5), and our former Editor's Choice HP Folio 13-1020us ($899.99 list, 4 stars) lagged way behind due to its older Sandy Bridge Core i5 processor (2:29 Handbrake, 5:24 CS5).
Even the "go-to" ultraportable for photographers, the latest MacBook Air 13-inch (2:42 Handbrake, 4:53 CS5) trailed the Zenbook Prime. The Zenbook Prime wasn't great at the 3D game benchmarks, but it did produce mostly playable scores at Crysis (52 fps) and Lost Planet 2 (34 fps) at the medium/middle quality settings. While it's not a gaming laptop, the Zenbook Prime will be capable of playing 3D games better than any ultrabook with integrated graphics. Battery life was somewhat below average, with a 5 hour, 26 minute MobileMark time. The best battery life of 9:37 was found on the latest Dell XPS 14.
So what's the final verdict? The Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 is a very, very good system for content creators in the field. It's light, has a brilliant 1080p screen, and is compact. A photographer will enjoy the speedy photo editing capabilities of the system, video editors will love the Core i7 power of the system, and both will find the 500GB hard drive a good thing. The system will also keep multimedia power users happy, for mostly the same reasons plus the full-sized HDMI port in such a compact laptop. If you want the Zenbook Prime's 1080p screen at a cheaper price, the Zenbook UX31A-R5102F and Asus Zenbook UX31A-DB51 will look the part for around $300 less. The UX31A twins don't have the UX32VD's multimedia prowess, but if all you need is a compact ultrabook with a 1080p screen, both are good choices. The EC for midrange ultrabooks, the HP Folio 13-1020us still trumps the Zenbook Prime on battery life and price, but the Zenbook Prime wins just about every other factor (weight, multimedia performance, screen brightness and resolution, 3D graphics, storage capacity, etc.) The Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 is meant for power users, and as such we're awarding it the Editor's Choice for high-end ultrabooks..
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71 with several other laptops side by side.
More Ultrabook Reviews:
??? Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A-DB51
??? Asus Zenbook Prime UX32VD-DB71
??? Dell XPS 14 (Summer 2012)
??? Dell Inspiron 14z (Summer 2012)
??? Sony VAIO T13 (SVT13112FXS)
?? more
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