ASUS ZenBook UX305 Review – tiny rocket

ASUS ZenBook UX305 is an Ultrabook PC that is designed by the Taiwanese electronic giant, targeted for those who want powerful yet lightweight notebook. The ASUS ZenBook UX305, powered by Intel Core processor, is just 1.2kgs in weight and has strong aluminum frame. The display is a Full HD 13.3″ screen. ASUS ZenBook UX305 is available across India (online and offline sales) for a price starting at around 58,000/- INR. At the end of this review you will find out if the ASUS ZenBook UX305 worth the price.

When Apple announced the first iPhone back in 2007, tech pundits predicted that the end of personal computers is coming. As expected, the sales of personal computers started declining and many thought that the pundits were spot on. The PC makers released ‘Netbooks’ which are tiny laptops with sub 11″ displays and it only turned out to be a short term gain. The decline of PC sales continued and Intel is one of the many companies that would have suffered, if the decline had picked up speed. The release of Apple iPad in 2010 did exactly that. Apple was using ARM licensed architecture for processors in iPad and iPhone. Intel did not have an answer to the explosive growth of ARM licensed processors (Qualcomm Snapdragon, Apple Ax etc).

Come 2011, Intel foresaw that premium looking super thin, super light and powerful laptops is the segment that will save the PC industry and introduced the concept devices named ‘Ultrabooks’. Though we call all thin and light notebooks as ultrabooks, the name ‘Ultrabook’ (as in ultraportable notebook) is actually a trademarked brand by Intel. Yes, Ultrabook is actually brand. Ultrabooks must be powered by Intel chips, should be less than 0.8 inch thick (of course), should have long battery life and should have aluminum unibody build. Intel had set aside $300 million fund to help achieve this. ASUS UX305 is one such Ultrabook and it ticks all the boxes.

The ASUS UX305 is insanely thin, made of aluminum shell, boots up in no time, has really long battery life and is powered by Intel Core chips.

The aluminum body screams quality. The ASUS ZenBook UX305 is so thin and lightweight that sometimes I feel as if I am carrying a tablet and not a notebook PC. Take a look at the Ultrabook from any angle and it looks breathtaking. Most notebooks have really ugly looking bottom but not this one. The bottom plate is absolutely clean and there are 10 screws that keep the panel in place. Upgrading RAM and SSD is also super easy and we should thank ASUS for keeping it very simple, unlike those notebook where you have to take the keyboard out along with few more components just to upgrade RAM or SSD.

One downside to the design though is that the display is not stiff so if I hold the ZenBook UX305 at a an angle, display facing down, the lid slowly moves and one downward push will close the display with a thud. The super thin design of ZenBook UX305 means that the ports will be at a premium. There are no ports at the front and at the back. On the left , there are two USB ports and a SD card slot. On the right hand side, there is a audio jack, power connector, micro-HDMI port and another USB port.

The ASUS ZenBook UX305 is powered by ultra low voltage Intel Core i5 5200U processor which is made on a 14nm fabrication process. Thanks to the super low heat generation of the Core i5 5200U, the fan on the ZenBook UX305 is barely audible. This means, whatever you do, the ZenBook UX305 will stay absolutely silent and the only noise will be you typing on the keyboard and your taps on the touchpad.

The heat is carried out through the vents below the display hinge. The speakers are bottom firing, placed at the bottom of the Ultrabook. Do note that if you place the ASUS UX305 on sofa or bed, the volume of the sound will reduce.

I can type at 85+ words per minute without breaking a sweat and when I did typing tests, the keyboard felt superb.

Coming to the keyboard and touchpad, I did love the keyboard. I can type at 80 words per minute without breaking a sweat and when I did typing tests, the keyboard felt right at home. The keys has just the right amount of travel and they are not noisy at all. They six row keyboard is spacey and the keys are placed in island style arrangement with just the right amount of gap between keys. The Top row has Function keys which also double as multimedia or special keys. One negative design element here is the placement of the power button exactly where the backspace key is usually placed and I ended up clicking on power key more than once. The bummer though is that the keyboard is not backlit. For a notebook that costs upto 72k INR in India, I can’t believe Asus has missed out on the backlit keyboard.

The touchpad is huge, supports multi touch gestures but it is very very noisy and right/left clicks does not feel good. The touchpad supports multi touch gestures but you have to activate Smart Gesture application from ASUS. The number of actions is not as wide as those that are available for OS X but the gestures work well. ASUS must improve the UI of Smart Gestures application. It looks primitive.

There is a front facing HD camera that can be used for video calling. The LED next to the camera turns on when the camera is in use and there is a microphone next to the camera and another microphone next to the ‘Enter’ key on the keyboard. The speakers are tiny and are just enough for occasional listening. If you are going to get this Ultrabook and if you do not have speakers at home, it is time to invest some money and get a set of speakers.

Display

The FullHD display is absolutely gorgeous. ASUS ZenBook UX305 has premium IPS panel with 178 degree viewing angle, when I tried to view the content at 170 degree angle, there is barely any change in color. Text is absolutely crisp and there is absolutely no pixelation. The color reproduction is spot on, thanks to 98% sRGB color gamut. There is an ambient light sensor that works in the same way that a phone’s ambient light sensor works (activate or deactivate using Fn+A).

ASUS ZenBook UX305 has premium IPS panel with 178 degree viewing angle, when I tried to see the content at 170 degree angle, there is barely any change in color

The display’s brightness and contrast settings change according to the amount of light in the room. Do note that the display does not come with touch screen panel. Windows 10 deserves touch screen display and given the pricing of the ASUS ZenBook UX305, it should have had a touchscreen.

Performance

After using the ASUS ZenBook UX305LA Ultrabook for more than a week, I can say that this one is a great performer. It takes just a few seconds for Windows 10 to boot. A tap on the power key can put the notebook to sleep or shut down the Ultrabook. The time it takes to take your hands off the ultrabook is nearly the same time it takes for the UX305L to go to sleep (and we are not talking the TV serial style hand movements). The same is the case when you bring the Ultrabook back from sleep.

The amount of time it takes to take your hand off the ultrabook is nearly the same amount of time it takes for the UX305L to go to sleep

The 256GB SSD and 8GB of RAM kept the ZenBook UX305 running without any hiccup, even while keeping multiple applications open. The only time when there is some lag is when CPU or memory intensive applications are used. The lack of a dedicated graphics card meant that we did not test any games. And this ain’t a gaming laptop anyways.

The webcam is decent enough for video calls. The microphone sensitivity is very good but do not expect recording video podcasts using the camera.

Benchmarks

We are not going to show too much of benchmarks as we all know how ‘perfect’ benchmarks are. The ZenBook UX305 produced very good scores. We didn’t even try to generate gaming benchmarks as this is NOT a gaming notebook.

SiSoft Sandra benchmarks

• Dhrystone Aggregate Native performance : 37.16GOPS
• Dhrystone Aggregate Integer performance: 41.9GFLOPS
• Aggregate Multi-Media Native Performance : 106.75MPix/s
• Inter-Core Bandwidth : 11.13GB/s
• Inter-Core Latency : 49.5ns
• Aggregate Memory Performance : 17.08GB/s
• Memory Latency : 33.6ns
  • Bank 0 : 4GB DDR3 Micro-DIMM 12-15-15-34 8-49-13-9 1T
  • Bank 2 : 4GB DDR3 Micro-DIMM 12-15-15-34 8-49-13-9 1T
• SSD Drive Score : 504.92MB/s
• SSD Random Access Time : 15µs
• GPU Aggregate Shader Performance : 130MPix/s for 1080p rendering
• Video Transcoding Bandwidth : 7.3MB/s

Battery

Unless you try to play some games or perform resource intensive tasks or keep the display at 100% brightness all the time, you can easily expect more than 7 hours of battery life. Turn on ‘battery saver’ and you can squeeze out more double digit battery life. I was genuinely surprised at this given how tiny the ultrabook is.

The Verdict

If you are looking for an Ultrabook that nicely balances battery life and performance, this is among the best ones you can buy. Dell XPS 13 is one notebook that gives a bit more than the ASUS ZenBook UX305L but the XPS 13 is priced a lot lot more for similar configuration (same is the case with Lenovo Yoga and ThinkPad Ultrabooks). The display is great, the laptop is very easy to hol, carry and handle. The lack of backlit keys and touch display are the major negative points while it takes a while to get used to the touchpad. These drawbacks are quickly overcome the moment you start using the Ultrabook. The fast keyboard, quick OS makes you forget these. In short, this ASUS AenBook UX305L is a rocket squeezed into a small body.

Buy it here