ASUS U80V-A1 Review

Depends on how much you are willing to spend and me getting a replacement.
I'm heading to university in a few days so it wouldn't be until about December.

 

Looks like the UL80A on the way will work out better.

 

Looking to buy one off someone or a reseller.

I need one with back lit keys and a better graphics card for college.

I have a U81A, which doesn't cut it, because no dedicated graphics card or lit up keyboard.

 

does anyone know where i can buy this in the US?

bestbuy is selling U81 model, but i'd love to have one with dedicated graphics.

is there any laptop that is similar to this?

 

Best Buy has a UX50, which has a GeForce 105m. The RX05 variant comes with a weaksauce Core 2 Solo, while the A1 comes with a low-clocked C2D.

 

Well we now see what the U80V got dropped for:

http://www.asus.com/News.aspx?N_ID=0IThtUQeJJdoflAe

We got better memory(DDR3), and a better GPU (GT 210M with DDR3) but the CPUs are the new C2D SU7300/9400 or C2S SU2300.

Battery life is a claimed 12hrs in the whole line so who knows what the UL80V will do. No price yet.

 

Wonderinf if 1.3GHz CULV would be a bottleneck to GPU.
Anyway, check my post at the bottom of this topic about probable prices.

 

Are you sure that's a better video card? The 4570 has a lot more shaders, but I don't know how much the two really differ.

 

Well I stand corrected. It should be a better video card than the 4570 DDR2 version but the difference may be marginal.

I think one of the reasons they went with the GT 210M was to help with the battery life even further. Which is probably why they went with the SU7300/9400 CULV cpus too.

 

No, to conserve the battery life, they used hybrid graphics, so You have GF + Intel GPU

 

I got the U81A from Best Buy and I'm happy with it. I don't do much gaming so the Intel 4500MHD is fine for me -- it runs HD video smoothly and it's light and runs cool and quiet. The sound is good once you enable the SRS software. Even without that the sound is good with headphones or powered external speakers.

The T6500 processor has a lot of beef -- it un-rared a huge multi-part movie file as fast as my desktop (P4 (HT) 3.2GHZ). The display is obviously budget, probably a Samsung screen but it's plenty bright and colors are good but the viewing angles are pretty narrow.

I got it on clearance for $575. Check your local BB store. One more thing, I installed Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate and it runs great. Installed the Vista drivers and utilities from the included DVD and everything works. It really flies with Win-7. You have to run the "setup.exe" from the DVD in Vista compatibility mode, otherwise it won't run -- but all the drivers and programs work fine since they're designed for 64-bit Vista.

 

^ The Pentium M 1.6 GHz on my ASUS M6Bne (end-2004) was giving a Pentium 4 3GHz desktop a run for its money... I'm pretty sure that current-day CPUs leave it coughing in the dust...

 

need help deciding,

hello after reading most of this thread, I am nearly going to make a choice in purchasing this laptop.

however feel things i want to clarify,

1. how long is the battery life that you have been getting? i've called the asus support centre and they told me its only around 2 hours, i've read in the thread somewhere that ppl are getting 5 hours

2. is the touchpad really not too responsive has there been any recent drivers to fix this.

3. is the fan really giving out loud noises. i am quite sensitive to noises. thanks

 

i've read all 42 pages of this forum. seems to me the only problem with this laptop is the static from the earbuds. i personally saw this laptop from Fry's Electronics. It's not on the website, but they have it in store. I've been researching a lot and I've narrowed it down to the u80 and the toshiba m505.

 

Fry's is only located in California, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, Oregon, & Washington. I found the U80v in California. Hope that helps.

 

Wait, they have the U80v in Fry's? You sure it's not the U81?

 

i'm positive. I played with it two days ago. It said u80-a1. It's selling for around 850 i believe.

 

Oh snap. That is very relevant to my interests. Going to check today, since I'm in the area.

 

I can see you live in the Bay. I went to the one in Fremont. They have one on display.

 

I looked at two of the Asuses they had on display. The one called the U80v had intel GMA 4500 as the graphics solution. I The U80v doesn't have hybrid graphics, does it?

EDIT: Never mind. It's the U80 a which uses GMA 4500. Dang.

There was a U50v that had a GeForce 105m. Promising.

 

what did you think of the u80v personally? I'm still thinking about the Toshiba M505 P7350. Any advice?

 

On paper the U80v looks really sexy. However, what Fry's has isn't the U80v, apparently.

Kind of miffed about that. It's advertised as a U80v, but it's apparently a U81 or a U80a

 

What's the difference between u80a and u80v then?

 

The U80v comes with Radeon dedicated graphics, a 4570. It gives decent gameplay power.

The U80a only comes with crappy Intel GMA 4500, which makes it retarded for gaming. I haven't found much info through google about the U80a, but a search of NBR says the U80a indeed comes with GMA 4500.

I should have told Fry's the mistake. I might have gotten something for free.

 

What do you think of the Toshiba one I mentioned earlier? I don't know much about computers.

 

What are you going to use your laptop for, and how much was the Toshiba?

 

I want a really fast computer for multimedia that will last 3-4 years. I'm mainly using it for school. 2.1 ghz +, 14 in screen, looks good.

M505 was around $850
Intel Core 2 Duo P7350
14 in.
2.1 ghz?

 

And what tasks are you going to be doing? Games? Encoding? 3D editing? Simple spreadsheets or word documents?

And unless only Fry's carries it, don't buy a laptop from them. The G51 from Best Buy is $999, while at Fry's it's $1149.


Go here and give people an idea of what you want.

 

no gaming but i want the screen resolution to be really clear. just simple Microsoft applications, internet searching, video playbacks. I HATE lag. I can't stand it. That's why I need to find a reasonable fast computer.

 

Hmm. What is your reference machine for fast? In other words, what have you been using before?

 

I'm currently using a 6 year old Toshiba. That's why i hate lag. LOL

 

agreed here too. I have a LT-3103u and it is now going to m daughter. I just purchased BB's U-81a, it has the 2.1 and GMA4500HD. No more lag, bright clear screen and if yu are not going to game much, if not at all, this is an awesome system...........

Also full screen Flash HD video is a non issue with this............

 

If correctly configured, a new system should run basic applications without any lag. Definitely it should improve with respect to a 6-year old laptop.

Notice the "correctly configured" part. If you leave all the application bloat and Vista service bloat running, your experience may not be as good...

 

Any chance if you know if you can special order the UL80VT through staples?

 

I saw the U50A at best buy today and would have bought it if they had a 13-14" version. After some research, I found that they do but I can't seem to find it ANYWHERE! Can anyone point me in the right direction and how much are they going for now?

 

was considering this one and i have it on my list of choices..
but is the U80V a discontinued model already...?
if yes, what's the latest ASUS release that's at par with that of the U80V's features?

and what's the difference in performance between the new Intel C2D SU series and the T series?

thanks!

 

so I read every page of this post, this laptop looks solid! And it is quite hard to come by. I saw a Asus UL50AG at best buy and just wanted to check it out since the chasis, display, keyboard look similar. I must say that the keyboard on this unit was real nice, better then other asus chicklet-style keyboards they had at the store.

the ul50ag also for its slimness had very little keyboard flex, which is great! I saw another ugly asus laptop, that was thicker and even that one had much more flex to it.

is it true that the u80 has very shiny exterior, the area around the palm rest and keyboard??

does the keyboard have the similar textured (not shiny) keys as the ul50ag? is the palm rest area also dull, or very shiny?
does it feel like a quality keyboard similar to the apple? is it nice and tactile?
the ul50ag among the laptops sitting on display was quite cool! is this just as cool, or does it get warm?

lastly,
what is the maximum external resolution (connecting to external monitor)?

one gripe I have: why in the world did they use DDR2 memory????? can anyone please rationalize this? everything else looks great from what ive read.

Denver, CO
USA

 

Hi,

I just saw the UL50ag at best buy today, on sale for $679. great keyboard, and the panel area is not shiny, dull, which is nice. I posted a question earlier asking if the U80v has exactly the same keyboard, as far tacitleness, etc. and if its more shiny.

by the way, Im not sure which version of u80 this is, but this looks sweet! I love how the area around the keyboard is matte! and the keyboard build quality looks exceptional! just wish the rest of it were too!
http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_image/20/0,1425,sz=1&i=206360,00.jpg

 

Where have all the posts gone for this model? It sure seemed like a winner to me.

 

I've been on the fence about this... should of jumped on it while Amazon had it going for $723

 

Yes you should have! It is UNBELIEVABLE to me, the more i play with this, the MORE i love it. Tempted to watch it on Amazon, wait for the price to go back down, and get a spare! Its THAT good! As for your question, the 4 1/2 -5+ hours i am getting is WITH everything on, i would have no use to shut off wi-fi, and i'm fearful to disable Bluetooth, i did it once on another laptop and the driver fell out. So i just leave evrything running, as is. Full brightness on screen, since it adjusts itself, i never notice what level its at, i only know its always crisp, and bright!

And so cool. I have not even found the minimalist (is that a word?!) amount of heat, the fan NEVER comes on, if it does, i have never once heard it, and the hard drive either. I tried out the dm3 (not with the intel chip, with the AMD) and that fan never ever shut off, and the unit got HOT (might have been defective, because there is no way they meant it to run like that. But this, Cool, quiet and collected! And what a breeze typing on the keypad is. I swear my speed has increased at least 15 words per min!

Never had a lighted mousey pad like this. When i read about it i was like, "whaaaa?" but its soooo much fun. A little lightshow going on here, between the lit keys (not JUST the keyboard but EACH letter) makes other keyboards seem flat & dull, i KNOW i could never go back to using one that didn't have this feature.

The speed on this is amazing. I was worried from reading the ATI HD Radeon wasn't such a great card, or that i have DDR2 Ram, that maybe i was going to be staring at the "little blue circle" a lot. NOT the case in any way. No matter how many photos are in a file, (100, 200) the second i open the folder, every large thumbnail is there... BAM! Soooo enjoying this, the display is also wonderful. I was worried when i read a few comments that it looked "washed out" with poor contrast. I'm not seeing that at all.

I had the Sony CW last week with the 1600x900 resolution and that was just ridiculous to me. Very crisp, but soooo tiny, and whne i reset the DPI to 125%, it only worked some places, not on the web pages. I felt like i was using a 14" netbook!

On other systems i have had (even the HP Quad Core 6 GB 512MB VRAM) the pics wouldn't all open up at once, found myself watching that circle fairly often, finally returned it because that system just didn't impress. My 2 yr old ACER with its 4580e & AMD Turion 4GB was JUST as fast, (Running Vista HP) very strange.

I just cannot believe this system was discontinued, but i am learning how many millions upon millions of gamers there are out there, and i guess this was just too limiting, as it were. Can't figure out WHY they replaced this model with the UL80vt, and yet didn't bring over this models key features... ie: Backlit keyboard, lighted mousey trackpad, ExpressGate (it might be on there but i didn't see it in the description) the ambient display, and i'm sure i'm forgetting something. Oh yeah, and the 7200 HDD this model has.

Anyhow, if i were you and you are in the market for a secondary laptop, i would definitely keep my eye on this @ Amazon. This feels like a unit i will have for a very, very long time, as i don't plan to bog it down with a lot of junk, and even if i did, it comes with Recovery discs (for clean install) and recovery partion for full install, so if i were to see it slowing down, i would just restore to factory. Its a perfect travel companion, light, thin, cannot go wrong with this choice!

 

I have a Crucial 256GB SSD installed in my U80V and am only getting a WEI score of 7.3 where the Intel 160 SSD in my G73JH scores 7.7; does anyone know if this is normal given the differences between the SSDs and the host computers?

Also my Windows Aero desktop score is a paltry 4.2; is this normal? Seems to me the ATI card should be capable of a better score, but maybe not...?

Any input appreciated.

 

What kind of benchmarks are you getting otherwise, with, say, something like CrystalMark?

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 B5 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/sec [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 bytes/sec]

Sequential Read : 241.052 MB/s
Sequential Write : 140.296 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 155.832 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 162.249 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 20.276 MB/s [ 4950.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 11.100 MB/s [ 2710.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 65.662 MB/s [ 16030.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 10.973 MB/s [ 2679.1 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 27.8% (66.4/238.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2010/03/21 11:18:47
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

How's that look? The sequential write is significantly less than my Intel SSD, which benches about 192... is there anything I can do to improve these scores?

 

What drivers are you using and is your drive TRIM enabled (or have you done manual cleaning?)

 

My AHCI drivers are Intel's latest, and according to Crucial the latest firmware, which I have, enables TRIM on Win7 systems. But how can I check the TRIM function to make sure?

 

There's some command you put in the command prompt, but it only checks that TRIM commands are being sent, not that they're actually being used.

And I think only MS drivers allow TRIM, not Intel ones.

In any case, I think you should dig around for a manual TRIM alternative and clean it up now.

 

That might explain a lot. Any recommendations for a manual "TRIMmer" for a Crucial SSD?

 

For those looking for more CPU punch I upgraded my T6500 in a U81-a BB version to a P8400 with no issue. I would imagine it should work for these as well..............

 

That's a question best asked in the SSD thread in the Hardware board. I only have experience with Intel SSDs, unfortunately.