ASUS Zenbook 13 UX325 - 2020 Model

Seems like nobody in the USA have really received their UX325.. Just got mine (ordered from Amazon).

2020 Zenbook 13 UX325J
13.3" Sharp IGZO 1watt 1080p
Intel i7-1065G7 (Ice Lake)
8gb LPDDR4X-3200mhz (Dual Channel)
512gb Samsung NVME SSD



I had the Zenbook 14 from Best Buy (the popular one with MX350 and Ryzen 5) before this so if you want any comparisons, ask away and i'll be making them below as well.

First thoughts.. Holy bright panel.. it uses a Sharp IGZO 13.3" model SHP10CD: https://www.panelook.com/LQ133M1JW40_Sharp_13.3_LCM_overview_40089.html

It boasts 470 nits and i'd say for sure.. it's incredibly bright!

Unit feels very solid, creaks a little when you grab it by the edges, but otherwise sturdy. All metal body.

Keyboard feels great, good travel - good firmness.. Pine Gray model, you can actually SEE the keys unlike the Zenbook 14 (Silver) and the backlight is infinitely better (incredibly bright).

Very light machine, Asus claims 2.35lb with the 1watt panel. I'll weight it shortly.

Fan is running while it's doing updates but it's quiet and not high pitched, wooshy sounding very much like the Zenbook 14 (AMD,MX350).

Screen is beautiful.... I thought the Zenbook 14 from Bestbuy was incredibly nice at 300nits, and very accurate but this blows that away.

 

Excellent review from Notebookcheck is out! : https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-...ook-with-Excellent-Battery-Life.488484.0.html

 

Have you seen the newer models with OLED yet?

 

I have one arriving today, can I just use this thread to post my observations and benchmarks. I can compare them to another zenbook I have on hand with the ryzen 5 4500U and MX350 that I got at Bestbuy on sale for $549.

 

Since I live in Brazil I am taking the the Ryzen Zenbook for a friend as a special order and the the OLED one is for myself, if I like it, for watching moveis and such when I am travelling for my job.

 

This is the notebookcheck review of the UM325 with the OLED screen.....there is the intel version UX325 as well. The ryzen 7 performs way better in multi core tasks but the intel tigerlake offers better integrated graphics performance.
Asus ZenBook 13 Review - A compact 13-inch laptop with a fast Ryzen 7 5800U and OLED display - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

Hi, I just got my UX325EA-KG245, OLED, Intel CPU (unfortunately no AMD options here).

The screen is excellent, I've been using a refurbished Samsung Galaxy Book 12 during the past three years, and the OLED from this Asus easily tops the AMOLED of the Galaxy Book (brighter, wider color space, better colors in general).
I had to struggle in order to install some drivers (Audio and Asus System Control Interface), since they sent the system into a blue screen loop of crashes (I suspect the culprit is Asus' installing utility, since I managed to solve the problem by extracting the drivers instead of installing them automatically, then going into the Device Manager and manually pointing the unrecognised devices to the specific driver paths).

What I am disappointed with is finding out that undervolting has been disabled all over the field by Intel and OEM's (I was out of the loop for a while, since I hadn't changed the XTU settings in my Samsung for a few years).

Does anybody know if there is any alternative options for undervolting this machine?

 

Yes, indeed very disappointing that undervolting is not possible with tigerllake U. The only way to reduce temperatures under load a bit is repasting and perhaps having some thermal pads touching the bottom cover, to act as a heatsink, but then it will also get too hot to place on lap.

 

haven't gotten around to repasting yet to test the results, since I only do light work on the laptop and watch movies on the OLED screen, which is nice. Gaming on this machine will only be on geforce now, so running cpu and graphics at 100% is not necessary yet.

 

I will have to do some repasting too, it seems.

Also, another surprise: I wasn't able to make the High Performance or Power Saver plans show up, so I went into Regedit to make the single options show up within the Balanced Plan. And, guess what, the TDP section is completely gone. I cannot believe I have far more options for customisation in a Galaxy Book than in this laptop. Oh well.

 

Yes not many options in the windows power plans. The TDP is controlled through the MyAsus app.....setting it to perfomance mode there will increase the TDP a little, but in a laptop so thin, it will likely thermal throttle anyway negating much of any performance gain over the standard mode.

 

At least Performance Mode gives free reins to the fan, so I guess that's something.

From what I've read from the various reviews, the AMD version seems to have 72-75ish degrees as the set temperature where throttling starts, as opposed to the 65ish degrees of the Intel version. 7-10 degrees of margin is quite a bit of difference in terms of performance, and surely the aluminium bottom plate of AMD version won't cook the user's legs any less than the Intel version...

 

The AMD chip obviously destroys the 4 core intel but for my needs, intel is ok and the integrated graphics has superior performance over the AMD model. In a couple of weeks I will get around to repasting and I will post results of before and after.

 

I don't why I thought the performance mode in the Fan Profile in MyAsus App increased the TDP, because I just tested it and it does not. PL1 is 25W and PL2 is 42W. I think I read that it increases PL1 in a review of a similar model somewhere.

 

Whisper Mode decreases PL1 to 11W or so.

 

I'd be fine with that (after all is just 3W less than the hard PL1 cap). The problem is, at least on mine, that as soon as temperatures go above 65C it reduces it further and stabilises around 17-18W after about 5 minutes.

 

I had previously modified the bottom cover of my Gigabyte p34g by cutting two circular holes in correspondence with the two fans and as wide as the fans, and gluing two 5cm flattened speaker grids in order to increase the air inflow, which helped lower the temperatures. I wanted to do the same (of course only for the one fan of the UX325) with the zenbook (even more necessary given I cannot undervolt it), but I didn't want to void the warranty already. Thing, is, I found a spare bottom lid for about 24 euros, and when I receive it and I have a bit of time I will mod it and replace the original one with it. Will keep you updated on how it works.

P.S. Have you been able to make any use of the .icc color profiles that are installed with the Asus MySplendid? They seem not to change anything at all, either by installing them with the Asus utility, or by installing them manually with Windows Color Management (I tried them also with my old Samsung Galaxy Book, and they do nothing there as well).
P.P.S. Just to be clear, I can use any other .icc profile without any problems. It's just the ones from the Asus MySplendid that do nothing.

 

Let us know how the mod goes....intertesting.

 

as far as splendid, it was working, with vivid being a bit oversaturated for my tastye and eye care acting like a blue light filter, which windows already has included. I didn't have any use for it, just kept the setting on standard. True2Life is kind of interesting, I was turning it on and off trying to decide what I prefer, still undecided.
However, now that you asked about this I went into the MyAsus app and the splendid options disappeared, perhaps it was an myasus app update that did that. I will redownload splendid profiles to check.

 

Actually, my Splendid options are working fine after simply installing the MyAsus app (I have Normal, Intense, Manual and Eye Care options). What I meant is that among the drivers and utilities for this model on the Asus wesbsite there is a "MyASUS_Splendid" which says to "install ICC profile to support MyASUS Splendid and Tru2Life feature". Now, if I install it, it installs an icc profile into Windows Color Management, only that profile doesn't appear to do anything at all. The utility also copies a bunch of other icc perfiles into your C:\DRIVERS\MyASUS_Splendid\, but none of them appears to do anything either (tried them on other computers as well, but nothing). I opened the perfiles with DisplayCal to see if there was something missing, but they all have their specific color space and color correction curves, so they should do something, but they don´t.

 

I still haven't decided which way to go with it (my Gigabyte was really starved for air and had two powerful vents, the UX325 is quite a different situation). Anyway, if I mess up the air-flow, I can always swap back the original lid.

 

I have the OLED model and did a fresh install, losing the default wallpaper in the process.
Would anyone be able to kindly share it with me? Image attached for reference.

 

I got a forced update to Windows 10 20H2 (which included the Asus firmware update), and after that the max brightness of my screen is noticeably lower (I have adaptive brightness disabled at Registry level).

Has anybody experienced something like this?