ASUS Zenbook UX31a Owners' Lounge

Let's get this started.

I'm not sure why there isn't one of these already started for the UX31a.

I love my UX31a-DB51. So far my only gripe is with the .... trackpad. Surprise!

I wish they would not have disabled so many of the standard options. The palm check is killing me! I tried to configure the ASUS Smart Detector but it sure doesn't seem to be working.

Based on a recommendation in another thread I have installed TouchFreeze to stop phantom touches when typing but I still get more than I would like.

Other than that, I'm thoroughly pleased with my Zenbook.

 

I think most of the discussion for these has been taking place here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-ips-screen-ux21a-ux31a-ux32a-ux32vd-350.html

But we need an owners thread too! Got my wife the Best Buy $999 version which is basically the same as the DB51.

Loving the portability so far.

 

I have the ux31a - db51 adata ssd, i'm satisfied with it except for some backlight bleed, but it's not super bad. I did a fresh install on mine to save space.

 

The backlight bleed I have is more than tolerable for the unmatched resolution and color reproduction that it also comes with.

 

Hello!

I was surprised at how quiet this user forum was so wanted to share my experience and maybe get some help as well.

I have had my UX31a for 4 days now and so far it has been great.

I am either not overly picky, or got lucky, but I have no light bleed issues that I can see. Maybe if I turn the screen to a very specific angle and squint with a blanket over my head I can see some along the bottom edge during start up.

My fan does seem to be more active after waking the laptop up, and if I do a restart it immediately goes away, but it doesn't seem as bad as what I have read from others.

I am coming from a Macbook Pro and I find the touchpad useful, and under responsive if anything. I am definitely not experiencing the out of control behaviour people have explained in other posts, in fact, I wish my touchpad was more sensitive to everything except palm touches.

I am really not happy with the space on the hard drive and am considering returning the laptop and upgrading to the larger hard drive model, but considering how well my unit seems to work I am a bit hesitant to do this.

I may save the extra money and just go with a USB 3.0 external drive for my files and toss that in my travel pack.

Just for interest sake I loaded "The Secret World" onto the laptop and it worked during my short test. I haven't gotten into any serious combat or played for a long time, but it does work. The next problem being that the game is a 34 GB install and I now have almost no room on the hard drive. I may try and play from the USB 3.0 drive and see if that works.

My main question is:

What programs did you remove from your UX31a?

I have found the Asus bloatware sticky post mostly unhelpful as none of the programs loaded on my UX31a match the programs listed in that post, so for this laptop that post seems a bit out of date.

I read somewhere on these forums that someone spent over an hour removing bloatware and freed up 12GB of space on their hard drive, but I have no idea what they removed to achieve that.

Any help is much appreciated!

 

Hello,

I am interested in this notebook but have 2 hang ups which can make the difference between being satisfied or unhappy : fannoice and heat

I have been checking out an UX31A-R4003V

Anyknow can let me know how is the heat on this note book and the fan noice ?

Many thanks in advance

 

I've had 2 of the i7, 256GB SSD, 4GB ones from Microsoft Store. The first one I didn't have any issues with but then I had a key that quit working. My second I really have no major issues however the preinstalled drivers were vastly different than the original. Both of them had modest amount of blacklight bleed but not enough for me to return.

 

Fan noise after wake-up is definitely there, but if you are used to normal laptop fan noise the noise from the UX31a is super quiet.

I had no heat issues with the laptop during use.

However, I am taking the laptop back as the other day the laptop would not turn off, and would not wakeup from sleep. It began to get really hot to the point I could not even touch the back of the laptop. After numerous tries I managed to hold the power key down and get it to turn off.

I have also had issues with the left side USB 3.0 port working intermittently. Sometimes it recognizes my external hard drive and sometimes I get nothing.

Originally my screen had no light bleed issues, but after a week of use I started to notice light bleeding from the bottom edge. Nothing too bad and I could have lived with it, but with the other issues combined it is going back.

Too bad too, I liked the laptop.

 

Hey, I just bought the UX31A. i5,128 gb sandisk. I was just wondering if someone can give me tips on how to take care of the battery? I am mainly using it for browsing,word processing and watching movies. It wont be leaving my house as much. So should I leave it plugged in all the time? or should I only plug it in when the battery is low? which is the safer option that will make my battery last? My screen brightness is at the lowest usually and the backlit is also usually off.

 

I have a zenbook UX31A, which I love, with 2 exceptions.
1. The trackpad - I knew this was a problem before I purchased the computer (one month ago), but I'm trying to get use to this.
2. The other issue is more problemtic and it may cause me to return the computer in exchange for an Apple, which I was trying to avoid. The problem is that when I have been on the internet for a time, the keyboard freezes up and doesn't allow input. This is annoying, but could also cause problems if I am online with classroom work! I have contacted the GEEK squad re: this issue, and they didn't know how to fix it. The only thing that works is if I turn the computer completely off, and then turn it back on again. The ASUS support team was not helpful at all, only saying it was a hardware problem. I have already returned the computer once, and got another one. This time if I return it, I will not get another Asus.
If anyone knows what is going on, and how to fix this problem, I would be thankful. I really like everything else about the zenbook, and would prefer to stay with a PC.

 

Guys .... can I find anywhere a list of bloatware to be removed from this thing?

 

Picked up the UX31A from bestBuy last week. The i5/128 SSD model.

So far I've been pretty happy with the laptop:
1. Screen is awesome!!
2. I have the Sandisk SSD, but it's much faster than what has been reported by other transfer tests. Windows experience gives it a 7.5.
3. Touchpad and keyboard have been great, Wi-Fi is no problem (I'm on 802.11g, haven't tried 802.11n), though I will say that I still have not tuned the touchpad settings to quite what I want and occasionally miss a click.

The bad however:
1. Fan noise! On a fresh reboot, I never hear the fan, even when I'm doing some CPU intensive stuff. But after waking up from sleep (which is super fast!), the fan does the max-speed pulsing thing, where it screams at max speed, the slowly slows down over about a minute, then screams again, on and on..... I have the latest BIOS, (Sept 6th), have tried all kinds of power management settings, etc. nothing. I've read that this problem is hit-and-miss, so I'm thinking of taking this back and getting another one. Any thoughts on that?
2. Spontaneous loss-of-power. Earlier today, after 10's of hours working on this thing, the laptop just shutoff. No shutdown, just lost power. I was plugged in at the time and the battery was fully charged. This one really worries me.

Has anyone else had the power problem? Think this is worthwhile trading in for a replacement? I don't want to be in a situation where the replacement has a whole new set of problems (Wi-fi, broken keys, screen bleeding)

Thanks for your advice!

 

I just bought one yesterday, Sandisk SSD came with it.

I have the fan speed issue to only after it wakes from sleep mode. I let Speedfan graph it, and it shoots to 5100rpm and then drops steadily to 3400 rpms then shoots to 5100rpm, etc,etc. This is with 1% CPU load. It will sit there and do that forever (and eat up battery life).

If I reboot the PC, it works perfectly fine. Fan is silent most all of the time or runs at a very low rpm.

This seems to be a widespread issue and not just with the UX31A. I've searched for hours now and talked with Asus support to no avail. I love this PC otherwise, especially the 1920x1080 screen, so since it will boot so fast, I guess I'll just always shut it down until a driver update comes out (possibly in intel dynamic platform & thermal framework s/w).

 

I have a UX31A being delivered to me today, and I've made a checklist of potential problems to check for.
Can someone tell me what the two possible 256GB SSD manufacturer & model numbers are, and which one is supposedly the faster one and which one is the dog?

 

Wow, this thread is really dead. Very odd, since the Asus UX31E attracted so much attention and a huge owner's lounge thread. Oh well.
Anyway, to answer my own question: The SanDisk U100 is the dog, and the ADATA XM11 is the fast one (Sandforce controller).

 

Has anyone tried putting an MSATA SSD in the WWAN slot on a UX31A? Any success?

 

I think people with a UX31 anything all sort of migrated to that thread and this one: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-fhd-ips-screen-ux21a-ux31a-ux32a-ux32vd.html

This one ended up being redundant.

 

I wish people would use this thread. That other one is so cluttered because it's for multiple models.

Anyway, I just purchased a refurbished UX31A from Newegg for $519.

I was looking to replace my Envy 14 that has a the Radiance 900P display. Although I was hoping for a slightly larger screen, Notebookcheck said Asus's 1080P IPS display is the best. After trying a few other notebooks with sub par screens, I'm fairly confident this one will be the one I keep.

The low weight it's also a plus since I'll be carrying it to school for the next 6 years or until it died.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

Anyone have a good recommendation for a good backpack/carrying case? Just bought the scratch and dent laptop on Newegg. Thanks!

 

I got stuck with one of the ty your hard drives. So I've got this beautiful ASUS Zenbook Prime UX31A-AB71 13.3-Inch Ultrabook with the crappy hard drive.1st of all has anybody heard of anyone upgrading this drive to a 320 and if so who's what I buy. And 2nd is it a problem to do a wipe and then a clean upgrade to Windows 7 Pro or to Windows 8. Any driver problems and any parts of their bundled software that I would need to keep. Everybody just prefers to it as bloatware so it seems to me a clean install would be the thing to do.

Please let me know in fact if anybody's open one of these boxes at all how hard is it to open and are there any known problems to cracking the box apart from my allegedly voiding my warranty.

Inquiring minds want to know?

CR NY

 

I've been trying to find some definitive information about the HDD Password option in the BIOS of my UX31A. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find more than a few mentions of the options existence. Perhaps someone here can clarify things for me, or at least point me in the right direction.

As far as I'm aware, the HDD Password option prevents access to the data stored on the drive without a key, but does not actually encrypt anything.

I'm thinking of using Windows 8 BitLocker (no TPM, no USB, just the long keyphrase option) in conjunction with a HDD Password. Bitlocker to deny a thief access to my data, the HDD Password to deny a thief the pleasure of using my laptop (at least with it's original drive). I just want to make sure I understand what the HDD Password does before turning it on...

Thanks!

 

Hi,

I just bought the asus zenbook UX31A. I have a question about the RAM. Though the operating system is windows 8 64bit version, it says only 3.89 gig of ram is usable. Do you have any idea what the problem is?
FYI: I checked this here: Control Panel\System and Security\System

Thank you

 

Your integrated graphics will have reserved some.

 

Ubuntu 13.04 works perfectly on the UX31A. All the function keys work out of the box. Battery life is 5hr with wifi browsing the internet on lowest brightness, compared to around 6hr running windows.

I also got a Energizer XP18000 battery pack and ordered a tip for this laptop. It's hard to say how long the battery lasts. It runs a few hours, but charges the laptop up to 70% at the same time.
Amazon.com: Energizer XP18000 Universal AC Adapter with External Battery for Laptops, Netbooks, and More: Computers & Accessories

I have had to open the bottom of the laptop to fix the keyboard last year when the keys stopped working. It's a really simple fix. There is a guide here:
Unresponsive Keyboard Keys - iFixit

 

I agree with Meaker. I hope that makes you feel better. I can tell you if your worry is about some 32bit OS the number is 100% not correct for that. Meaker that slippery Scottsman got this one on the head. Not sure just go in the BIOS and adjust the reserved space for the IGP/UMA and watch the available RAM shift.

 

Hey guys...

I just got myself a Zenbook Touch ASUS - ASUS ZENBOOK UX31A a few weeks back.

I think it's a quality ultrabook but am not really happy with the battery life... I think I can drag it to 4 hours the max. Not happy with that.
Also the bloatware is annoying. I removed most of it.

What I really want to do is:
Install a fresh Windows 8 without the bloatware. As the zembooks don''t come with installation files for the OS, ASUS keeps the installation files on the SSD .. in a recovery partition.

I want to get this recovery partition onto a USB drive and use it to install a fresh Win8 OS. It seems possible!

But has anyone done this thus far? Any issues you have faced?

 

Legally download the ISO of the same edition (links are somewhere on this forum) and install.

It will activate using the key in your bios.

No bloat at all then

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/680250-asus-ux31a-fresh-install-guide.html

I think these are the links Meaker is talking about. It took me quite a while to figure out where they were.

 

Did not realise there was a specific guide for the machine but it looks like you are all set

 

Has anyone removed any of the keyboard keys?

My "i" and "2" get stuck every now and then and I'd like to try and reseat the keys.

Has anyone done something similar with success?

 

Solved, used a fine blade to remove them slowly.

 

They all use plastic clips so thats usually the best way.

 

Hi there UX31 owners, I also own a zenbook ux31a, however, after I had end the application which allows better battery saving mode. I have been unable to get that application back on the desktop. Do you all know how to get that back?

 

Not to bump this thread from the dead...but was the fan spinning more rapidly after sleep issue ever fixed? Also, if I buy a 128 gb version of this computer or a 256 one, how will I know which SSD I am getting?

 

Bought one for my GF (i5, FHD, 128GB). Is it possible to make the F keys to always work as the FN keys?

 

No, this is embedded into the keyboard controller.

 

Hello Guys,

i have a strange problem...I use a usb dongle to connect to the internet...but when i run down on battery and i insert the power plug the connection drop and the software of the usb key is started...
Anyone having an idea on why?

THX Gianmar

 

The temporary power "flicker" when plugging in the AC adapter may be resetting the USB stick.

 

I know this thread doesn't get much traffic, but have always been a fan of this machine and always hesitated because of the ubiquitous reports of bad quality control (something like 40% return rate on 1st and 2nd replacement - see Amazon or Newegg user reviews). Seo my questions are:

1) Is there reason to believe the out-of-the box quality has siginificantly improved?
2) Any word on Asus support? Heard it was also pretty bad.
3) Does it make sense to buy a refurb UX31A since it would have gone back to the factory with problems identified and once fixed should it not run like a champ?

Thanks.

 

I've had mine for close to a year now, and the only problem I've had is with the fan control *only* when you allow it to enter sleep mode. Hence I gave up using sleep mode and just do a full shutdown every time. With the SSD it boots quickly, so it isn't a problem really anyway. I've enjoyed the 1920x1080 screen, but I hate the touchpad implementation as it's too easy to inadvertently touch, and the right click side of it is insensitive.

I think a lot of people returned these laptops due to the sleep mode resume out of control fan situation. As far as I know, there has not been a solution to that problem so far.

 

Does anyone know if it's possible and how to replace the HDD with an SSD? I'd like to have the 128 GB default SSD + add another 256 GB SSD and take out the 500 GB hard drive.

 

There is only the single propriety interface slot in there so you can't add a second and it will be tricky to upgrade it.

 

If you reformat then can you delete both the 4 GB partition and the 10 GB recovery partition? I think the 4 GB partition is for hibernation and the 10 GB one is for recovery but I'd like to be able to extend the drive and I don't think you can extend it until you delete both and not just deleting the 10 GB one.

 

I just purchased a refurb of this model with the 256GB hdd. The unit was refurbed directly with ASUS and sold from one of their authorized retailers. The SSD is the Sandisk one, but coming from my previous laptop (u35jc) I find it fast enough.

I noticed the SSD is partitioned quite a bit so i'm planning on doing a fresh install. I've been reading a lot about the 'fan' issues, but I don't seem to hear my fan at all? Could that be that ASUS fixed the issue?

 

It's possible, you could check to see what firmware you are running. Any 256GB SSD should be able to give you that speed feeling over a normal HDD though it depends how full they are sometimes.

 

bought a bluetooth speaker and it sounds amazing with my phone or ipad but sounds like absolute in my zenbook. Does anyone out there know a fix? I tried updating the bluetooth driver and it still sucks. It sounds like a using a radio from the 90's. I am VERY disappointing with asus on this. I tried searching but got no results but I am sure im not the only one with this problem. for the record its the jawbone mini jambox speaker. these things are amazing.

 

You should make sure your HD audio drivers are up to date.

I'm listening to my Philips Fidelio right now and it sounds great.

 

Check to see if the device itself has PC drivers.

 

External Monitor

I am trying to use the micro HDMI port to connect to a Dual DVI monitor (2560x1600). Does the micro HDMI support such a high resolution? Technically, the port is HDMI 1.4, which supports up to 4k resolution, but I am not sure if UX31A graphics can do the work.

 

Problem with backlight keyboard

I have Windows 8.1 on my Zenbook UX31A. When I open the lid after computer was in sleep mode, backlight on the keyboard doesn't work. I have to restart it to make backlight work again. Any solution?