Asus ZenBook Pro UX501 Owner's Lounge

Please provide a link to a compatible screen replacement at any price. I searched, and couldn't find anything.

As someone who really wanted to like the Ux501, I'd love to see this laptop with the NX500 screen (drool). Or frankly, I'd take a $1500 NX500!

 

http://www.panelook.com/modelsearch...type_category=&rohs_compliance=&button=Search

Would any of those panels be compatible with the non touch version(Sharp seems to be of good quality)? There is one Sharp 3200x1800 panel being sold on ebay for 300 usd but its a bit expensive. Would be nice if there were any cheaper alternatives.

 

I did some reading on this, it looks like Lenovo Y50 had this exact panel, same problems. There is a huge display thread for that machine, you may get some information there.
As far as I know, the Sharp 4K model is not compatible with the Samsung 4K model - some difference in pitch 0.4 vs 0.5 mm.
Also, this is a touch model, so I am not sure if it will be easy to separate the touch and LCD. If you go the non touch way, where will you get the Bezel for the LCD panel from.

If the Sharp IZGO 4K screen is compatible with this machine, this will be a one hell of a laptop.

 

There is a model available in my country with matte 4k non touch display, meaning there is a plastic bezel on it already. So all I would need is a panel that has about the same dimensions as the existing (crappy) 4k panel and the same connector (right?).

This seems to be the 4k panel used by the lenovo Y50 (and perhaps the one used in the ux501):

http://www.panelook.com/LTN156FL02-L01_SAMSUNG_15.6_LCM_overview_23360.html

 

http://www.asusparts.eu/en/Asus-90NB03N1-R7C010

I did find this. From the description it appears to be the entire top half/lid of the NX500, which has the same dimensions. For that price, maybe it includes the screen! Anyone want to see if it bolts on to the ux501?

 

Perhaps it would be easier to just buy a NX500 instead of the UX501? They are probably on sale now and seems to be at least as good as the UX501 and better in some regards like screen, speakers etc.

 

Except, they're not on sale! Still $2.7k! Great suggestion though!

 

the new broadwell quad core processors should be on the market soon. We will most likely see a new version of the ux501 in Q3 with some luck.

 

this would be awesome: broadwell + Win 10 + revised hardware = UX502

 

Techradar review is up. Nothing but glowing praise for the screen.

http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews...etbooks/asus-zenbook-pro-ux501-1294636/review

 

Well, battery life is really terrible on the 4k model and keyboard flex a lot too (at least in my model)
In fact, autonomy was the deal breaker for me after testing it one afternoon, not the screen...

 

SERIOUSLY, can nobody here help me out??

 

Does the 4k screen has the same 50hz frequency limit/locked frequency problem as the lenovo y50 uhd version(samsung 4k touch pannel)when using 1080p resolution? Did anyone try playing games using 1080p in the 4k screen ? There is a video in YouTube teaching how to proper scale 1080p gaming in 4k screen in alienware 15, please try it and post game benchmarks in 1080p resolution. Here is YouTube tutorial using 1080p gaming with 4k screen. Please test it




Enviado do meu iPad usando Tapatalk

 

Hey guys. How is Asus's customer service and warranty options offered for the UX501?

 

May I ask what you mean by "autonomy" ?

 

You don't need the 4Gb memory with the gtx 960m. Bigger memory does not equal better performance
performance. I'm pretty certain the 2gb model is more efficient.

 

with my typical usage (office, web, and pro audio software) the top of line UX501 (4k, 16GB RAM, 512GB PCI SSD, 96Wh battery) doesn't reach 4 hours of work when I need 6 hours. For such huge battery, its a complete let down...

 

Have you had any laptop go over4 hours with your workload? The "pro software" is probably what drains your battery. Also make sure that the dGPU does not kick in when you do not need it.

 

Simple tasks such as browsing through facebook for 4 hours with screen set to ~30 % backlight will drain the battery completely. If you run any of the "pro software" the battery will probably be drained even faster.

 

well, yesterday, with my new Acer TravelMate P645-SG (i7-5500U, 12GB, 256GB+1TB SSDs), I did 5 hours straight with my typical workload and I still had nearly 20% battery life available. Of course, both with Asus and Acer, I made sure that I was on the iGPU

 

It's pretty much pick your poison in my opinion. I have only had my Precision m3800 for a few months and I have already had to replace the touchpad twice, and now the screen is having multiple issues as well. This thing honestly feels like a poorly made piece of junk to me, especially the touchpad. I am looking for something thin, powerful, and light like a Macbook Pro that doesn't run OS X, so I was looking at the UX501 as well, but it seems like this thing has a ton of build issues to get sorted out. I will say that there is no real keyboard flex on the m3800, but it has other issues to deal with.

Looks like other than going the Macbook Pro route there just isn't a worthy computer out there for what we are looking for.

 

I'm heavily considering the UX501 for similar use. Most of my audio work (recording, mixing several tracks, fx) is done through Reaper. What kind of audio work are you doing? What software/DAW are you using?

You're pretty much guaranteed to get better battery life on an i7 5500u as it is a 15W low voltage dual-core cpu, but the i7 4720 (47W) is going to be able to handle more simultaneous tasks as it is quad-core.
The trade off for a more powerful CPU (until quad-core Broadwell and/or Skylake CPUs come out) is the lack of better battery life.

 

One think I have to say about this laptop is that it has a great Touchpad compared to most others I've tried. Really smooth and easy to control. The keyboard is also quite nice to type on, although it does flex a lot when you put some slight pressure on it. The build quality is also quite OK all in all. And yes, I'm still returning it, just haven't gotten around to it yet. Strangely enough, I find that the speakers seem to work much better with the computer in the lap or similar then standing on a desk. This most likely have to do with the speakers firing down.

 

I don't get this battery issue of Intel and PC Makers. Apple is using the same hardware with intel quad core and MacBook Pro 15 has 9 hrs battery life. I don't know why PC Makers are going back when technically, intel is claiming they have improved power efficiency of their processors. 6 hrs is not good enough considering the marketing pitch of power efficiency.

 

Firstly, Apple includes massive batteries in their devices. The rMBP 15" has a 99.5wh battery. The Screen resolution is also lower than the UX501. I still believe that Asus messed up somehow as battery life on this device seems to be very bad for the battery inside. I can easily get 6 hours on my 70wh battery in my Razer which is much closer to the Mac. Windows also tends to drain battery more as the Mac lasts a lot less time when running Windows. Another big thing for Apple is Safari that drains very little battery when browsing.

 

There is the Razer Blade 14.

 

You can't compare ULV processors, they consume less power but they're also much weaker. If a ULV processor can handle your Workload then you should probably look elsewhere as battery life will be a lot better.

 

Yeah, but I have to have a 15.6" machine. I can't go any lower than that. Plus, since it's my work laptop I'm trying to stay with something that has a clean professional look and doesn't look like a gaming machine. Those things just aren't my personal style.

 

Alright, I understand. I still find it strange that a white apple is professional while a green snake isn't. It's literally the only thing on the chassis. Lol is it the animal or the color?

 

It's the whole look of the thing. The weird looking keyboard font, the glowing green keys, the green snake. It's just not my style, and it looks weird to me. On top of that it's 14" which is a complete deal-breaker for me.

 

I haven't heard about any color problems with the Asus G501 screen. So if you don't need a touchscreen, just get that instead of the UX501.

 

Somehow, all companies, Microsoft, Intel, and Manufacturers have failed in this and never seem to improve battery life significantly even on third and fourth generation of ultrabooks.

 

I don't use any DAW, I'm a speaker designer so my pro audio softwares are on the engineering side, mostly EASE, FEA / FEMM and AutoCAD / Solidworks.
On pure office / web workload, screen brightness at 50% (which is already above 150nits), I spent today 8 hours on my Acer TMP645-SG, and battery was at 10%. Very very satisfied.
Review here: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Acer-TravelMate-P645-Notebook-Review.140765.0.html

 

So I've just got my UX501, and while I'm generally happy with it, I did notice an issue with the space bar.

If you push down on the space bar near the bottom edge (so the edge closest to the trackpad), the keyboard doesnt register it as a key press.
The bottom edge of the key does move downwards fully, but the top edge (the one closest to the C,V,B,N,M keys - where I suspect the mechanism is) stays raised much more than during a normal key press.

Is my space bar broken, or are you guys experiencing the same?


EDIT:

Okay, as I didnt want to return my machine after spending 2 days setting up linux just as I want it, I decided to take things into my own hands, and figure out why this is happening.

I removed the spacebar, and I've edited a picture that I found online that's close enough to how the spacebar on the UX501 looks.



There are two metal bars underneath the spacebar key, here indicated by the blue and purple line.
These hook into a set of holes, indicated by the purple and blue arrows.
The green circle indicated by the green arrow is the rubber dome that actually registers the keypress.

From what I can see, on my machine, the purple metal bar has more room to wiggle and travel downwards than the blue one, due to two underlying components not being on an equal level. This allows the spacebar to tilt when pressed at the bottom edge without actually compressing the rubber dome enough to register a keypress.

So to solve it I cut a small circle from some fairly thick self-adhesive vinyl film (the stuff you feed into a cutter plotter, it's about half a millimeter thick) and attached it to the inside of the space bar, right where the red circle is.
This doesnt prevent the space bar from tilting, but it does compress the rubber dome enough so the key press actually registers which is good enough for me.

Perhaps this is useful for someone some day.

 

Just curious, how is every one else feeling about the screen BESIDES the problem with yellows? My screen is really bad with noticable yellow clouds visible on a dark uniform color background but hopefully its worse than average. Haven't seen a LCD panel this bad in many years.

And as amazing as it might sound, I've noticed now a squeking sound comming from the keyboard when typing. To be more precise, it's the spacebar doing these noises, sounds familiar anyone?

My, doesn't Asus have any kind of QC in place before shipping these units? If someone wants a real premium 15", just buy a MacBook Pro right from start as Asus attempts to copy it is a big failure

 

If I didn't hate OS X so much and running VM's weren't such a pain (for various reasons), I would have stuck with a Macbook Pro for sure. I hate Apple like crazy, but I never had one hardware issue from my Macbook Pro in over a year of use. These PC manufacturers need to get their stuff together.

IT CAN"T BE THIS D#MN HARD!

 

Yes, it continues to be true, the best PC laptop is made by....Apple. Have to agree with you, how hard can it really be??

Don't care to much for OSX either, have been running Bootcamp for the last 5 years (or more) and then Windows.

 

Yes, it continues to be true, the best PC laptop is made by....Apple. Have to agree with you, how hard can it really be??

Don't care to much for OSX either, have been running Bootcamp for the last 5 years (or more) and then Windows.

One thing that has me a bit surprised with this laptop, especially compared to the other new ones I have, is that I'm not really blown away by the performance either. For some reason it feels like I'm driving around with the handbreak engaged.

(Edit: Have no idea of why the forum made two posts of my one post)

 

it's pretty good text is really sharp and good for reading and colors a are vibrant and i believe they are pretty accurate too, even the yellow is not as bad as it being descried here if you are looking at really bright yellow like the one you mark cells with in excel you will see the mustered thick tent, but if the yellow is kinda mixed with other colors like super saiyan hair you wont notice the difference.

 

Who knows the answer to this question? If you buy a laptop with a 4K screen, but the screen resolution of 1920 × 1080, then how much is enough battery?

 

Another question ... How many of you bought the Asus UX501 with FullHD screen? How long a laptop is running on battery power? I want to compare with FullHD 4K version and see which is better.

 

I guess you already checked the notebookcheck reviews for 4k tests at least:

4k G501 96WHr battery:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-G501JW-Notebook-Review.141745.0.html

Idle (without WLAN, min brightness): 6h 55min
WiFi Surfing: 4h 46min
Load (maximum brightness): 3h 22min

4k UX501 96Whr battery:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ZenBook-Pro-UX501JW-Notebook-Review.142308.0.html

Idle (without WLAN, min brightness): 6h 01min
WiFi Surfing: 4h 23min
Load (maximum brightness): 3h 10min

Yes G501 and UX501 is essentially the same laptop, beside color and keyboard backlight. There might be different configs, but the configs tested by notebookcheck is about the same.

The fullHD panel should give a slight advantage to battery life, but don't expect miracles.

 

G501 also has a slightly mustard yellow on the 4K version. So if color reproduction is important to you, I'd avoid both 4K UX501 and G501 or look at the FHD version.

 

it won't make any difference in battery life, as you still light up all the 4k pixels when the resolution will be at FHD

 

Well, it might have a small impact as the GPU would probably only have to "generate" a 1080 image, which is then scaled to 4K. That said, I don't really have any more knowledge about this or if it is indeed any major changes. What could be worth considering however is that by running in 1080 instead of 4K, you will probably have much less problems with scaling compared to Windows 8 trying to scale stuff to 4K.

 

Curious, has anyone compared the UX501 to the latest version of the Dell XPS15 (4K)? The main pitfall would probably be the GPU, but most other aspects could be just as good or even better on the XPS15.

 

I have seen multiple post claiming that their laptop is almost the same and in some aspects even better.
Lets be clear about some things:

- QHD and UHD(=4K) are not the same! ensure that if you claim the screen is UHD or 4K it actually has a resolution of 3840x2160! Huge difference!

- i7-4712HQ is not better then the i7-4710HQ or i7-4720HQ... It is slower then both and has worse built in graphics (which are used in most simple programs and windows)
(2.3ghz with graphics 1.15ghz vs 2.5/2.6 ghz with graphics 1.2ghz, in other words about 10% more performance) (the power consumption however, is lower)

- No other harddisk has such a fast SSD. And since almost all laptops stick with either SATA-600 or MK.2 PCI-E 2x, the speed of the current AND any future harddisk of these laptops can never be more then either 550MB/s (SATA) or around 800MB/s (MK.2 PCI-E 2x)!
(the new nvme drives are said to be even faster but these are not yet avalaible (for normal customers) and require a motherboard that supports it fully to be better (most commonly used motherboards dont fully support it))

- Battery life comparisons: make sure you check with what brightness they were tested (and down-clocking, in this case probably against the UX501).
Another thing like already told is that the new i7 (so far) are dual cores, which means they perform less and have a much lower powersumptions=longer battery life.
Of course, which processor is in your benefit greatly depends on your use of the machine!

Personally i recommend a good videocard too, like the 860+ or 960+ too, 4K drains yours videocard when used for graphics (games or graphical editing software)

Please mind that i don't say people told inaccurate stuff, just see it as a reminder to ensure no future misunderstandings , please correct me if some of my information is wrong )

 

No, it makes no difference if you output at FHD or 4K.
In 2D, the video scaler (the very last stage of the pipeline) has negligible effect in power consumption compared to other parts of the GPU (its a very simple low power circuit).
in 3D, what makes difference in power consumption is GPU usage (in simple words, how the ALUs stay busy). Different software/games have different ALU utilization (so the difference in power comsumption). But a game has same ALU utilization whatever the output resolution. Of course, at lower resolution the GPU is able to do the job faster, thus higher framerate, but the power consumption is the same. In other words, with same piece of code, at FHD 60fps you drain the same power than at 4K 20fps.
hope it's clear

 

The 750M is much weaker than the 960M and the cooling of the XPS 15 will most likely be worse.

That's incorrect. The whole point of NVIDIA battery booster is to reduce performance for battery life gain so although it is true that in 2D the resolution does not matter, it along with frame rate does matters in 3D.

 

Has anyone bought the cheaper $1200 FHD-touch version with the 1TB HDD and 8GB RAM?
Is it possible to switch out the HDD with a (say Samsung Evo SSD) in that model? Also is it possible to add in another 8 gigs of RAM in the future? If that is possible then the buy would be a no-brainer...
It would be a great help if one of you could open the thing and give us what can be switched out, can the graphics card be switched out too in the future if neeeded?