F8SA-X2 Mini-Review

Greetings - I received my F8SA last week and wanted to pass on my thoughts on it. First, Thanks to jlcamp7 (I hope I have his name right!) for help in locating XP drivers.

Build Quality - Fantastic, I really believe ASUS has the market cornered here. No marks or scratches (Hello H-P!), and no un-even seams. The chassis is very solid as is the lid/LCD.

Size/Weight - Good - Honestly the F8SA is a little bigger than say the dv2700's of the world, due in part to the amount of real estate above the screen where the webcam is located. It still fits nicely into a bag designed to fit 14" laptops.

LCD - Very Good - Mine is an AUO, not the brightest but adequately bright, with no stuck or dead pixels. Honestly, though, the H-P dv2700 which I just sold had nicer colors and was brighter.

Graphics - Very Good - I saved several hundred dollars by getting the ATI 2600 version instead of the the Nvidia 8600 version. Although my Vista Gaming/Aero score is only 4.9/4.9 (with modded drivers - Thanks to Mobility Modder), games run very well in XP. I play (modded) SWAT 4 alot, and I have to say that SWAT 4 looks better and plays more smoothly on the ASUS than it does on my Dell 1520/8600GT. AA does not appear to work on the Dell/8600 - but works very well on the ASUS/2600, plus the gameplay is an order of magnitude smoother on the ASUS.

Dual-Boot - Very Good - Kudo's to ASUS for splitting up Vista and the drivers, unlike on my F3. I installed Vista on a new HDD and used the ASUS Driver disk (without installing Norton) and it worked like a charm. It has been a real pain to find XP drivers as ASUS does not provide them. I found all of the drivers except for the TPM (un-needed) and Infrared. I haven't used IR on a laptop since I had my Palm IIIc so the lack of infrared is no issue to me. Again, I used the Mobility Modder to mod ATI desktop drivers and it worked exactly as advertised.

BIOS - Excellent - ASUS was kind enough to give you the option to run native SATA, or not , in the BIOS. So, if you don't have a slipstreamed XP cd you can still load XP. This is where H-P has apparently sold out to M$, the newer H-P's no longer have this option n the BIOS.

Sound - Excellent - My Dell 1520 continues to have scratchy/static sound from both the headphone jack and the speakers, and the sound on the Dell is way too loud. The XP Realtek sound package installed with no errors and sounds great, and I have no volume problems.

Wireless/LAN - Excellent - no problems with the 4965 or the gigabit ethernet. It was a little tricky finding drivers for XP but jlcamp helped me there.

Battery Life - Fair - I knew when I bought my F8 that battery life would not be so good - and its not. I get about an hour and half battery life while surfing/etc. Not good, but its a small battery and I knew about this ahead of time.

Overall - I am very happy with this system and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a moderately priced compact laptop. ASUS continues to impress me with their build quality/quality control. Hopefully they will bring out this same form factor, later this year, with ATI's new mobile graphics.

 

Thanks for the DETAILED review.

How does the HP DV2700 compare to the ASUS ?

 

No problem on the drivers. Great review! I think it was very fair and honest. I keep meaning to do a review. But I just haven't had the time to sit down and really lay it out. As for anyone interested in the F8SA-X2, I have had mine for about 3 weeks now and I love it! Every laptop has it's little things that some people like and some people don't, but I can honestly say that you can't beat the price for what you get out of this 14" laptop.

 

how's the web cam?

laptop mag says it is just ok with low resolution, is that true?

 

I would consider it to be just okay as well. it's a 1.3 megapixel. I mean you have to remember one of the last purposes of a laptop is to be a video camera as well. However it works perfectly fine. I have sent friends/family a few video emails with it.

 

Yes - I forgot to mention the webcam - it is only OK. If using the webcam for Skyping or anything like that (which I don't do) then you may be disappointed. The webcam on my Dell 1520 and (former) dv2700 were quite a bit better. I really liked the dv2700 LCD, battery life and size - but not being able to fully use XP was a show-stopper for me. Also I believe the ATI 2600 is quite a bit more capable than the Nvidia 8400 on the dv2700t (although I understand the newer 8400's are using DDR3).

 

Nice short review. I have the F8SV-A1 so it is almost exactly the same.

Interesting about the graphics part, my Aero score is 4.7 and Gaming score is 5.1 with stock drivers. (I guess that averages almost the same as yours heh).

It seems there is a little pack of us who recently bought an F8 I've had mine for 2 weeks now.

The webcam is decent. Like others have said, it gets the job done, its not like you really need a good camera on a laptop.
The mic, however, seems to be pretty poor. In CS:S, the only way I can get it to register (using the test microphone option) is if I talk INTO the mic hole. I don't know if it will pick up your voice when speaking in a normal position to the laptop, but based on that test, I would guess the microphone will not pick up your voice.

About the battery life; on batter saving mode Vista estimates around 2.5 hours of life doing surfing the web. I haven't done a full test until the battery depleted, but 2.5h seems pretty accurate (more accurate than 1.5 hours listed above).

Note that, using Power4Gear, I further lowered the processor speed to 60% max (I think the default was 75% max). You could lower it even more - and squeeze even more time - because this laptop is still plenty fast for surfing/writing in word etc. When I have the time I'm gonna try for 3 hours

 

JTF2 - I'm not familiar with the F8SV-A1 (well, honestly I'm only really familiar with the ASUS models that NewEgg sells - and I think they just dropped the F8SA-X2). 5.1 gaming in Vista is a pretty good sized jump - mine only rated 4.8 with the stock HDD/drivers. Does your 2600 have DDR3 or are you running 3-Gb+ of RAM or something? And, you're right about my comment regarding 1.5 hours - its 1.5 hours to 20% battery level. I only rarely run a laptop below 20%.

 

I guess I should have made my signature earlier.

The F8S V has an 8600M GT whereas the F8S A has a 2600. This explains the score jump. Sorry for the confusion

 

Thank you for your kind reply , much appreciated.

 

Oh , really that models has HD2600 in US , I did not know that.
In Asia , I can choose either ATI HD2400 or NV 8600GT.
I may buy the NVIDIA one.

Thanks.

 

I would probably go for the nvidia one as well. The only reason I went with the 2600, was because it was a special newegg.com package for an excellent price. I am very satisfied with it, but if I were in your position would definately go with the nvidia, since the 8600 sits quite a bit higher than the 2400.

 

Did anyone notice that the F8SA-X2 is gone from neweggs website? I just checked it and coulnn't find it anywhere. The only way I was able to find it was to log into my account and go to my purchases. It will bring the page up and say that it is a deactivated item. I wonder if they are getting a new shipment in, or if they are gone forever. Either way I am sure glad I got it while I could.

 

wow, thanks , lots of help and I have to say you guys are so nice and lucky .

the neweggs.com price is like crazy , much cheaper than these prices in Thailand or Siggapore.

BTW, what is your screen resolution WXGA or WXGA+?

 

The specs for the F8SA-X2 is WXGA 1280X800, however the F8-B1 and some of the other F8 models are WXGA+ 1440X900