User Reviews

Review by: Smilepak - Z71v

Here is a quick review after 24 hours of usage. After a little over a year of scouring the forums and internet sites, this is what I end up with. I had seriously considered several other laptops such as the Acer 8100 series and Acer Ferrari 3200.

I had specific need. I wanted something with wide screen so I could do photoshop and webdesign on. I wanted something configurable so I could pick and choose the components I want. Lastly I wanted something with enough juice at a reasonable price so I wouldn’t have to upgrade too quickly down the road.

I ordered this from www.proportable.com. Justin @ proportable has been one of the very few people you see anywhere that is helpful, quick, friendly, and responsive to all your need. Hats off to him and the proportable team for putting this together for me quickly!!!!


Ordered: Asus Z71V
Pentium-M 1.86Ghz w/2MB L2 Cache
nVidia GO GeForce 6600 w/128MB Video Memory
60GB 7200RPM HD
2x1GB Corsair DDR2-533
Intel Wifi A/B/G
DVD+RW Dual Layer
Total Cost Under $2100.00
Purchased: http://www.proportable.com

Standard Specification:
Built-in SD/MMC/ Card Reader
5 USB 2.0 Ports
One VGA port
One Modem Port / One RJ 45 Network Port (gigabit)
One PCMCIA Type II slot
One 1394B Type Slot
SATA/PATA Support. Adapter included

Design:
The Asus Z71V have a rather round corner, gun metal color design. It seems fairly well built with no open cracks or spaces around the notebook. Upon first impression, the color looks very conservative and pleasing to the eye. The laptop is two tone gun metal colors. The darker shad makes up most of the laptop while the lighter shade offers a nice trim around the laptop. Another noticeable feature upon booting up this laptop is the cool blue color LED surrounding the power button. Similar to the Asus M6 series, the power button offers a nice distinctive look to the Asus laptop series.

In the center above the keyboard is the power button with a blue light around it. To the left of the power button are 6 led status lights. To the right of the power button are 5 quick keys control for email, wifi on/off, etc. This laptop has a touch point pad with a side scroller.

In front of the laptop in the center you have the LCD lid latch. To the right of that are 5 controls for the CD/DVD Rom drive. The battery is situated right below the palm rest towards the front of the laptop. This design allow the hard drive to be situated more towards the middle and back of the laptop where the heat from it would not cause the palm rest an uncomfortable heat feeling some people noticed with other laptops, such as Uniwill 258KA model. In the front on two side of the battery, are two well equipped speakers. Though they are not Harmon Kardon, they do output a nice solid sound.

LCD:
The LCD on this laptop is a 15.4 WSXGA+ with high resolution of 1680x1050. To team up with this high resolution LCD, the laptop comes with a nice nVidia GO GeForce 6600 128MB video adapter. The LCD is clear, non-glossy texture with pretty decent viewing angles. I am not sure is it due to the wide screen type, but it looks best at max resolution compared with any other resolution. At any other resolution, the screen looks a bit distorted. This laptop does come with a feature called A.L.S. (Ambient Light Sensor). This feature is rather useful in the sense it extend your battery life. In a notebook, the one component which takes up a huge amount of power is your LCD. The ALS will detect the amount of light around you and adjust the LCD brightness accordingly to help you conserve battery. If you are in a dark room, the LCD will auto dim down a bit to help you conserve battery. From Asus, this could assist in extending your battery usage up to 6 hours. So far, I prefer using it with the ALS feature enable as it is much easier on the eyes while using this laptop in low light condition. One thing to know is even in a total dark room with ALS active, it is still pretty bright. You don’t even know it was even active.

The 15.4” wide screen is extremely beneficial to those who use spreadsheets or photoshop. You have the extra wide space to utilize all the tools you enjoy in those applications. After 2 hours of usage at high resolutions, it doesn’t seem to take a heavy toll on the eyes.

Last note on LCD, no dead pixel found yet. This is awesome! But compare this LCD to a Sony, Sony still win hands down. But compared this with others, I think this LCD have a pretty good chance.

Height / Weight:
This laptop as you can see is a 15.4” laptop. With that, most laptop of this screen size out there are usually pretty heavy. While the specification says it is less than 7lbs, it seems rather light when carrying it around. Comparing it to IBM Think pad T30 or T22 for that matter, this is lighter. The documented dimension for this laptop is: 14” x 10.75” x 1.38” and weight approx 6.5lbs.

System Performance:
On the system performance, it is rather fast compared with the AMD-XP 3000+ desktop I have. Keep in mind one thing the Intel processors have always been superior to AMD in the fact of the additional multimedia instruction set. Though in benchmark AMD might be head in overall speed, in multimedia area, Intel is still the king of the hill. What I would like to see is someone else’s Sandra using the DDR2-400 memory, how would that compared to the DDR2-533.

Sandra 2005 Benchmarks CPU:
Benchmark Results
Dhrystone ALU : 8035 MIPS
Whetstone FPU : 2593 MFLOPS
Whetstone iSSE2 : 3315 MFLOPS

Sandra 2005 Benchmark Memory:
Benchmark Results
RAM Bandwidth Int Buff'd iSSE2 : 3032 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buff'd iSSE2 : 3041 MB/s

Int Buff'd iSSE2 (Integer STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2995MB/s
Scaling : 2978MB/s
Addition : 3107MB/s
Triad : 3048MB/s
Data Item Size : 16 byte(s)
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 71% (estimated)

Float Buff'd iSSE2 (Float STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2984MB/s
Scaling : 2995MB/s
Addition : 3101MB/s
Triad : 3084MB/s
Data Item Size : 16 byte(s)
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 71% (estimated)

As you can see above, the numbers are pretty good.

Video Performance:
On the video performance, this is a bit interesting topic. It seems Asus have underclocked the nVidia card on the Z71V for the purpose of long battery life. Due to this, the numbers seem lower in comparison to ATI X700. Through gaming and normal usage you would not notice these differences, but in benchmark you would. Keep in mind the 3D Mark number below is based upon stocked clock speed. I have not over clocked the video card for these numbers.

Using stocked nVidia Driver v71.13
3D Mark 2005: 1720

Using XtremeG nVidia Driver v71.84
3D Mark 2005: 1780

Now let’s see the overclock benchmarks:

Using XtremeG nVidia Driver 71.84 (300 Core / 500 Memory)
3D Mark 2005: 1970

This seems to be the best setting. It is rock stable and still offers great performance.

In comparison to a Toshiba Tecra S2 that also uses the same nVidia GO GeForce 6600 w/128MB

Toshiba Tecra S2 w/nVidia Go Geforce 6600 128MB...

3DMark05: 1548

As you can see, even the stocked driver from Asus still beats the Toshiba up and down. I am interested to see other laptop using the same video card and some benchmark spec around it.

One thing to keep in mind is the current 71.84 version drive available on nVidia website does not support the GO GeForce 6600, due to this you would have to use a mod such as Omega or XtremeG which edit the INF file to include support for the GO GeForce 6600. You could download the Xtreme G from www.guru3d.com which contain the official nVidia 71.84 driver w/mod INF file for support on the GO GeForce 6600

Heat / Fan:
I have used this laptop for a few hours now. I have not noticed any heat issue and the fan is very quite. Given the fact I have a wife who is a light sleeper; using this laptop next to her at night doesn’t seem to be a problem with waking her up. In my previous laptop, IBM Thinkpad or Toshiba Satellite Pro series, the fan could be quite loud at times. The palm rest is very comfortable with little to no heat after a couple of hours of usage. This is due largely in part of them being able to situate the HD a little further back than most laptop out there. Someone nice is the fan ports are actually suction ports. They intake air and ventilate out to the back of the laptop, so the heat blowing on your lap isn’t hot air!

It is actually quite comfortable typing this with the laptop on my lap. No heat problem in the palm rest area or any heat problem on my lap. The fan is very faintly on you could barely notice.

Other Comments and Information:
In my opinion, this laptop is a great well designed laptop. Most of the pictures you see here or anywhere doesn’t do any justice to this laptop. It is solid built laptop with a lot of features for the price you pay. I consider it as one of the best bang for the buck type laptop. Since it is a true barebone (whitebook) laptop, it is pretty much configurable depending on there you purchases it.

This notebook comes with 5 USB 2.0 ports. In my opinion, I think this is overkill. Having 3 at most is good, but beyond that is overkill. If anyone who needs more, get a USB hub and use it on a docking station. I would rather see the slot be covered up to give it a more sleek design.

One thing about this notebook which is rather annoying is the brightness of the LED light. Granted it is nice, but when the laptop goes into standby mode and you have the laptop lid closed, at night the flashing blue LED light could get rather annoying.

On average usage with writing email, surfing the internet, etc, this laptop could dish out a nice 3.5 and up of battery life. Which is pretty nice compared with other laptop out there today. Of course, you could also purchase a 2nd battery kit to be used in the space where the DVD drive is located.

Summary:
Overall after 24 hours of usage and benchmark, I have to say this laptop is pretty good. While the nVidia GO GeForce 6600 was not as I expected, it still perform fairly well on EQ2 and other games. A mental note is that all of these benchmarks are mainly for bragging rights, to the average users playing games or any sort of function; you will rarely notice any differences between this video card and ATI X700.

It also seems Asus wasn’t the only one unclocking the video card for battery reason, as Toshiba Tecra S2 performance was pretty sad as well. In stocked drivers and clock speed, the Toshiba Tecra S2 actually performed over 200 points lower than the Asus Z71V in 3D Mark 2005.

Setting up this laptop was a breeze without any problem whatsoever. I was able to installed Windows XP SP2 in less than 20 minutes. All the drivers came with this laptop were simple installation. The wireless wifi was an easy install as well. Plug in my WEP key and off I go. It has pretty strong signal compared to the linksys wifi 802.11b card I have.

In the accessories department, you could purchase a 2nd battery kit which fit nicely in the place where the DVD drive is currently at. This gives you the option to go on full day usage w/o having to be plugged in. Another nice accessory is the dual hard drive kit. This allows you to use two hard drives, this is great for those who rarely uses their DVD drive and could live on the external version.

For Asus Z71V Support Thread, please refer to: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=72349

Where To Buy:
http://www.proportable.com
http://www.rjtech.com
http://www.geared2play.com
http://www.hypersonic.com
http://www.xmeld.com
http://www.istnc.com
http://www.agearnotebooks.com

And of course the nice expensive painted version could be purchased at http://www.voodoopc.com. Which is known as the VoodooPC M:515 on their website.


Overall I give this laptop a 9 out of 10!

















Now off to sleep, I have a serious flu and typing this out is making me tired :saywhat: :$ :uhoh: :scratch:
Review by: SmilePak

Laptop: Asus Z71V From www.proportable.com
* Intel® Pentium® M 750 - 1.86GHz
* 2GB DDR2-533 Corsair
* Hitachi Travelstar 60GB 7200 RPM w/ 8MB Buffer
FAQ Most asked about laptops: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61505

 

Review by: Sencha - S5n

Last night I became the proud owner of an ASUS S5n. After a good deal of deliberation and dithering, this was the road I chose. Due to circumstances that were mostly out of my control my financial situation made the S5n the most realistic choice for me for the time being. Portability was my #1 thing, and the S5n was the perfect choice in that respect.

I put in 512MB extra memory (I can give exact brand and specs if anyone is interested) and decided to just stick with the HD that's in there for now.

First, what came in the box:

- The computer and its battery
- The wireless mouse
- The external drive in its own packaging as if purchased separately
- Windows XP Pro software (unopened)
- ASUS utilities CD
- Some software that I haven't even looked at yet
- The power brick and cord
- A well translated manual
- Some funky stickers for the touch pad
- A telephone cable (?)
- A really handy credit card sized card that lists all of the ASUS global service members by country in case you're travelling and something goes wrong and you need to get your notebook fixed (nice!)
- A cleaning cloth for your LCD (nice)
- A big folded card with some of the more important stuff from the manual in about 30 different languages (fun for learning words like "Batterijpakket" and phrases like "Installering av batteri pakken" and "Apning av LCD display panelet")
- Carrying case and sleeve

Everything was very nicely packed and well wrapped and clean.

After many hours playing with this very cute little computer, here is a fairly detailed review and my initial impressions.

- C O M P U T E R -

Size, Weight & Build: It is amazingly light and compact. I even have trouble believing it weighs what it says in the specs. Yet it still feels very solid and well-built. I was ginger with it at first because it's so small it gives one the illusion that it is delicate, but after playing with it enough and carrying it around, it is quite clear that it is very durable and not delicate at all.

Keyboard: The keyboard is strong and doesn't have any give as far as I can tell. The keys are a bit clicky. I personally like that for tactile reasons, but I do wonder if it will be a bit loud when I type in class.

Noise: It's silent. I have not heard it make a sound yet except the small hard drive murmerings all computers make sometimes. These are only audible if you are basically sitting right next to it. I certainly haven't maxed it out yet, but I still have not heard the fan come on. Sometimes I've closed it and completely forgotten that it's even on because it is so quiet.

Speed: It is FAST. Even with only 768MB RAM, it is very zippy. It literally takes less than 10 seconds for Windows to boot up and load my preferences, etc. And that's with a number of programs that run at startup like McAfee and Kerio PF installed.

Battery: The battery life is, as expected, dismal. The power brick is very small and not heavy, so as long as I can find a power source, I don't mind toting the power cord and brick around. I'd say the battery averages 2 hours with power savings. But the Power4 Gear software is great and as soon as the battery gets low, you get a couple minutes warning and then it will automatically save everything and stabilize before it goes into hibernation. Loss of data seems to be almost impossible unless you really screw up. For me, weight and size were more important than battery life, so I don't mind. I'll probably get the extra battery for situations when I will want more battery life, but for now I'm fine with the default battery. The battery is really easy to remove and put back in. Very nice design there.

Keys & Touchpad: The keyboard is a bit difficult to get used to at first. The space bar is not wide enough, and that is my only serious complaint about the S5n. The longer I have used it, the more comfortable I am with the keys, but it definitely took some getting used to. If you can't handle typing on anything that doesn't have a full sized keyboard, I'd recommend you stay away from this guy, because you will hate typing on it. The keys are a sort of clearish white color and would probably look better if they were completely opaque like the W5's keys, but I like them anyway. The touchpad is quite small and the mouse buttons are slightly hard to depress, but you get used to it.

Screen: The screen is clear and bright and the colors are good. It doesn't have the 16 million colors that many models do, but it hasn't been a problem for me so far.

External Monitor Compatibility: I've already tried connecting it to my desktop monitor and it worked like a charm. The special function keys are great, especially the one that toggles between monitors.

Speakers: Do I even need to talk about the speakers? They're typical laptop speakers. They're not very good. Exactly what you'd expect. Put on some headphones and you'll be fine.

Heat: I have not noticed the computer getting hot at all. If you pick it up after you've been using it, the bottom is slightly warm and so is the place where it has been sitting, but it is certainly not hot at all. I wouldn't have any problem working with this on my lap - though you gents are not supposed to!

Ports: 3 USB 2.0 are well positioned. PCMCIA slot and the multi-card reader are there but I probably will never use them. Monitor out, headphones, LAN, modem, 1394 (what is this for?), etc.

Wireless Connection: Works great. It had no problem detecting my home wireless network as well as several others nearby! However, the Intel/XP wireless software situation was mildly confusing at first and for some reason I have two wireless status icons in my system tray - one is the Intel and the other is the standard XP icon and they both seem to have to be enabled for the wireless to work. Maybe I'm being stupid, but I find that odd.

Status Lights: The status lights on the palmrest are really cool. When the screen is closed, you can still see them through tiny windows built into the lid. The one that flashes regularly to show your wireless is working is very handy. They are all very small and are multi-colored so you don't even really have to look to see which is which, as you learn based on what color they are (e.g. wireless light is indigo, battery charging light is amber). When it is hibernating the pretty blue power button light blinks slowly, which is good because otherwise you wouldn't even know that it was on because it is so quiet!

- P E R I P H E R A L S -

Wireless Mouse: The wireless mouse is very cute and very tiny and has a really nice texture, but it doesn't work. I'm sure I screwed it up somehow when I was trying to sync it. I plan to try to get it to work again, but it's definitely something I'm not going to worry about because I have a perfectly good USB mouse that works fine for me and doesn't require AAA batteries (grumble).

External Drive: The CD-RW/DVD-Rom drive is really slick. I rarely even use the CD-RW drive on my desktop computer, so this was one of the things that really turned me on about the S5. I can just use the external one when I need it, but don't have that additional weight built into the machine itself. It works great with the computer; as soon as you plug it in it's ready to go. My only complaint is that when it first starts running a disc, it is pretty loud. However, I'm mostly going to be using it at home - and rarely at that - so I don't care.

Carrying Case: AWESOME! It has a really snug padded pocket within the main inner-compartment that the computer fits in perfectly, so you can carry the computer safely and securely while also carrying regular sized documents in the main compartment. I love that! I've already had some fun putting the computer, the external drive, all the necessary cables, my regular Microsoft optical mouse, the power brick and power cord, some papers and a book in there and carried it around and it's fine. It's like a magic trick; the bag looks like it could never accommodate all of that, yet it does! It also has a nice little inner pocket where you could put some pens and there are also a couple CD-sized inner pockets. On the outside it has one long pocket. The slickest thing about the bag is the way you can hide the carrying handles when you are just using the shoulder strap. There are two little pockets that they can slide into and you don't even know they are there. That is so cool. The bag is nice quality and looks good and has a small ASUS badge on it. Have I said yet how much I love the bag?

Sleeve: It is very snug and cozy, but it doesn't fit in the special pocket inside the carrying case with the computer, so that option is out. It's nice to have and would be good to use inside another bag, but if you use the carrying case that comes with the computer, you wouldn't have much need for the sleeve very often.

- P R O S -

- Size (!)
- Weight (!)
- Stylishness + Cuteness
- Durability
- Stiff, good keyboard (even though it's small)
- Clear, bright screen
- Incredibly quiet
- Very fast with the memory upgrade
- Really slick, versatile carrying case
- 3 USB 2.0 ports which are well positioned in my opinion
- Doesn't get hot at all
- External drive is small and light and integrates perfectly
- Picks up wireless signals very well
- The Power4 Gear button that toggles between power saving modes is great, and the icons are cute

- C O N S -

- Battery life
- Very small number, F keys and space bar
- Small mouse buttons on the touchpad which are a bit hard to depress
- CD-RW/DVD-Rom drive is loud + doesn't come with DVD decoder software (tsk tsk tsk)
- My wireless mouse doesn't work!

Overall I am INCREDIBLY pleased with this computer. I've only had it for a day, but I've had no problems (no dead pixels!) and it ran like a charm out of the box. I love carrying it around and I think it looks killer. Keep in mind, the last notebook I owned was a hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 7000 doorstop from 1999 (which still looks better than a brand new IBM, but I digress), so I might be easily impressed.

I give this bad boy 8.5/10 stars. It's not for everyone, but I would never hesitate to recommend it - especially for the price. It makes the 12" iBook (its obvious design inspiration) look like a big fatso, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.

And I must say, it looks cute as hell with an iPod Shuffle sticking out the side.

I took some pretty nice photos so if anyone is interested I can post them, but just let me know.

- U P D A T E -

I've had this computer now for over a week and I've been using it a lot. I just wanted to add a couple more thoughts to this based on using it longer. People who are thinking of buying an S5 when the refreshed versions come out should probably know a few more things.

I know I said earlier that I didn't care about the lack of a built-in optical drive, but I would urge anyone thinking of purchasing an S5 to really think about whether or not this is something you can live without. I haven't really regretted that this computer doesn't have a built-in drive, but it definitely makes the prospect of watching DVDs on the airplane a bit less appealing. Having to get the external drive out in order to do that would mean I wouldn't have enough tiny tray room, and this could get annoying. Even playing games that require the CD (Sim City, etc) is out. So I would urge you to think about things like that. In my day-to-day life I haven't missed the built-in optical drive at all, but I know I will miss it when flying.

Go somewhere and practise typing on a compact keyboard. The keyboard on the refreshed S5 will be redesigned, but I still would urge you to see what it's like typing on a small keyboard. If you do it a lot, you get used to it, but if you're switching between a full-sized keyboard and the small one, you will get frustrated very quickly with the typing mistakes you make. I love my S5 but really, really wish it had a more usable keyboard. I think this will be the case with the refreshes - at least they will have full-sized number keys - but still think about it.

If you buy the extended battery, you are going to use it more than your old battery, that's just a fact. I haven't put my old battery in since I bought the new one. So I would urge you to think about whether or not having the extended battery sticking out the back is something you can live with. It doesn't stick out as much as it appears to in photos, but it defiitely sticks out, and it definitely throws off the balance of the computer. If the whole sleekness thing is why you're buying the S5, keep in mind that if you put an extended battery in it, most of that sleekness is out the window. I don't personally care and I still think it looks wicked, but this is something to consider.

Also remember that the LCD on this computer does not have 16m colors and you WILL notice the difference if you are used to using a good quality desktop display. It is not bad and I don't mind, but colors are definitely a bit more muted and toned down. I've done some graphics work on it and it's fine, but you just have to remember that what you do will look different on a 16m color display. If you're using exact color codes that you've already established on a better display, you should be fine, but if you're trying to "eye-ball" it, you might be in trouble.

On a more positive note, I'm more impressed with the build quality every day. I did the test of applying pressure to the lid to see if the LCD ripples and it would take a lot of pressure to make that happen. Naturally I didn't go that far, but I was very impressed with how stiff and sturdy the case is. I'm also still constantly impressed by how light and compact it is. I saw an iBook the other day and almost laughed at how thick and fat it looked compared to my computer. I don't think you can imagine how thin and compact it is until you actually see one.

That's about all I can think of for now. Don't let any of this confuse you - I still adore my S5 and don't regret my purchase for a second. I take it everywhere with me and I am totally happy with it. But these are things that I've noticed since I got it that I think are important for anyone who is considering buying one to know.

I only made my review so long and detailed because when I was shopping, I found those were the reviews that helped me the most. Even what seems like the smallest bit of infortmation was appreciated, so I apologize if you found it a bit over-the-top in length.

Here are some pics of my S5n:

Thumbnails:









And here's a comparison of the included wireless mouse with a regular sized Microsoft Optical mouse:



_{I am one escroww}