ASUS U31SD-A1 Review Discussion

This 13.3" notebook delivers over ten hours of battery and decent performance in a portable package. What's not to like? Read our full review.

Read the full content of this Article: ASUS U31SD-A1 Review

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Basically the same recommendation for this machine as for their editions of two years ago. Good heat, excellent battery life, decent machine, but treat very, very carefully as build quality is sub-par.

I have owned a UL30a-a2 for some time now and have been paranoid with it - it has lasted me a very long time and services me well as a "battery life" machine.

 

Typical ASUS with their terrible screen quality. They need to break this trend! And a new design would be nice, it's getting old.

 

The UL30 has significantly better build quality than this machine, actually. This notebook has a very poorly reinforced chassis.

The screen quality is not better or worse than other 13.3/14" notebooks in this segment. In other words, barely adequate. ASUS does include a color profile switcher, which helps the colors somewhat.

Agreed that the design is getting old. Here's what ASUS needs to do to fix this notebook:
-Put an actual internal frame in the chassis to prevent it from twisting
-Get rid of the glossy plastic ... entirely (screen and keyboard surround)
-Design a new keyboard
-Design a new touchpad
-Put in an ExpressCard slot and/or eSATA, USB 3.0
-Ditch the dedicated graphics, they are weak + useless + unnecessary with the new Intel integrated graphics
-Get a new exterior design that actually looks coherent

So basically, you are correct, a whole redesign. The U31SD is not a terrible notebook but doesn't try nearly hard enough.

 

im debating between this and the u36SD

any thoughts?

its for day to day use for my sister in college

 

If you're looking for an ultraportable, the X220 is the real deal.

 

The U31SD sounds like it will work for your sister's purposes, but as ZaZ noted ... the ThinkPad is seriously a much better quality machine.

 

thanks ill check it out

 

the u36 is also a much more solidly designed laptop, look in the asus forums there are plenty of people that have and like the u36 and have given a lot more information on it.

 

the u36sd hasn't been released yet, the only difference i could ascertain between the u36-sd and the u31-sd is the size..have i missed anything?

 

What really bothers me about Asus as of late, is their quality seems to be going down hill, yet they still command a price premium for their products. Newegg is a great example. Comparing specs across the board, for equally spec'd boards and notebooks they are consistently higher priced than others. I've read a lot of reviews both at Newegg and here, and comments on various boards, and Asus quality does seem to be on a steady decline. I find it very troubling actually.

 

ASUS notebooks generally aren't a bargain, though it is worth noting a good percentage of them come with a longer warranty period than competitors (2 yrs) and a percentage of those also have a year of accidental damage protection.

Doesn't make up for the rest of the notebook as this review shows, but that extra warranty is worth something.

 

The difference between the two are:

i3-2310 vs i5-2410 w/ turbo boost

usb 2.0 vs usb 3.0

Magnesium/Well Built vs Anodized Aluminum on lid only and plastic on the rest

 

so it seems most people agree that the u31sd is a better built model.
my qualms with the X220 mentioned earlier is that it just doesn't look good aesthetically

 

just bought one of these..

 

Please post your impressions when it arrives.

 

^ Seconded. I'm considering one of these as well, but have read about many of the Sandy Bridge /w discrete vid laptops under 15" have thottling issues. The review on here praised the thermals on this Asus but I wish they would have verified and stated whether this thing actually completes the benchmark at its advertised clock speed. The Acer TimelineX and a few others tend to downclock to 1.2GHz or 800 or something along those lines once they hit a certain threshold temperature and don't let go of that speed until the CPU temp drops below 45C or so- a serious handicap if you want to do some intensive work or play games.

 

i'll get it on wednesday so i shall post a review as soon as i can.

 

Alright guys, let me just say this much i'm not an expert so i haven't run any benchmark tests or the like..

Build quality:
Amazing. It feels sturdy, but not cumbersome. I'm sure internals are still fragile but honestly I feel like it could take a bump or two without a breaking a sweat. I have a U35JC-A1 and this laptop feels much sturdier than my own.

The keyboard is a little stiff, but that may be because its new, but there is no discernible flex to it at all. It's black on black unlike mine which is black (keys) on silver (base).

The mouse pad, unlike the U35JC-A1 which has a mouse bad the blends in with the palm rests, the U31SD has a clearly identifiable mouse bad. The texture is rough, maybe even too rough so that would take some getting use to.

I bought this from Gentech PC and they actually gave me a clean install of win7 (for a small price) which was really nice of them.

I know this review is pretty basic, but if theres anything you want to know let me know and i'll try to give a more detailed answer.

 

I want to see if anyone else got their cpu customized to an i7 quad core processor. When Ken from gentechpc displayed a u31sd running with a i7-2820qm processor, I was surprised that a thin and light machine could handle it.

 

i think the only problem with doing that is that it will increase the heat output

 

Thanks a lot for posting your impressions. The U35JC sounds a lot like the U45JC I reviewed:
ASUS U45JC-A1 Review
Overall I liked it.

ASUS notebooks, especially the U-series are hit and miss ... for example this U41JF I reviewed had poor quality and I didn't end up recommending it:
ASUS U41JF-A1 Review

Congrats on your laptop! I think the keyboard will break in over time. The U31SD is a pretty good travel companion, especially considering the battery life. If you want a performance boost, drop in a nice Western Digital Scorpio Black or Hitachi Travelstar 7200RPM hard drive. The WD 640GB 5400RPM drive it comes with is quiet but slow. You can put the drive it came with in an external enclosure and use it for storage.
I'd also recommend a clean install of Windows, ASUS notebooks tend to come with too much pre-installed software.

dkukade, adding a quad-core processor will undoubtedly increase the heat output and negatively affect the battery life as well. I would stick to dual-core processors in a smaller notebook.

 

I posted this question in the U31JG review's discussion, but I didn't get any answer, so I thought I'd post it here since it's still relevant to the U31SD review.

In the U31JG review, the U31JG scores 6077 PCMarks with an intel core i3 380M processor. I have an U31JG with an intel i5 480M processor and it only scores 5228 PCMarks in PCMark Vantage (64-bit on default settings) with a clean install of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and the processor running at 3,2 GHz (performace settings). How can this be?

 

PCMark also uses the graphics card and hard drive heavily ... what kind of hard drive and graphics card do you have?

The i5-480M isn't that much faster than the i3-380M. It can Turbo Boost to 3.2GHz but that's only on one core, on two cores the Turbo Boost is probably around 2.8-2.9GHz.

 

Same graphics (Geforce 415M) and a Segate momentus 320gb 5400rpm drive.

Are you saying that one core is running in 3,2Ghz and the other is not? How is that possible?

 

The 320GB hard drive your notebook has is likely a little slower than the 500GB 5400RPM one in our test unit, but that shouldn't make a large difference. Both are relatively slow drives.

Perhaps the Nvidia Optimus technology that permits your notebook to switch between integrated and dedicated graphics on the fly didn't work properly. Or whatever power profile you had selected in Windows didn't allow the machine to perform any better. If you post the actual screenshot of your PCMark05 score, including the individual component scores, we can maybe see the issue.

-----

Regarding Turbo Boost - check this out, it's a Windows 7 desktop object that allows you to see the Turbo Boost technology working in real-time:
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?DwnldID=19105

Intel rates the i5-480M at 2/2. Turbo Boost (1.0) is calculated with 133MHz increments. The first number is the # of increments it can do with two cores active, the second with one core.

Max turbo boost frequency for the i5-480M specified by Intel is 2.933GHz ( Intel® Core? i5-480M Processor (3M Cache, 2.66 GHz)).

We can calculate it out to verify using the 2/2 rating and the 133MHz increments:
2666MHz base frequency + (133MHz*2) = 2933MHz

The i5-4xx M series processors don't have as high of Turbo Boost as the i5-5xx M processors. E.g. a CPU like the i5-560M is rated for 2/4.

 

Yup the shiny plastic bezel surrounding their screen is a major let-down. It gets scratched quite easily.

 

Hi everyone,

I am going to buy U31SD and these are some of the main characteristics of the model we have in Bulgaria:

Processor: Intel Core i3-2310M (2.1 GHz, 3MB L3 Cache)
Video: nVidia GeForce GT 520M - 1 GB DDR3
RAM: 4 GB DDR3 1333 MHz
HDD: 500 GB SATA 7200 rpm

the price is about 950$ and I am not sure if it is nearly the best I can buy for that price.
any advice and/or opinion would be welcomed

 

Welcome. What computer stores do you have? The price may not be expensive in your country. In the US, $950 is too much for that.

Maybe complete this form and post it in the "What Should I Buy" forum:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...ould-i-buy-form-must-read-before-posting.html

 

there is only one company in Buglaria that imports ASUS notebooks and it is called "Most Computers"; I am going to the England in two weeks and will stay there for a few years - I am not sure if it is a better idea to buy a laptop there. I checked some of their online stores and the prices were even higher, may be I did not look in the right place.

Thank you for the link, it will be useful when I make up my mind