ASUS UL80Vt-A1 Review

I understand all of your points. Realize that I am more sensitive to build quality and keyboards than other reviewers. Most of the ~40 laptops I have reviewed over the past five years have been 17" gaming notebooks. Those typically exhibit higher build quality standards than other notebooks. When you test 40-50 machines that more or less exhibit the same 'lower bound' of quality, with none being noticeably worse or better than another with the exception of the few 'excellent' machines, one that is noticeably below average (UL80Vt) is going to stand out and cause you to review it in a different way.

Read the review and interpret it as you wish. I have sufficiently defended the review, and in response to any of the recent comments, please go read pages 1-5 for my responses. Thank you.

 

to some degrre I agree with you, build is EXTREMELY important. if you pick up a laptop and its nearly sagging it doesn't matter what else the computer has in it, it's still sagging.

a laptop is kinda like a hamburger. you can have the best meat, cheese and pickles in the world, but if the bun is soggy it's still gross.

in terms of gaming I couldn't care less, I haven't any idea why anyone would want to play games on a 14inch screen.

 

You would want to play games on a 14 inch screen if you travel a lot and want to conserve power while getting past a boring flight/car ride. Its kind of tough for me to open up a 17 inch screen on an airplane.

 

I gotten be honest. After reading Charles' review over the weekend, I had pretty much given up on the UL80VT and had contemplated just sending it back without opening it. Plus, I had gotten the dm3z in earlier yesterday and was really impressed by its looks (though frustrated by a poor track pad). In the end, I decided to go ahead and open my UL80VT anyway, and shazam! It blew my socks off... so there I was, standing sockless in my room... lol

I'm not trying to make the Asus look like a perfect computer its not, but at its price point/performance, it's certainly is a great one.

Of course I'm a fanboy! It's a great laptop... and no, I'm not an Asus employee, and this is the first Asus laptop I've ever owned (I owned the netbook Asus 1000HE for about two weeks when if first came out, which I liked but didn't want to keep because it had to small a keyboard for long periods of typing).

I have actually owned about 12 laptops in the last year and half (sadly, I hope I have finally found the one I can keep for a little while...), and about 9/12 of those laptops have been HP, because I love their keyboards and the looks of their computers. HP is generally the brand I recommend to people, but now this Asus laptop will definitely get my recommendation.

 

I can't wait to put my own spin on this messy debate when I get my UL50Vt-A1.

The big question is replace the 500gb hard drive with a SSD and use the 500gb as a sff external hd, or just keep the 500gb and save my money instead of splurging for the SSD...

 

Quadron - I had a similar reaction to Charles' review - I was close to canceling my order as well. I'll be looking forward to seeing if Charles made a mountain out of a molehill or, instead, was the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

 

Charles is not the only person that has mentioned the problems with the touchpad, key noises, and build quality.

I do doubt that the people that have a problem are more discerning than the others that see no problem with the build quality. I think it is inconsistencies in production.

Someone did comment on my post and this is what I was referring to:

"The Nvidia GeForce G210M is a mainstream graphics card and unable to play newer games like Crysis well."

1. Unable to play newer games like Crysis - which games are these newer games?

2. Well is relative. If you can play Crysis at native resolution at medium settings and get 25 to 30 FPS some people may consider that well.

I really wanted the backlit keyboard and that is the only thing that is really bugging me. If the construction is questionable I will just have to care it better Flex is only an issue to me if I want to slap someone with my notebook. Wanted style.

 

Charles mentioned an Amazon promotion ($100 gift card) on the UL80vt and someone above said he paid $720 for it on Amazon.

I have been visiting Amazon many times a day and the only price I see is $823 - no gift card or promotion.

Where do you guys see the Amazon discount (or $100 gift card)?

Thanks!

 

Is there a difference between the UL80vt and UL50VT keyboard? I mean qualitywise not the fact that the 50vt has a numpad.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000444911

 

I have been aiming this laptop UL80V for months. Switchable graphics, Turbo 33 and 10 hours battery life! Finally I got a chance to take a look at it during an Asus Roadshow. I was so disappointed with the build quality and what Charles said about the keyboard flex is true. Another disappointed is the LCD screen which lacks contrast. I went to the nearby Sony Style and the CW screen is way much better. The build quality of CW is superb despite using plastics. I'm now considering either Sony CW or Asus U80V-B1.

 

My cousin just got one, and he said he put some different drivers he got off the net and that made the trackpad more usable.

 

I just got mine - I noticed a small amount of flex in the keyboard on the left side, but only because Charles had drawn my attention to it; it does have a "cheap" look on that aspect, but not really a big deal. My biggest gripe with the computer is that I don't like the CD-ROM drive - its tough to access and feels like it could easily break. But, that said, the computer so far has really impressed me and I don't feel like sending it back now. I'll write more maybe later, especially after I have had a chance to test it playing CIV4

 

Update: In some ways, I now agree with Charles about build quality. Build quality had not been an issue for me until yesterday morning when I was typing. I noticed that when I pressed down on the front edge of the left palm rest it squeaked annoyingly (it hadn't done this until then). I began squeezing the front edge and noticed that top part of the chassis isn't cemented to the bottom part of the chassis very well so that when you put pressure on it (such as when you rest your palm on it) it made a noise. I tried placing about an inch long piece of scotch tape across the part that was sqeaking, and the squeaking went away completely. It was disappointing to find this because it was the first issue with the build quality. Also, I now understand what Charles meant when he said that when he pressed in the center of the laptop it causes the bottom of the laptop to touch the surface it is resting on... it's not if you press in the middle of the keyboard like I had thought you had said for some reason, lol (my bad!! )... it's if you press on the trackpad buttons (like Charles had really said), he was right that you can feel the laptop touch the surface it is resting on, but the thing Charles was wrong about is that it isn't the bottom of the laptop touching the surface below it... it's a little "support peg/foot" that protrudes from the bottom of the laptop about 1/10" of an inch. The overall chassis does flex a tad, but it is just the peg touching, and the peg is maybe moving 1/16" of an inch tops (probably less). So yes, the chassis does flex just a hair, but not as bad as the review makes it sound (I think the review should be updated with this information personally).

I am thinking about putting a drop of super glue on the edge of the left palm rest to keep it from squeaking. I'm pretty sure it would work without a hitch unless you put too much glue and then tried to take the casing apart and wasn't able to. I figure it wouldn't void the 1 year accidental warranty but maybe the 2 year standard warranty if they figured out what I did. I'm not sure though...

Overall, I'm still impressed with laptop and can definitely still recommend it to friends who can't afford a 15" MBP. I can also verify that it does live up to its 10 hour battery life claim.

 

Yup, as stated before, spot on review Chaz. You did what other reviewers failed to do.

You win a (Sorry I took a bite...)

 

My favorite

As I noted, I'm used to a different type of notebook so the UL80Vt was a change for me. All of the issues I noted exist except they will be more accentuated in my review vs. others. Take it for what it's worth. Despite my rating of the UL80Vt I enjoyed using it. If I owned it I would have removed the keyboard and put double-sided tape under it, that would improve the typing experience.

 

I was wondering whether to go with this laptop (UL80) : http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220602
or the ASUS K61IC-X1 http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220637

I dont know why newegg posts that the UL80 has 3 year warranty and the K61 only has 1 year? is it a type?

so anyways which do you think i should get?

 

Those are two very different notebooks . . . the UL80 is much more portable and will get far better battery life, however the K60 will have much better overall performance. I suggest you go to the What Should I Buy forum and complete the FAQ.

The UL80Vt-A1 I reviewed had a two-year warranty with one-year accidental coverage.

 

thanks for your response, i should post a new thread with the questions.
but by any chance, do you know the warranty on the K61, or do all laptops from ASUS have standard 2 year manufacturer warranty (Excluding it's netbook line of course)

 

The Kseries and the bestbuy models only have 1 year standard warranty

 

its such a shame to see a small laptop with good performance and battery life marred by not paying attention to the finer details

asus really needs to step their game up

 

So, there is no such thing as the perfect laptop still? Such a bad thing...
This had so much potential...

 

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/11/asus-ul80vt-review/

Just saying. I think it does still have so much potential, if you get one of the well-built ones. The UL80Vt thread seems to show that build quality on these is pretty variable, so I guess its a luck-of-the-draw type of thing.

 

There is a different model worth a look if you are not feeling quite sure, the Lenovo U450p with SU7300 and ATI 4330HD.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...-category-id=9BE5D2F69135469E87802302A7A501F0

 

I apologize in advance for 'cross posting' - but i think its owed to warn prospective buyers of this laptop that you CANNOT upgrade the graphics drivers! http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5564728

hate to see anyone use their hard earned mula on something that doesn't meet their expectations :cry:

 

To be fair, you don't know if you cannot upgrade the graphics drivers YET. They may be releasing new drivers.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5565715&postcount=461

 

can you please tell me which drivers? i've tried every available notebook driver set and even the regular driver set with a modded inf and none of them have worked! any special steps you had to do??

asus MIGHT release an updated driver set sometime.... but i realllly doubt they'll be keeping up with nvidia and updating the notebooks download page with the latest available drivers all the time - i've never seen ANY manufacturer do this!

 

First, be sure you are running on your G210M. Download the latest drivers for Geforce 200M series. Worked fine for me.

What kind of problems are you experiencing?

 

I set the graphics to the 210M

then I downloaded and ran the latest available driver: http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook_winvista_win7_x64_195.62_whql.html

and after the installation is complete and the system is restarted the highest available resolution will be 1024x768, the NVIDIA control panel is not accesible, and the switchable graphics button application that is normally in the tray isn't there

the Intel graphics will display a error code 31 in the device manager

which drivers are you using? how did you manage to get it to work?

 

So what is Asus's typical revision timeline on their laptops? The UL80VT came out this past fall correct? I think there are some few noted needed improvements across all the laptop forums that offer some insight to what would make this laptop soar. Just curious how often Asus updates their model line, maybe it's worth waiting.

 

You can get the UL80VT with a 500gb HD a well.

 

is the ul50vt better than the k61Ic?