Asus F9S User Review Discussion

The Asus F9S is an ultraportable laptop with a bit of a twist -- it has a fast 2.20GHz Core 2 Duo processor and dedicated Nvidia graphics, something you'd expect to see in a much larger sized laptop. Following is a user based review of this Asus laptop.

Read the full content of this Article: Asus F9S User Review

 

Nice review.
Oh wow i was surprised that it came with 8400 GS instead of the 8400 G as stated by Asus

 

Those look like 8400G scores to me.

 

One, the list there shows 3DMark06 scores, whereas the benchmark is actually 3DMark05, and two, the F9S does not have an 8400M GS, it has the G.

For the keyboard, its the same as the W7S keyboard. Its a pretty nice keyboard, but the keys on the right side are kinda squished. Its not much of problem though, you get used to it quite quickly.

Battery life: I'm averaging around 2.5 hours on balanced settings, though I can squeeze 3 if I really try to. The dedicated graphics really kill the battery life.

Memory: Once optimized, Vista runs just fine on a gig of ram, though I did upgrade to 1.5GB to make it run a bit smoother under some games (which maxed out the RAM).

Heat: Yep, it gets hot as hell. End of story.

Gaming: not that good....It plays Quake 3 just fine (duh?) but NFS pro street (demo) barely runs on it, even at lowest settings at 800x600. TrackMania Nations does fine though, and looks fantastic in the process. As long as you aren't doing anything too intensive, it should be fine.

Build quality: Thats why I went with the W7 over the F9 - the better build quality and quality of materials was far more important to me than the slight improvement in specs.

I'm looking forward to the Penryn processors to swap into this thing - hopefully it will help battery life and heat by a lot due to its smaller 45nm manufacturing process.

 

Thanks for this good review.

I would recommend that your get an extra 1GB or 2GB RAM. Operation will feel smoother. As for the battery life, I think what you are getting is slightly, but only slightly, on the low side for a T7500 + 8400M GS. I think they all fall short of 3 hours with a 6 cell battery.

For good battery time you need either a big battery and/or hardware which doesn't drain much power. A big car engine burns more fuel on idle than a small engine and notebook hardware has the same characteristic.

John

 

Thanks for the nice review Omni. I wish it would be a bit lighter and a little smaller, but it definitely does offer good performance for a 12" notebook.

 

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!
I'd like to point out some errors that was made.

1)The scores I sent were of 3DMark05, not 06, as stated in the screen shot. I didn't bother with testing it with 06, because of how low the 05 score was.
2)I wrote in my original review that it was the 8400m G, but it seems that the "G" was accidentally dropped when editing it. And the GFX card appears a second time, as "8400m GT". It's just the 8400m G @ 128MB.

To Vivek:
That's not Quake 3 (1999?)--its Quake 4(2005) which runs off of the Doom 3 engine.
And for those who are purchasing a notebook for gaming:
F9S won't give you the best results. It can barely run BioShock and Lost Planet, and Crysis is way out of the question. If you are an occasional gamer who'd play WoW, Age of Empires III, WarCraft III, or any game that was released 2005 and pre-2005, then the F9S may serve your right.
Just keep in mind: The F9S wasn't built for hardcore gaming, or gaming in general, for that matter.

 

Nice review Omni, too bad about the battery life though, you're right for an ultra-portable class notebook we would expect at least 3 hrs. Have you tried OCing the 8400?

 

Yes, I know that your SS was of Quake 4, I was just giving my gaming experience on a similar notebook thus far. I've not done quake 4, only 3, so thats why I said that.

And yes, completely agree - 8400M G is only good for games made prior to 2005.

 

I tried...I put it up to 530/530 (core and memory) but my system crashed. I then put it to 500/500, and ran Quake 4 with it. The system ran fine, but occasionally you'd see some black spots or "crackles" so I put it down to 450/450. At that state, its perfectly fine, and temperature isn't that bad, either. (at 500/500, the temperature ran between 64-69 degrees celsius)
And what can you do? You can almost never get everything you want out of laptop, or anything for that matter, without paying extra. THe battery life, although mediocre, doesn't bother me too much because I'm rarely without my charging cord or out there on batteries for more than 2 hours.

Oh, I apologize. I thought you were critiquing my review and misquoted something. But yeah, for an ultraportable, it's certainly not bad, and I'm sure you'll agree

 

I wasn't critiquing your review at all - its pretty good. I was just adding my thoughts, since the W7 and F9 are so similar

 

Those temperatures are exactly what I'm getting with that processor. Nice to have a dedicated option in a 12-incher. For its size, it's very powerful. The battery life is disappointing, though. How many wHR is the battery? I would've guessed you'd be able to get at least three hours with those settings. Maybe 10% brightness on it is just brighter than 10% brightness on most other laptops.

 

Edited that to 8400m G as it should be!

 

Great review.

 

Thanks, everyone!
Sometime during my winter break (mid December, or so) I will have a cooling pad as well as another stick of 1 GB RAM, to max out those specs. Once that happens, I will run the benchmarks again to show the improvement.
And I wanted to borrow a thermal camera from my friend to show heat distribution on this notebook, but unfortunately he's out of town .
I guess I'll just have the images for the next time I update this.

 

Great review.

 

For those who are penny pinchers, ASUS Has the F9dc which is exactly the same but with an a 120gb HD and AMD TL56 processor for $999

 

Very fair and balanced review omni. I though one thing should be added. the f9s 12" is not any smaller or lighter then w7s 13.3". I am still rendering the 2 min clip video of this and 3 other asus models which will be uploaded to my video section in the asus forum

 

Good review,Omni...very helpful
thanks

G2PLAY---will u post a link here?

 

Just let you know that only F9S doesn't have the XP driver "LISTED" in it section. HOWEVER, you can just use f9E,f9DC XP driver to get around. Those are the same architecture and in the same family (F9).

I was using Xp in my f9s for a week now and it's working fine with all functionalities.

Cheer.

 

Thats all fine and well, I suppose (I'm really not an AMD person), but the Turion X2 will be slower (but in daily use, it should be fine so no real problem there), have less battery life (sub 2 hours), and run even hotter. Making a really hot notebook even hotter, now theres an idea. Plus it doesn't have a VGA out - only HDMI. I guess though, if you only had a grand to work with it'd be a decent option, though I'd rather get something like a Lenovo V200 that has a better CPU and easily double the battery life, even if the graphics are worse.

 

The F9Dc does have a VGA port along with HDMI, in fact they are right next to each other. It does lack the fingerprint reader though.

 

Oh, interesting. I remember reading in the original product documentation that the F9S had SVid and VGA, whereas the F9Dc had only HDMI. I guess they made it VGA+HDMI on both models.

 

Wow!
Thanks a lot, vpnnm! I'l really look into that. I'll back up my files and try installing XP tomorrow or later.
Also, when you back up your system, does it back up everything from the bios to every single document that was on there?
Thanks!

 

I used Acronis to back up whole C drive (never use the Vista build in software).
So far so good....
PS: On XP, you can have rougly 2,5~2,9hrs for the battery. and the machine run a little bit cooler than when ran on vista....

 

Great Review! I love the looks and size of the F9S. But the crappy battery life kills it for me.

I mean why have a portable 12" when it has bad battery life, and you can't use it on battery for very long? My Vostro gets around 6hrs max. Usually ~3 while gaming.

Bottom line: Asus REALLY needs to step it up when it comes to battery life! Or at least make all their notebooks have a modular bay and throw in a battery.

 

The Vostros are getting awesome battery life. On extreme power saver, I used to be able to get a good 5.5 hours or so out of mine. Asus has probably the worst average battery life of all of the notebook manufacturers. I plan to get a 9 cell for my W7s, hopefully that will improve life to at least 4.5 hours.

 

great review!

 

I believe that the battery life for the F9S and the W7S are similar. Please let me know how much of an improvement it is and how many hours you get with the 9-cell.

And thanks to everyone for giving me a feedback on my review!

 

Nice review.

I'm quite intrigued with the HDMI output of this F9S, sounds like a pulling point but would be interested to see how well the 8400M G can pull those high resolutions on an HDTV.

There's a lot in similar between the W7S and F9S especially when you mention the heat, keyboard and battery life issues. But it's interesting how you mention the good quality speakers of the F9 when I found that in the W7 they can pump some volume out but and was audible but that was it. Maybe I'm too use to my subwoofer

At least the F9 doesn't come with stickers all over the palm rest.

 

oh, the F9 came with all sorts of stickers, telling me everything that I didn't all ready know (the system specs). I ended up getting rid of those as soon as I opened the box, because if you leave them there, the stickers will wear down and eventually make the palm area look a bit dirty. Today I just received my stick of 1GB ram, and I've maxed out the RAM on this notebook to 2 GBs. I'll post benchmarks as soon as I get some time next weekend.

 

I'm not sure from you guys saying... but I have try this F9s was running smooth on playing game like Half Life 2 prostreet nfs was running great for me without tweak any of it? mine 2.0g,ram 2g, 128m.. smoooooooth..

 

Interesting, since in my experience, the 8400GS (dv6500) doesn't do much better (not close to the X1600 in my iMac, anyways), and the Go7400 (dv6000) does a fair bit worse than my W7s in Pro Street. I tell you, those HPs are taking over....almost all of my friends have some flavor of dv6....

 

my notebook dealer says that he can upgrade it to 3 GBS , but i have to wait till march to get mine , but its not because i have to wait for it to get in stock (if i buy it i get in store right there at same time ) but my dad can't get it yet since, while he can't

 

hye guys,

I got the F9s yesterday from Saturn in Neuss (Düsseldorf). It seems to work fine except for the battery life which lasts for just 2.5 hours as per your expert reviews. I got it for 1147 eur after a 50 Eur rebate since the stores did not have an extra piece other than the one in the showcase.

I also got 130 EUR tax free and i sold my old acer 4710 for 500 EUR. This means i had to shell out 500 bucks extra for the new laptop. So far so good. Let us see how the system performs.

Any new owners of this laptop?

 

well, since u have the f9s what does the LCD/CRT/TV display switch hotkey do?

 

Has anyone tried reseating the processor with some Arctic Silver 5 to see if it brings the heat down any? I saw this laptop in a store and really liked it, but I wont' buy anything that produces that much heat.

 

I was thinking of using the Arctic Silver 5 compound, however I was told by my notebook dealer that lifting the CPU and doing anything to it will void my 1 year warranty. And plus, I was told that AS5 doesn't make much of a difference.


The LCD/CRT/TV switch hotkey just allows you to choose where to output the display if you have other output devices connected to your laptop, I believe.