Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsA thin and powerful notebook with a few fixable shortcomings
Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2018
Build:
Solid construction. Touchpad is great, gestures are smooth and click distance + sound is perfect to me. The fingerprint reader however is completely useless and takes away from the aesthetics in my opinion. Overall I'd say this laptop feels more premium to touch rather than it does in the looks department. I actually prefer the light silver of the UA model to the gray of the UN.
One of my biggest concerns going in was the keyboard. The travel distance isn't too terrible at 1.4cm but no real tactile feedback made for a mediocre impression when I tested it at Micro Center. After a couple hours though I started to get a feel for it and after a day I was flying on it. Still far from the best but you expect to sacrifice a little with a thin 2 in 1.
As far as speakers I’d say they’re about average. The fact they’re bottom firing isn’t helping things but after reading some complaints I was surprised they sound as good as they do. They’re a little tinny (as almost all thin laptops are) but they’re still surprisingly rich. Just fine if you’re by yourself but probably not ideal for presentation. You can fiddle with Audio Wizard to make them louder than stock as well.
Display:
Overall the display is sharp with good color accuracy albeit a touch on the dim side. I found 100% brightness to be about the perfect mix between vibrancy and comfort, but I'd like to be able to crank it up past that if I were to go outside or work in a very bright room.
I had read about PWM flicker on the device but didn't really pay it any mind - but sure enough after the first couple hours I noticed my eyes felt much more tired than usual. I fixed this with an app called Iris which allowed me to dim the display while keeping the system brightness at 100% (no flicker at 100)
Battery:
I haven't gotten a chance to test the battery much so far. First run through I got about 3 hours but we're talking constant installations, copying large files, running video in the background and even some light gaming sprinkled in. After 20% I actually took measures to preserve battery life and milked the last bit for nearly an hour and a half. I'd say you can expect 3-4 hours for heavy tasks and 6-8 for a light workload with some adjustments. I’ve seen this advertised anywhere from 8-14 hours so bear in mind, for most users this is going to be unrealistic.
Gaming:
I'm not a hardcore gamer but I did buy this looking for something the could handle occassional light gaming.
I’ve ran 3 games (updated): Resident Evil 7, Fallout 4 and Farcry 5. The performance varies at the default 1920 x 1080 but after knocking some down a couple resolutions they were all playable with no big hit to the graphics. Even with this I noticed some sharp frame rate drops after it starts heating up a bit but I installed the Asus gamertweak which reduced the throttling and allowed for smoother gameplay. Results: Fallout 4: 1600x900, High Textures, Low Shadows,Low Distance - 45fps. Resident Evil: 1920x1080, Medium settings, 45-60fps (drops in some areas), Farcry 4: 1600x900, Medium textures, Medium vegetation, Low everything else, 45fps
If you're looking to push your settings further, check out the youtube video by exklim tech news (who actually shows up in the comments on this listing) for an excellent, detailed walkthrough on how to push your performance. But coming from someone who’s only ever been able to laptop-game on integrated graphics? I was really impressed for something so thin and light.
Pen:
The pen was actually a pleasant surprise for me but take it with a grain of salt because I have nothing to compare it to. I have read reviews saying it is average compared to the likes of the Surface pen or the Lenovo 920, but I experienced no issues in my testing and found it surprisingly natural and responsive. I was more interested in it for the novelty/tech side of it but I can definitely see myself using it for highlighting and notetaking when going over large pdfs and documents for work.
I was annoyed by the fact that there was absolutely ZERO explanation or instructions for set up. Now it turned out to be easy enough - unscrew it, pull the battery tab out, put back together - but still could’ve used some direction.
Quirks:
One thing that was odd for me was that the screen wouldn't rotate by itself. I couldn't even change the option for rotation lock as it was grayed out in settings. I actually had to go in and edit the registry just to get it working. A weird quirk for sure but I dunno if it’s the computer or just Windows being Windows.
No single-press keys for brightness, volume. You have to hold FN key for all commands and no option to customize it which is a shame. Some might be used to this but I find it annoying. If you’re in the dark looking to turn on the keyboard backlight you’ll be struggling to find the right buttons.
At 10%, when all the power saving modes started kicking it I noticed the computer slowed down to a frustrating degree, even getting some input lag when typing. I imagine this can be tweaked with some settings but was still a little jarring from a new computer.
Overall like any purchase do your own research first and see if it addresses all your needs. I had played with this model beforehand and even though there were some things that made me think twice, after a few days now I feel most of those concerns have been alleviated. I think a lot of the pain points others have addressed in their reviews can be fixed with a couple tweaks.
I’d give the laptop itself a 4/5 and rate my satisfaction as a 5/5.
