Amazon.com: Customer reviews: ASUS ZenBook 13 Ultra-Slim Laptop 13.3" FHD Display, Intel 8th gen Core i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, 256GB M.2 SSD, Win10, Backlit KB, FP, Icicle Gold, UX331UA-AS51

Reviewed in the United States on November 7, 2018

Style: Core i7 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

This is a bargain laptop. The core I7 8550U Kaby-Lake processor is the same one you'll find in most high-end laptops these days, and better that the Y processors in the new macbook air. It has a generous number of connections; full size HDMI, USB 3, Usb2.1 and USB-C (3.1 specs), along with a Micro-SD slot and a 3.5mm headphone /microphone jack. The screen is a non-touch 1080P and a backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader. All in a 2.6 lb (by my scale) aluminum package. I have read some criticism of the keyboard, but personally I find it as good as any laptop keyboard and have no complaints. But, I do not write novels or technical manuals for a living so my typing is pretty basic and your mileage may vary. The down-firing Harmon Kardon branded speakers are OK. But in my opinion, people who insist on blasting there speakers for sound either live alone or don't mind annoying people around them. I have always preferred headphones.

Needless to say, for a laptop that is almost $400 cheaper than its rivals, there are some compromises. The screen is only HD and not the current QHD on most higher-priced laptops. But seriously, it is a 13" screen. The text on 1080P is already tiny for my bifocal wearing eyes, how small would it be at 2560? That's not a deal breaker for me. The USB-C does not support power or display port. You still need the (standard ASUS) Power adapter to plug it in. There is only a 256GB SSD option and it is SATA-III. Finally it only comes with Win-10 Home, a Core I7 should have Pro. I did spend the money for a Pro upgrade.

All things considered, it is hard not to like this laptop. For a light weight easy to transport laptop it is excellent The I7 CPU provides plenty of power for almost any portable use. The machine powers up quickly and smoothly, the fingerprint reader works flawlessly (for me). For my use, I just could not justify paying an extra $350 - 400 for a similarly spec'd laptop. And I have had excellent experiences with Asus products. this laptop is an more than adequate replacement for my 6 year old desktop and laptop combo.

61 people found this helpful

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Ilyas Sharifi

One of the best for the price

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2018

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

In short this is one of the best laptops you can get for the price. I do want to mention that this is a ultra book and it's meant for productivity. Things like school work. Don't complain saying it sucks when I play games. Look for a gaming laptop that weights 250 pounds. Makes me disappointed when I see people give something 1 star just because they don't know the purpose of something.
This is my first impressions only but as time goes on I will update

Unboxing (5/5)
It was hard to get out of the box because how tight it was packed which is a good thing because if it gets knocked around during shipping it doesn't have anywhere to go.

Build Quality/Feel (4/5)
It doesn't feel as premium as I thought it would but it does still feel amazing. It's seems very slippery and easy to drop so be careful when handling it. If you don't smash the thing you should be fine for years to come.

Audio (3.5/5)
This in my opinion is the worst part of the laptop. It's still better than most but I was expecting a little more. When it comes to ultra books you can't expect to much esspecially at this price point.

Screen (4/5)
It has a very bright screen and very accurate colors. However there is some shine to it which is why I took off a point

Battery (5/5)
This will beat most if not all laptops out there. Around 10 hours battery life and as I do heavier work on it I should get around 7 which is hours better than most.

Keyboard (5/5)
It took a few hours to get used to it however once I did it was amazing. The keys are far apart from each other which is wierd when switching from my desktop keyboard to the laptop. The keys are tactile. I also like key travel when change this has. Note that keyboards are preference based.

Trackpad (5)
I heard some bad things about the trackpad but It seems amazing to me. Maybe time will tell as it's only my first impressions. One gripe I did have with it is the clicks are loud but not something I would take off a point for.

Overall it's a 5 stars because if you do look at it separately you will find problems but as a whole it's a beast.

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Bob

Flickering display problems

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2018

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

As several other review-writers have noted, this laptop computer has a problem with the display flickering. As with others, I noticed the problem when watching Netflix videos that stream at 1080p (you have to watch in Edge or using the Netflix app; in Chrome and Firefox, Netflix streams at only 720p).

I believe that the cause of this is that the computer generates electrical interference of some sort at 60hz, which is what the display is set at by default. But because it also comes with a video setting enabled called "Panel Self-Refresh" which causes the video card NOT to send a refresh every 1/60 of a second in order to conserve battery power, by default the display isn't actually running at 60hz despite it being set at that refresh rate.

Watching a 1080p movie on Netflix kicks the display into a frequency that causes the flickering to become apparent.

To make the problem go away, turn off all battery-saving settings that have to do with video, especially "Panel Self-Refresh," and then set the display refresh rate to 48hz, and there will be no more flickering.

You can also make the flickering go away by connecting it to an external monitor with an HDMI cable. That acts as a ground for the video system and makes the flickering go away.

I give this laptop 1-star for what is either a design flaw or a common manufacturing defect. I recommend that you don't buy this.

7 people found this helpful

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AK

2 HUGE flaws!

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2018

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

The battery life is great! Maybe the most redeeming quality. I personally like the way the backlit keyboard feels (layout and key travel). Performance is also great with the 8th gen CPU and SSD. Boots up and off in less than 10 seconds. Very portable and sleek looking.

CONS:
There are TWO very big cons I have!!!
The screen has good specs for the price and it shows it. HOWEVER, the screen FLICKERS very often. Ive tried resetting the drivers and even deleted ALL foreign apps the laptop didn't come with. Still happens and it's only gotten more frequent.

The TOUCHPAD stutters and STOPS RESPONDING every 15-20 minutes. Using the laptop is very difficult with this flaw.

4 people found this helpful

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Mike Jin

Screen display is crooked, otherwise solid laptop

Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2018

Style: Core i7 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

I bought this ZenBook UX331UA-DS71 to replace my much-loved ZenBook UX330UA from late 2015, hoping for an upgraded version of the same laptop. Overall, there have been many improvements, but I'm returning it because the screen is noticeably crooked and uncentered relative to the edges of the display, and part of the screen actually goes off the display (see three attached photos). In the photo of the blue setup screen, the bottom right corner has a wide and angled offset from the screen edge, something that can't be seen at either of the top corners, where the blue goes all the way up to and beyond the screen edge. The slanted display orientation can be seen somewhat in the setup screen, but is much more noticeable with Microsoft Word (second picture), Chrome (third picture), or any application with context menus or tabs that extend to the top left corner of the screen, where they are clearly cut off by the edge of the display. The third picture also shows a screenshot of that screen pasted to MS Paint, where there is no slant.

Pros:
Great look and feel -- lightweight, and the icicle gold is actually more of a silver color with a slight golden tint that is barely noticeable
Great price for the hardware -- for a 256 GB SSD, latest Intel 8th gen quad core i7-8550U processor, and excellent battery life, this laptop is definitely a bargain, and unique in its niche price point/hardware combination compared to the Lenovo Yoga series, Dell XPS 13, Microsoft Surface series, and the latest MacBook Air. The computer boots in less than 10 seconds and runs very fast with this processor/SSD combination.
Several improvements over the ZenBook UX330UA: speakers are louder, trackpad is less noisy and "clacky", and the keyboard is now elevated above the laptop surface rather than in a slightly depressed section that easily accumulates dust and debris. It also appears to have fixed the issue of occasional random crashes when the UX330UA tries to sleep, an issue that caused me to return and replace the UX330UA three times through Amazon before accepting that this was probably just an issue for every computer of this model (though at this point I haven't used this UX331UA enough to say for sure that it's fixed).
Backlit keyboard and fingerprint reader are nice feature additions

Cons:
Display is crooked (see above). This is my main reason for returning this laptop.
The top of the laptop is a shiny material that attracts and retains smudges
Trackpad has some issues. At times it seems to have a lag before the cursor moves, and this doesn't seem to correlate with CPU load.
The laptop runs a little hot sometimes, even when I'm only doing medium-load tasks like editing graphics in Illustrator or doing spreadsheet work. With the UX330UA, I never felt much heat even when the fan was running at full speed.

Overall: great laptop with a few very minor issues that won't be dealbreakers for the average user; great value for a portable machine that will last all day!

4 people found this helpful

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Lloyd W

Slim, silent, low-heat, great battery & portability

Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2018

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

My priorities in searching for a laptop were as follows: good brand, low emission (meaning low heat and low noise), MATTE display (because the common glossy displays reflect way too much light), HD monitor, >8GB RAM and a Solid State Drive. I spent a lot of time reviewing newegg, bestbuy and amazon for top sellers, along with pcreviews and notebookcheck dot net (which does incredible detailed reviews showing how much heat and noise a laptop generates). I settled on this notebook and am very happy with what I got. The 2018 version is definitely worth the extra $50 over the 2017 version because the bezel (plastic border around the screen) is much smaller resulting in a laptop that is 10% smaller than the 2017 version while maintaining a 13" screen! The faint high pitched noise put out by the motherboard is only detectable in a silent room when you place your head within 12" of the keyboard. The battery life is stellar. Under load, the system hardly generates any heat and under light use (browsing/Word), I never hear the fan kick in. This 8th generation i5 is much more powerful than older i7 CPU's. It's incredibly thin. I was worried about the laptop looking 'gold' but it doesn't - it looks very silver with a faint hue. Very fast start-ups - I press the power button from hibernation and by the time I moved my finger to the fingerprint, I'm up and running within 2 seconds. Fully recommend.

30 people found this helpful

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Bonnie Brett

keep finding things to dislike

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2018

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

Overall, this is a fine machine with good battery life. It's quick, it's light, it would be great if it didn't have a TERRIBLE trackpad. For the price, there is no excuse to have a trackpad this inconsistently responsive. I use my laptop all day every day for my job and I can't tell you how infuriating it is to have the trackpad just suddenly stop working. Sometimes I will not be able to scroll, sometimes I just sit for 2 minutes til it finds the pointer again. I lose time every single day because of this. I tried the solutions I found online but nothing helps and unfortunately, I live in a country where an external mouse will be quite expensive to buy, if I can even find one. This laptop would have had 5 stars no problem if it weren't for this inconsistent, crappy trackpad. I'd return it if I could.

UPDATE: I keep finding more reasons to dislike this relatively expansive computer. The screen glitches often which can be quite a headache when working for long period of time. Often, programs won't work (e.g., Skype has a problem with the microphone, netflix reads as having too many windows open, steam won't launch at all) unless I restart entirely, which takes time and often messes with my work flow (I have a certain number of docs open that I'm working on simultaneously and have to save and close all of them to make a business call in which I then have to re-open all of them). The number of issues I continue to have with this computer is unacceptable given the price. I don't know, maybe I got a lemon, but I am very dissatisfied.

14 people found this helpful

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A. Gordon

A solid laptop for school

Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2019

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

I bought this laptop on the recommendation of the wirecutter. It has not disappointed, even though it has made compromises across the board to save money and weight. The screen is more than adequate for viewing indoors and a little outdoors with indirect light. The track pad was a little scattered at first, but once I disabled 3 and 4 finger gestures it has worked smoothly. The fingerprint reader works flawlessly. Battery life is around 6-7 hours with moderate use. The chassis is strong and feels very premium with metal edges and a glass finish to the track pad. In terms of gaming, I would not expect too much. I have installed steam and actually streamed the screen from my other machine. The computer gets hot fast, but could probably handle gaming on some lower settings. But that's not why you buy this machine. It's light, it's solid and for all day research and portability, this machine is fantastic.

One person found this helpful

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Celtic Gardener

Wish it hadn't had software issues right out of the box

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2019

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

Have been using for about a week. Within a couple of days, the laptop developed the flickering screen issue mentioned in several other reviews. I followed the ASUS customer support advice included in the 'comment' responses (reinstalling a couple of bits of software), and the problem appears resolved. However, unimpressive that this appears common in a brand new, not inexpensive, laptop. Otherwise, I mostly like it, and would echo other reviews:
- Superfast (though I haven't done anything challenging yet), lightweight and looks good.
- The cover definitely shows fingerprints already.
- The keyboard isn't backlit, contrary to the description. That was really disappointing. (EDIT: on checking through other reviews, discovered that function/f4 will turn on the backlighting. This does not appear anywhere in the laptop's control panel or in response to 'help' questions. I can't now work out how to turn it off again though!).
- The power button is a regular key at the top right of the keyboard next to the delete key. I haven't had a problem with hitting it by accident, but can see that might be an issue; it's certainly a design flaw.
- The touchpad is taking some getting used to. It may just be hypersensitive but I do sometimes end up in weird places, and accidentally wobble the entire screen horizontally, which is disorienting. Very occasionally it seems to lag or not work. I would have preferred some definition to the left and right click areas; they're not distinguished in any way from the rest of the touchpad.

In summary, jury's out. Will update when I've had it longer, but probably wouldn't buy it again.

2 people found this helpful

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Toolmaker

love it

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2019

Style: Core i5 | 8GB | 256GBVerified Purchase

While it isn't literally a feature of this model, I'm thrilled to death with the fast boot and fast load of programs. This is the way to go. Never get a computer with a hard drive again. Forget 1 T hard drives; pointless in these days of cloud storage and USB sticks with 128 Gb of storage costing under $20.

Haven't used the camera yet, and since I connect the laptop to a huge monitor and have wireless trackball and keyboard, don't use the fingerprint reader much, use a pin instead. But when I travel, the fingerprint reader worked just fine.

Again, it may be common, but pleasantly surprised at the size and weight of the 'brick.' Which is the term for the transformer, and they used to weigh 4-5 lbs all by themselves. This brand should be bragging about that, because it's slightly larger than an iPhone transformer. When you travel, it's the weight of the whole setup, not just the computer, that matters. Computers without hard drives are lighter, boot in about 6 seconds, load Word or Excel in 5 seconds, not 20 seconds or more like hard drive computers.

Because I love my trackball so much, I bring it along when I travel, so don't use the mousepad. In fact, if you type on the computer's keyboard, occasionally your wrist or a finger brushes the mousepad, making it do funny things like move the location of typing.
I can travel through the control panel to turn off the mousepad, but strangely that setting doesn't stick. The next time I turn on the computer, mousepad is live again. When I turn on the computer I leave it on all day, so we're talking taking 30 seconds once a day to turn it off when I'm working in a hotel or on the couch, but it would be a tiny bit nicer if one of the F keys turned the mousepad on and off while leaving trackball or mouse live.

That, however, is not a flaw of this computer, but of the whole laptop industry, which has standardized what F keys do.

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