Asus Zenbook UX31 running Ubuntu: first impressions
Last week, I finally gave in and bought a new laptop. I wanted something small and lightweight, yet reasonably powerful.
I discounted the MacBook Air on a couple of counts: the increased cost and the potential for extra hassle getting Ubuntu running.
My two choices were the Dell XPS 13 and the Asus Zenbook. The Dell was my first choice: Project Sputnik, the fact Mark has just got one and its size were all in its favour.
The Asus is a good looking machine and has had good reviews. Some dislike the keyboard, but it has been okay for me. However, the Dell feels like it has more momentum amongst the kind of people I work with and the people who make Ubuntu work well on laptops.
After much thought, and a few conversations, a couple of things pushed me away from the Dell: the trackpad isn’t yet well supported in anything other than Windows and it’s a touch more expensive than the Asus.
So, after a few days with the Asus, here’s a quick run-down:
- It really is very thin, lightweight and looks great.
- The keyboard is okay; not perfect but not terrible.
- The battery life under Ubuntu is mediocre; three or four hours under light usage.
- Wifi range is a joke; seriously poor.
- Despite being advertised as supporting 5GHz wifi, it sees only 2.4GHz networks.
- The trackpad does not switch off when typing; very frustrating in use and, also, I could probably have got the Dell.
- Sound quality is very good.
- The screen resolution is good and, for my purposes, colours and contrast appear to be good.
I’ll report back when I’ve started to tackle some of these issues.
I have one of those too. Did you see I updated https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/962798 just the other day? Good that it’s finally solved, helps with the battery life if you can suspend it.
A great Pro for the Asus is that you are not forced to buy windows like Dell is always doing for years.
a >60 $ saving for a windows licence that we never use.
For battery life I really had better result.
Hi!
I’m really interested! So please, keep us up to date about your progress
I’ve recently fired my laptop, and now I’m planning to buy this zenbook! But I’m a linux-user-only, so I cannot buy it if the battery life is only about 2-3 hours!
Thx again!
David
Good to see you’re mostly satisfied
The WiFi has mixed results with different people, but surely both the ath9k hardware and drivers are not optimal. I noticed the lack of 5GHz first time during UDS.
Regarding touchpad, since you have problems with it, I gather you have Sentelic touchpad, unlike my Zenbook which has Elantech which currently works just perfectly and with multi-touch. See https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook#Improved_support_for_Sentelic_touchpad_synaptics.2BAC8-multitouch for progress on better Sentelic support.
Battery life seems too short. I’ve 5-7 hours with light usage, but surely the screen at its brightest setting (when it’s 2x brighter than most of the competition) eats more battery. However, you may consider using the kernel paramaters + ALPM mentioned at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook#Power_Saving_Optimizations – I’ve those enabled.
Disable touchpad while typing: https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/ubuntu-help/mouse-disabletouchpad.html
That was the first thing I tried but it doesn’t have a noticeable effect. I need to look into it more closely as there’s likely something else going on.
Note that on Windows, the Zenbook’s trackpad does get disabled while typing.
FYI
There’s a new Zenbook, now called Zenbook Prime that will be available in June.
I has received excellent reviews and is said to fix all problems with key board, trackpad and more.
Hi guys, I just installed Ubuntu 12.04 in my zenbook ux31E (my old laptop was asking for some rest
and followed everything on the site https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AsusZenbook and everything works flawlessly so far.
Ok, I had the lucky to get an Elantek touchpad so things got a little easier but the other things I just followed the hints on the above site and I have my ultrabook up an running ok. In fact batery is not too longer as it should be… it lasts for about 5 hours.
Everything else is great, big touchpad with good sensibility, screen resolution/colours scheme, boots IMPRESSIVELY quickly and also ‘instant on’ (when waking from sleep mode) seems to work (not sure if it’s the instant on actually but I’m considering the fast response time – about 2s) very goo too.
For those who are thinking of buying one I strongly recommend, though I’d advice to try to get one with Elantek.
Bst Rgrds,
George.