ASUS UL80Vt First Look: Mobility Redefined
by Jarred Walton on October 24, 2009 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
ASUS UL80Vt Benchmarked - Battery and LCD
Finally, we have perhaps the most interesting aspect of the UL80Vt. Decent performance and a reasonable size are nice, but there are plenty of laptops to offer those amenities. What truly sets the UL80Vt apart from most other Windows-based laptops is the battery life. ASUS claims "up to 12 hours", and we decided to check their claim.
Idle battery life reached nearly 13 hours… and that's what Turbo mode (overclocking) enabled. Granted, the system was sitting idle -- hardly a realistic usage scenario for most users. However, light office use isn't going to be much more taxing than our idle battery life test, and if you decide to disable Turbo mode battery life can only improve. In the far more pertinent Internet battery life, ASUS still achieves record-setting performance. Our initial test (we haven't had time for multiple test runs) came just shy of nine hours of continuous Web surfing. That's with several flash ads on be active website page, which again should be a bit more taxing than what many users view.
Looking at battery capacity and relative battery life, we finally have a true laptop that can actually trade blows with Apple's MacBook line. We never have been able to determine exactly what Apple does in order to achieve their high battery life, but clearly part of it has to be using lower voltage CPUs. ASUS follow suit by using the Core 2 Duo SU7300, which actually surpasses Apple by going with a 10W TDP CPU. Apple currently uses the 25W TDP SP9300, while some previous models used the 17W Core 2 Duo SL9000 series.
Even overclocked the SU7300 practically sips power in comparison to many other CPUs. We measured average power use of 9.5W for the UL80Vt in our internet test compared to 21.1W for the Gateway NV52 and 15.6W for the Gateway NV58. 10.1" and 11.6" netbooks only get down to 8.0-8.5W in the same test, and performance is obviously substantially higher with Core 2 Duo. What's truly impressive is that laptops like the UL80Vt previously sold for nearly $2000 -- sometimes more. With the boom in netbooks sales, manufacturers have apparently realized there's a real market for smaller laptops that get extremely good battery life.
About the only fly in the ointment with the UL80Vt is the LCD panel. Here you can see our contrast ratio test results, and the results are down in the dumps with many other laptops. Sometimes I feel like a lone voice crying in the wilderness telling manufacturers that laptop LCD quality is a serious concern. I know from responses to previous articles that many of you agree, but unfortunately it's something that's difficult to quantify because many reviews don't ever look at LCD quality with quantitative results. ASUS has used very nice LCD panels on lesser offerings (i.e. the Eee 1005HA has an excellent LCD), and we have seen decent displays on other laptops and notebooks as well. If the system cost $25-$50 more but it had a 1000:1 contrast ratio (with an LCD that could still run at 250 nits), I wouldn't hesitate to give the UL80Vt an unequivocal recommendation. As it stands, it's a great laptop but it isn't quite perfect.
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7Enigma - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
I'll do it for you. Using an old review from April09 where they posted the min/WHr:MacBook2008 got a 6.36
Asus gets a 6.32 (531min / 84 WHr)
It is important however to note if the testing methodology (ie websites used/etc.) have changed significantly since the 2008 Macbook review and if so in which direction (my guess would be more draining now).
If they are directly (or closely) comparible then you have to factor in weight difference and price, and of course CPU/GPU performance differences. Since the price is $150 cheaper, the weight difference IMO would have to be significantly lighter for the MacBook to justify (build-quality, OS, intangibles aside).
JarredWalton - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
All I know for certain is that the old results had Apple at 6.36 (as mentioned), but the tests are not the same as the ones I used for the Windows laptops. Anand has the new Internet tests I'm using (I ran them on Linux, so they should run fine on OS X), so when he's had a chance to run numbers we can make the comparison. The UL80Vt is twice the relative battery life of most Windows laptops, and over three times the relative battery life of higher-spec units. I can't say for certain whether it has matched or surpassed the latest MacBook, but it should be very close if not better.Pirks - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
"32% in DivX encoding, and xxx% in CINEBENCH R10"xxx%? Really?! Are you hiding something from us Jarred? ;)))
JarredWalton - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
LOL... sorry, I was still running tests at the time and obviously missed that. It's 12% BTW; text updated.mczak - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
I'm wondering why asus uses a overclocked ULV chip. Presumably they increase voltage a bit when overclocked to guarantee stable operation right? So in this case power should be very similar to LV chips (+30% for higher clock plus something additional for more voltage - ULV chips are 10W, LV 17W). So why not get a non-overclocked LV chip like the SL9600 in the first place? 2.133Ghz, 6MB cache, should cost about the same as the SU7300.JarredWalton - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
CPU-Z reports the voltage as 0.875V -- at the overclocked 1.73GHz setting. The ULV parts are essentially CPUs that work well with very low voltages, and they usually have better overclocking headroom. Anyway, it appears that even overclocked, the SU7300 isn't consuming more than perhaps 12-13W. (I'll have to do more testing to verify that figure for the full review.) When you have a laptop that uses 9.5W on average for Internet surfing, an extra 3W is a big deal.mczak - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Those 0.875V are presumably at idle? Would be way below published VID range under load (hopefully cpu-z reports this correctly even for mobile cpus).I just doubt a ULV chip is really any better if you overclock it to the level of a LV chip. Unless you're courageous and don't overvolt it to the same level, though you could just undervolt a LV chip instead...
In any case, I'd be very interested in the voltage adjustments (if any) under idle/load for OC/-nonOC setting - of course those chips have a VID range and hence could vary by chip but in practice they don't vary that much and the asus overclocking would presumably add a fixed voltage increase (if any).
mschira - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
Amazing, the most interesting new laptops at the moment are all cheap ones.Like the acer Timelines, the Asus"WTF have they been thinking with that name", the Dell Studio 14z etc.
They are all very nice, but they have compromises to keep em cheap. Not too bad compromises, but still.
Why doesn't Asus make a Lambougini version of this little nice buddy? Ditch the CD drive - who needs those - give us a nice screen, give us an expensive light, great case.
I'll happily pay the premium - it's not going to be that much anyway.
M.
KikassAssassin - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
Wow, with the exception of the screen, this thing is almost exactly what I've been looking for in a laptop. I've been really disappointed in the seeming non-existence of an affordable, highly-portable laptop with a dual-core ULV processor, non-Intel graphics, and a high-Wh battery. Put a high-quality display with a matte overlay (WhyTF is almost every laptop using freaking glossy nowadays?), and a toggle-able back-lit keyboard on this thing, and it would be my perfect laptop to a T.I also really like the idea of the ability to toggle between low-power integrated graphics and higher-performing discreet graphics, and I wish more laptops would include this feature. I have a feeling nVidia's going to be pushing hard for this once Arrandale comes out.
hybrid2d4x4 - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
One request for the game testing section: add an older title s/a Half-life 2 in addition to the usual new new games. I'm more interested in what it can run than the obvious "well, there you have it- it won't run the latest titles, get a desktop for that".Looking forward to the review!!