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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gohilurvish - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
I like the article and also the battery life figure by particular Asus model but I dont agree to compare it with MacBook (I am not Apple fan-boy).From what I know is, all 9400M based MacBook/pro has C2D Penryn processors and with <55WHr battery it provides 6-7Hrs of battery life with wireless productivity.
If these lineup moves to ULV processor and 80+WHr I am sure it can deliver 15+hrs or battery life.
I think its OS and other hardware that helps giving longer battery life for MacBook.
For winodows PC, this is my choice now (obviously not for computational heavy work).
fk49 - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
This is a great first look and much more in depth than most of the previews that come out. I did notice that the main CPU comparison was with the P8600 of the 14z which is definitely meant for a higher price point. For the full review, could you include benchmarks comparing the SU7300 to more CPUs? Especially in the gaming benchmarks, as the G210m will definitively beat the integrated solutions available but what's not clear is how CPU-limited games might be when the UL80vt competes against laptops with dedicated GPUs. Thanks and again, great review!darwinosx - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
Since everything is compared to the Mac laptops that is obviously the gold standard. That should tell you something. For a minor amount more you get a dramatically better laptop build, screen, cpu, multi-touch trackpad, and of course OS. Not to mention support. Put one of these next to a MacBook at your local Fry's or wherever. The Mac Book walks all over it. Yes Windows 7 is decent. But I want a lot more than decent when it comes to my notebook or desktop computers. I make quite a good living as an IT Architect and I don't have time or interest in buying the lowest common denominator to save a little money.simas - Monday, October 26, 2009 - link
Mac Book /OSX = No games.and buying overpriced laptop label just to by Microsoft OS to be able to play a game is too wasteful. There isn't anything OSX delivers in the laptop that I can not get from Windows 7 so why pay the premium?
for Asus - they are close, dual core CPU, switchable graphics, 4+ GB of ram, decent CPU speed and good battery life. Get a better LCD and I would buy it.
Kelv00n - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
Quoting: "I make quite a good living as an IT Architect and I don't have time or interest in buying the lowest common denominator to save a little money."1) You're clearly an Apple fanboi; ergo anything not Apple is the lowest common denominator; ergo your comments add nothing to a proper evaluation of this machine and are therefore useless to other readers who are not facetious like you.
2) No one cares about how big your wallet (and what it compensates for) is, and as many commentators here have observed, this laptop fills a nice role for people like non-trust fund college kids who have to a) consider weight and performance since they have to lug the piece around, and b) work to pay their own way through college.
Asus has been making lots of right moves lately. They just need to ditch the glossy trend and work on their build quality. This laptop is hitting the sweet spot for the holy trinity of weight, performance and price. I'm going to wait for the next iteration, which hopefully will have a better LCD, but it looks like my new laptop will be ASUS-branded.
fk49 - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
Even so, comparisons to Mac performance is something some of us would like to see. The Macbook does cross the $1000 line and as a student, the price difference with the UL80 is meaningful. About half the kids at my school have Macs while Asus has a pretty niche market, so it would be interesting to see if an aggressively designed and priced product aimed at the tech-savvy can beat the mainstream "standard".Voo - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
Well I won't be using Mac OS X any time soon and I don't think many Apple fans would even consider it.So the interesting comparision would be a MacBook with Win7 against this one.
Voo - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
Argh.."and I don't think many Apple fans would even consider using this notebook."
MournSanity - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
If I may make a feature request for the full review...I heard that this laptop can also be overclocked from the BIOS. Can you look into this feature and tell us how/if it works in conjunction with the Turbo33 setting? Thanks.
MournSanity - Sunday, October 25, 2009 - link
I ask this because I recall seeing on a taiwanese review of this laptop a picture of it overclocked to something like 2133 mhz(8x266?). It would be very cool if this machine can be stably overclocked that high for when you want to do some heavy lifting.