ASUS UX21E 11.6-inch Ultrabook
Category : Notebooks / Tablets
Published by Marc Büchel on 04.11.11
As one of the first manufacturers, ASUS has launched their 11.6 inch ultrabooks. If you believe product descriptions and marketing departments this devices should feature a very nice design, a high quality display and a fast SSD from ADATA. Furthermore there are feautres like "Instant-On" that have to show what they're capable of. 
If you read about Ultrabooks these days, one brand stands on the very top: ASUS. As one of the first brand ASUS has just launched their brand new Ultrabooks. They promise that you get a very well built product with an anttractive design. As one of the first reviewing sites around the globe we got to give shot at their UX21E, 11 inch product. This one comes with a 120 Gigabyte SSD, four Gigabyte of memory and an Intel Core i5 CPU.
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Preview
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Specifications / Chassis
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2467M (1.6 GHz Standard, 2.3 GHz Turbo) |
| Graphics card | Intel HD Graphics |
| Chipset | Intel QS67 Express Chipset |
| Memory | DDR3 1333MHz, 4 Gigabyte |
| Display | 11.6'' TFT, Glare-Type, LED Backlight |
| Hard drive / Drive | 128 Gigabyte SATA-III SSD, ADATA with SandForce Controller |
| Video Camera | Webcam, 0.3 Megapixel |
| Keyboard | No backlight |
| Connectors | 1 x USB 3.0 1 x USB 2.0 Micro HDMI mini VGA Audio |
| Audio | Integrated, Bang & Olufsen |
| Battery | 4800 mAh |
| Dimensions | 299 x 196 x 17 mm (W x D x H) |
| Operating System | Windows 7 Home Premium |
| Weight | 1.1 kg |
Chassis / Design / Build quality
Already at a first glance one can see that with the UX21E, ASUS has a very high quality Ultrabook in its portfolio. The design is plain and simple and very pleasing. ASUS has understood how to combine aluminium and plastic in a clever way, that in the end, it generates an attractive and homogenous overall picture, whereas the chassis is made from aluminium and the keyboard from plastic. Furhtermore the case is also very stable and offers a high level of stiffness. A closer look at the displays hinge-joints reveals that they're made of aluminium too which guarantees a long lifespan. These connection pieces also prevent annoying lupping of the display. What makes Ultrabooks absolutely perfect to be carried around is there very low weight. The product only weighs 1.1 kilogram.
Simple and with a certain amount of understatement, that's how ASUS puts this notebooks expansion ports in place. Although we have to mention at this place, that the UX21E only comes with a minimum. There is one USB2.0 and a USB3.0 port. Next to these ports one can find a mini VGA as well as a micro HDMI connector.
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Display / Input Devices
Display
Also with the display ASUS has made a good choice. Although the UX21E is available for at "only" CHF 1'199 (EUR 999.-) the device comes with a very good TN panel, whereas we have to say that it would be brilliant if there were more of these panels also in standard desktop displays. With it's 499 candela per squaremeter brightness, ASUS is highly competitive. Also the the obtained black value of 1.2 is on a good level and it's the same for the contrast ratio of 345. If we look at the resolution of this display, 1366 x 768 pixel allow comfortable working on one's way. For an 11.6 inch display this is a reasonable resolution.
Input Devices
Even the input peripherals are good with the ASUS UX21E. The keyboard for example allows comfortable typing although the keydrop is very short. What might become a bit irritating over time, especially if you tend to have sweaty hands, is that the plastic keys aren't that grippy and nice to use anymore. On the other hand we like that there is a separate block with the arrow keys in the right hand corner of the keyboard.
Even the touchpad, which by the way is a multitouch touchpad, has been done very well. Till today we've only seen multitouch touchpads from Apple which really do the job well. All the other multitouch touchpads we've been using so far didn't do what you'd have expected them to do. Even two-finger-scrolling goes easily and intuitively without any effort. The only thing that might feel need a bit of time to get used to is the mouse acceleration, but this is a highly subjective point.
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Test setup
Regarding our notebook reviews we use a practical approach. To get a detailed impresson of the device the tester uses it to work with. In case of gaming notebooks it replaces the testers gaming PC during the time of the test. These methods allow us to provide detailed user experience to you.Regarding performance benchmarks - which are listed below - we don't go very deep. What we do, is that we use benchmarking software which over the years have established as standards for reviewing purposes. Furthermore the specific game benchmarks give insight to the playability of recent games.
Benchmarkprogramme
- Futuremark PCMark 7
- Total Score
- Video playback and transcoding / Video playback Score
- Video playback and transcoding / Video transcoding - downscaling Score
- System storage - gaming / System storage - gaming Score
- Graphics - DirectX 9 / Graphics - DirectX 9 Score
- Image manipulation / Image manipulation Score
- System storage - importing pictures / System storage - importing pictures Score
- Web browsing and decrypting / Web browsing Score
- Web browsing and decrypting / Data decrypting Score
- System storage - Windows Defender / System storage - Windows Defender Score
- Total Score
- Battery Eater
- Classic
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PCMark 7 - Video Playback / Downscaling / Transcoding / Storage
PCMark 7 is a benchmark suite which consists of 20 different workloads. The following results reflect the PCMark 7's standard selection, which provides a good insight regarding overall system performance. For a comfortable presentation we chose to split the results onto three different sites.| Futuremark PCMark 7 | Punkte |
| ASUS UX21E | 3'450 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 3'297 |
| MSI GT 780 | 3'805 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 3'720 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 3'074 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 3'015 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 2'966 |
| ASUS G74SX | 2'500 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 2'261 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 1'693 |
| Video playback and transcoding / Video playback | fps |
| ASUS UX21E | 23.17 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 23.08 |
| MSI GT 780 | 23.14 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 23.13 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 23.12 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 23.11 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 23.10 |
| ASUS G74SX | 23.04 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 23.01 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 22.62 |
| Video playback and transcoding / Video transcoding - downscaling | KByte/s |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 16'353 |
| ASUS UX21E | 15'227 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 5'285 |
| ASUS G74SX | 5'251 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 4'948 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 4'912 |
| MSI GT 780 | 4'905 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 4'923 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 4'870 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 2'472 |
| System storage - gaming / System storage - gaming | MByte/s |
| ASUS UX21E | 16.51 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 12.56 |
| MSI GT 780 | 14.40 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 13.83 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 7.93 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 7.21 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 7.09 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 4.46 |
| ASUS G74SX | 4.34 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 3.23 |
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DirectX 9 / Image Manipulation / Importing Pictures
| Graphics - DirectX 9 / Graphics - DirectX 9 | fps |
| MSI GT 780 | 50.55 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 50.37 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 49.74 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 47.51 |
| ASUS G74SX | 48.96 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 32.92 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 30.67 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 16.51 |
| ASUS UX21E | 14.00 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 12.61 |
| Image manipulation / Image manipulation | Mpx/s |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 9.13 |
| MSI GT 780 | 9.04 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 8.88 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 8.86 |
| ASUS G74SX | 8.80 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 8.72 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 8.72 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 8.66 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 8.19 |
| ASUS UX21E | 6.63 |
| System storage - importing pictures / System storage - importing pictures | MByte/s |
| ASUS UX21E | 29.39 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 10.50 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 23.94 |
| MSI GT 780 | 21.06 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 11.08 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 9.75 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 9.55 |
| ASUS G74SX | 6.30 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 5.96 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 4.74 |
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Web browsing / Data decryption / Windows Defender
| Web browsing and decrypting / Web browsing | Pages/s |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 14.82 |
| MSI GT 780 | 14.08 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 13.36 |
| ASUS G74SX | 10.66 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 10.63 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 10.26 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 10.21 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 9.8 |
| ASUS UX21E | 7.94 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 7.3 |
| Web browsing and decrypting / Data decryption | MByte/s |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 59.06 |
| ASUS G74SX | 55.94 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 54.14 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 48.14 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 47.63 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 47.22 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 47.20 |
| MSI GT 780 | 46.27 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 40.32 |
| ASUS UX21E | 31.34 |
| System storage - Windows Defender / System storage - Windows Defender | MByte/s |
| ASUS UX21E | 5.38 |
| MSI GT 780 | 5.12 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 5.06 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 4.65 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 3.29 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 3.22 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 3.11 |
| ASUS G74SX | 1.40 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 1.20 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 0.99 |
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Cinebench R10
| 1 CPU | sec |
| Intel Core i7 990X | 170 |
| Intel Core i7 2600K | 145 |
| Intel Core i5 2410M | 195 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w, Core i7 2630QM | 193 |
| Intel Core i7 2630QM | 199 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 205 |
| ASUS UX21E | 246 |
| X CPU | sec |
| Intel Core i7 990X | 30 |
| Intel Core i7 2600K | 37 |
| Intel Core i5 2410M | 94 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w, Core i7 2630QM | 52 |
| Intel Core i7 2630QM | 52 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 105 |
| ASUS UX21E | 121 |
WinRAR
| Integer Test | KByte/sec |
| Intel Core i7 990X | 4'131 |
| Intel Core i7 2600K | 4'108 |
| Intel Core i7 2630QM | 3'656 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w, Core i7 2630QM | 3'638 |
| Intel Core i5 2410M | 2'318 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 2'152 |
| ASUS UX21E | 1'907 |
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Battery Eater / Power Consumption
| Battery Eater Classic | min |
| ASUS UX21E | 2 h 54 min |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 2 h 20 min |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 2 h 16 min |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 2 h 06 min |
| ASUS G74SX | 1 h 33 min |
| MSI GT 780 | 1 h 29 min |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 1 h 25 min |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 1 h 22 min |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 1 h 19 min |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 1 h 13 min |
| Power Consumption Load | Watt |
| ASUS UX21E | 64 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 76 |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 81 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 116 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 128 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 139 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 143 |
| ASUS G74SX | 145 |
| MSI GT 780 | 148 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 150 |
| Power Consumption Idle | Watt |
| Sony Vaio S-Serie VPC-SB1S1EW | 12 |
| Toshiba Portégé Z830 | 17 |
| ASUS UX21E | 19 |
| Toshiba Qosmio F750-10L | 20 |
| HP EliteBook 8760w | 30 |
| ASUS Lamborghini VX7 | 37 |
| Toshiba Qosmio X770 - 107 | 40 |
| ASUS G74SX | 42 |
| MSI GT 780 | 46 |
| Sony Vaio F-Serie VPC-F22S1E/B | 55 |
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Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| An elegant case, a good display, high-quality input peripherals and a very fast SandForce based SSD: what do you want more from an Ultrabook? Probably an ten hours of battery life but this would come at the cost of heigher weight. At the end of the day there are only details to criticize, because looks, haptics as well as build quality are on a very high level with the UX21E. | - Case - Design - Weight - Display - Input Devices - ADATA SandForce SSD |
||
| Display / Input devices | + | - | |
| ASUS equipped its 11.6 inch Ultrabook with a display that
definitely is above average. The TN panel the make use of offers
superior brightness. Regarding contrast ratio and black value it also
cuts a good figure. Although there is a glare type panel it is still
comfortable to even work outside with this ultrabook, which is mostly
thanks to the very high level of brightness. For the input peripherals it is about the same. The keyboard is comfortable for writing and the touchpad leaves us with no wishes. |
-
Display - Keyboard - Touchpad |
||
| Performance / Battery Life | + | - | |
| Equipped with a Core i5-2467M
dual core CPU that has four threads, clocked at 1.6 GHz and Intels
integrated graphics chip, the UX21E isn't exactly the fastest notebook
we've ever had for testing. But that's also not what it's been built
for. Thanks to a very fast ADATA SSD that is based on a recent SandForce
controller this ultrabook feels very responsive. Looking at battery life shows that the UX21E really has some stamina. Running Batter Eater Classic resulted in almost three hours of working pleasure although this program creats quite heavy load. Furthermore ASUS equipped this thing with some more nice feautres. For example: when you put the UX21E into standby it can stay there for more than eight days before it runs out of juice. If you should wake it up by simply pulling the lid open it takes only two seconds until the device is ready and available for work again. The ASUS engineers had to do quite a lot of tweaking in the BIOS to make this possible. |
-
Desktop-Performance - SSD - Instant-On-Feature - Battery Life |
||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| If you should be looking for a light-weight and very good looking notbook, then the ASUS UX21E is most definitely a very good choice. Although there are numerous ohter manufacturers ready to launch their Ultrabooks there won't be many who can compete with this very model. | - Ultra portable | ||
| Rating | |||
| We give the UX21E from ASUS our maximum rating of five out of five stars. | |||
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