Comment on ASUS U31SD-AH31 13.3-Inch Thin and Light Laptop (Black) by Aaronmere.
Best performance for the dollar in a 13.3″ notebook,
This is a 13.3 inch laptop with a separate graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 520 1GB DDR3 VRAM). It comes with all variations of Windows, several different configurations of hard drives and the new Sandy Bridge second generation i3 (2330M) or i5 processors (2430M). The ASUS U31SD is a super powerful desktop replacement and an incredible value in the AH31 version. You simply cannot find a better more powerful 13.3 inch portable. The U31SD is sexy, svelte, lightweight, and gets the job done better. Dollar for dollar, pound for pound I would challenge you to find a better deal out there for a 13.3 inch ultra portable.
The Window Experience Index scored the same as my desktop.
Rated from 1.0 (worst) to 7.9 (best)
Processor: 6.8 (i3 2330M)
Memory (RAM): 7.3 (Kingston PC-10300 8GB)
Aero: 5.0
Gaming Graphics: 6.4 (NVIDIA GeForce GT 520)
Primary hard disk: 7.2 (Kingston V200 SSD)
I upgraded the hard drive to a Solid State Drive and the RAM to 8GB but even with those upgrades my cost was still under 750$.
I’ll break down my review to different areas.
SCREEN:
Bright, warm tone. On such a small portable I am not concerned about viewing angle as I typically sit right in front and am not sharing it with others (unlike a tablet). But for those who want to know, ideal viewing angle is about 15 degrees, anything outside this and there will be slight variations to color, brightness and sharpness. It is still viewable up to about 45 degrees (approx). ASUS does not publish the nit-brightness of their screen but I did manage to find it. The brightness is 250-nit. In retrospect average laptops like the Acer timelineX is 200-nit while the super expensive Samsung 9 Series is 400-nit.
KEYBOARD/TRACKPAD:
Chiclet style with no flex and good tactile feedback. However, the ‘Z’ and ‘X’ keys stuck a few times but seem to be ‘warn’ in now. Still not a full size and no substitute for hyper typists. The track pad is multi gesture and works okay; smaller than I would like but works well enough.
GRAPHICS:
This is where the Asus outshines it all. There is a desktop Widget that lets you manually switch between the NVIDIA card and built in INTEL. The Asus will also automatically switch based on needs analyses if you don’t override it with the Widget. I am not a PC gamer so have not put this machine thru its paces with the latest games but would bet money it can keep pace with the Alienware M11X. I can tell you with video and photo editors it flies. I use Adobe CS5 and have not been slowed down at all.
RAM:
The RAM in the Asus U31SD can be upgraded to 8GB total. A panel on the bottom removed by a single screw reveals access to the RAM and HDD. The U31SD uses DDR3 PC-10600 (1333MHz) 204-pin SDRAM SO-DIMM in 2 sockets (4GB x 4GB). The nice thing in the AH31 is it comes with 4GB but instead of loading 2GB sticks in both slots they put one 4GB stick leaving the second slot open so that upgrading to 8GB is as simple as installing a second 4GB stick. I ended up putting in a full 8GB because the cost was the same as buying a single 4GB stick and I wanted a matched set.
HDD:
Removing the panel on the bottom give you access to the HDD. Asus uses a 2.5 inch SATA III (Serial ATA 300) 3GB/s connection drive with a max height of 9.5mm. In the AH31 it is a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB 5400 RPM. I removed this drive before boot up so have not used it but have used WD 500GB 5400 RPM drives before. In my experience with the new Sandy Bridge processors and DDR3 1333MHz RAM, 5400 RPM drives are the Achilles heel in a notebook. I installed a Kingston SSDnow V200 128GB Solid State Drive. I removed and cloned the WD before boot up and installed the SSD. Asus partitions the drive into 3 sectors. One partition has the OS, the other is for DATA and the third is a hidden recover partition. The problem with this is when I reduced the drive size to 128GB it partitions the OS at 45GB only leaving me 11GB for adding my own programs. The DATA partition is at 61GB with 61GB free (on a 128GB drive) If you use a 256GB SSD you won’t be so crunched on space.
BATTERY:
Asus packages the U31SD with two versions of batteries so be careful when buying. The AH31 comes with the more powerful 8cell 5600mAh 83Whrs battery. I have not had time to fully condition the battery and put it thru the paces but Asus claims 8 hours unplugged. I would say if you ran the PC under light loads and used all the battery saving resources then yes you probably could get pretty close to 8 hours.
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