Asus Zenbook Prime UX301LA review

Asus’s Zenbook laptops have always been desirable, but the UX301LA is easily the most elegant Ultrabook we’ve ever seen. The metallic finish on the UX301LA’s crystalline glass lid looks remarkably beautiful and its super slim chassis measures just 15.5mm when closed and weighs a mere 1.38kg.

Fortunately, Asus has taken great care to ensure the UX301LA’s beauty isn’t just skin-deep, as it’s the first laptop in the world to use Corning Gorilla Glass 3 to protect its lid. Gorilla Glass 3 is three times more scratch-resistant than the more common Gorilla Glass 2 coatings seen on some other laptops, giving the UX301LA even more protection when you’re mobile.

The UX301LA has few connection ports, but it has a good selection for a laptop so thin. There are two USB3 ports, micro HDMI and mini DisplayPort video outputs, an SD card reader and a combined headphone and microphone jack. You also get a VGA and Gigabit Ethernet adaptor in case you want to connect the laptop to an external monitor or wired network.

The UX301LA model we reviewed is a supremely capable laptop, and its dual-core 1.8GHz Intel Core i7-4500U processor and 8GB of RAM sped through our multimedia benchmarks. It scored 53 overall, which puts it just two points behind the similarly priced Sony Vaio Duo 13. You certainly shouldn’t have any problems running multiple programs at once or using processor-intensive applications such as photo- and video-editors.

The UX301LA also performed well in our Dirt Showdown test. With graphics quality set to High quality and at a 1,280×720 resolution, the UX301LA produced a steady 23.6fps, which is roughly what we’d expect to see from this type of processor. That average frame rate isn’t quite quick enough for fast-paced racing games, but you can get higher average frame rates if you reduce graphics quality. At a resolution of 1,920×1,080 and with graphics quality set to Low and no anti-aliasing, the UX301LA produced an average frame rate of 34.9fps. This shows that you should have no trouble playing casual games, but the UX301LA will struggle with the latest 3D games.

As you might expect from such a high-end laptop, the UX301LA’s 13.3in IPS touchscreen display looks fantastic. With an sRGB colour gamut coverage score of 88.4 per cent, colours were bright and vibrant and the display’s glossy finish helped them to leap out of the screen. Contrast levels were good, too. We measured a contrast ratio of 933:1, and our high contrast test photos all showed lots of detail. A few darker areas were slightly obscured by areas of solid black, but on the whole we were pleased with the UX301LA’s image quality. Wide viewing angles and a generous amount of screen tilt meant we could see the screen from a variety of angles without any major shift in contrast.

The UX301LA’s display isn’t as good as that of the latest Apple MacBook Pro, and we noticed a small amount of backlight bleeding along the lower edge of the screen. You wouldn’t notice this bleeding in everyday use unless you were watching a film with black bars along the bottom, but it’s still something we don’t expect to see on an expensive laptop.

Unfortunately, we found closing and minimising windows with our fingers a little tricky due to the small size of the icons, but overall the touchscreen was extremely responsive. Multitouch gestures worked perfectly and we didn’t have to tap the screen too hard when opening apps and files.

These issues aside, the UX301LA was a joy to use for everyday tasks. The well-spaced keyboard showed no signs of flex whatsoever and its bouncy backlit keys gave lots of tactile feedback. It’s easily one of the best Ultrabook keyboards we’ve used, and its large all-in-one touchpad was equally superb. The lower half gave an excellent level of feedback when we clicked on files and folders and its smooth and responsive surface was great for performing multitouch gestures and Windows 8 shortcuts.

Battery life was also great, and the UX301LA lasted 10 hours in our light use battery test with the screen set to half brightness. This is a huge improvement on the seven hour and 24 minute battery life of the Zenbook Prime (see Reviews, Shopper 310), so you should be able to do a full day’s work on the UX301LA with just a single charge.

Our main concern with the UX301LA is its price. Zenbooks have always been expensive, but at £1,500, the UX301LA isn’t as good value as the more powerful and similarly priced Apple 13in Macbook Pro. The UX301LA is certainly one of the classiest laptops around, but we prefer the Ultimate award-winning 13in Macbook Pro.