Asus Zenbook UX305 review: Still a cheap MacBook alternative

Way back in 2015, intel’s Core M mobile processors were revolutionary. Subverting our previous performance expectations of a budget ultraportable, the chip is still found in any MacBook launched since early 2015.

Contrary to popular belief, Apple wasn’t the first to market, a trickle of Windows laptops beat the tech giant to the punch. Now that Core M devices have been around for a while now, they can even be found in those cheap sub- £500 ultraportable alternatives. This is Asus’ slim ZenBook UX305, which can now be picked up for £500 – more than half the price of most MacBooks – should you manage to find one.

The gorgeously thin laptop takes full advantage of the low power consumption and undemanding thermal footprint of the 0.8GHz Intel Core M-5Y10c processor buried inside. While 800MHz may sound pathetically slow, it’s worth keeping in mind that it can actually Turbo Boost to an impressive 2GHz should thermal conditions allow. If we didn’t already know what processor was inside the laptop, our first guess would have been a Core i3, considering its performance.

The advantages of such a low-power processor are paramount and definitely very clear. Firstly, the laptop is pretty much completely silent no matter how heavy a load it’s under, made thanks to its fanless design. As a result of this, it’s nice and thin at only 12.3mm and extremely light, yet again thanks to the lack of a heavy cooling system. The stunningly thin and compact design sadly means you’re left with just a single micro HDMI output, SD card reader and no Ethernet port. Asus haven’t scrimped when it comes to USB ports, with a total of 3 USB3 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack, which is a heck of a lot more than you’ll get in the new MacBook for instance. There is a workaround for the lack of wired connectivity, though, with a supplied USB 10/100 Ethernet adapter in the box for when you’re able to connect to a wired network.

Despite this low price, at first glance you can clearly see Asus hasn’t skimped too much on build quality and overall design. The sleek brushed metal chassis certainly looks the part and while it does pick up greasy fingerprints pretty easily and has a little bit of flex to it, it definitely doesn’t feel flimsy by any stretch of the imagination. We’re more than happy to pick it up and throw it into a bag without worrying all that much about it getting damaged during our time spent with it. Its weight is so small that we barely even noticed it even in a small bag, so it’s perfect to take around with you, even if you think might not need it. It’s this effortless practicality that so many laptops miss and the Asus Zenbook UX305 manages pretty much flawlessly.

The keyboard is incredibly comfortable to use, even during lengthy typing sessions, with grippy island keys leaving you plenty of space for your fingers. There wasn’t any noticeable issues such as missed keystrokes and we were also able to type perfectly consistently and quickly whether on the bus, sitting at work or lounging about on the sofa. The only real downside we noticed is an unfortunate lack of backlighting, which would make typing late into the night significantly easier. Obviously, with a laptop of this price we wouldn’t exactly expect it , but we still miss it nonetheless.

The touchpad is relatively good, too, and is massively improved by Asus’ excellent Gesture Control software. You get the option to switch various two- and three-fingered gestures on and off using this software, and you can also deactivate the often tiresome Windows 8 gestures that activate if you accidentally swipe your finger from the edge of the touchpad. A particular gesture of note is the three-fingered down swipe gesture that shows the desktop and the three-fingered left and right gestures that take you back and forward in the browser. This brings the UX305 in line with the Apple MacBook Air, which is equally easy to use thanks to similar gesture controls with OS X.

As you might expect given the affordable price, the screen is an area that’s let down a bit and where a couple of build deficiencies sadly come into focus. During my lengthy use I noticed there’s a small amount of backlight bleed at the bottom of the display where the panel looks to have warped slightly. Of course, this isn’t terrible by any means but it is the sort of build quality issue you’d find on a laptop that costs a fair bit less than this one. The 13.3in screen uses a Full HD panel, although it’s not particularly stunning. While sRGB colour gamut coverage isn’t great at 85.2%, the 1368:1 contrast ratio means images still have a decent enough quality and some fine details, while not exactly perfectly colour-accurate, are certainly visible. The matt screen has a 271cd/m2 backlight and easily visible even in brightly lit conditions, but this comes at the cost of a little bit of fidelity; there’s a slightly messy grain over the screen coating, which is often relatively noticeable when looking at light greys and whites.

It’s also worth mentioning that Full HD screens on small laptops make some programs and text extremely small. While Microsoft have gotten a bit better at text scaling, if you have some problems seeing tiny objects you may want to adjust the resolution down a bit in order to increase the physical size of items on-screen, or use the text size slider in the Windows settings.

Performance isn’t all that much to write home about really, yet it’s more than enough for your typical workload, running Office programmes, family photos and of course, browsing your favourite websites. The UX305 actually scored quite competitively in our multimedia benchmarks, managing 42 in the image rendering test. The results from the video compression and multitasking tests brought its overall score down to a slightly less exciting 20, yet considering you won’t really be buying a tiny ultrabook for editing high-resolution video, you’ve got to take into account that this isn’t designed as a rendering machine for instance, but is perfect for your typical everyday use.

As you’d expect the UX305 is as far from a gaming laptop as you could get, but we ran our Dirt Showdown 720p graphics benchmark anyway out of curiosity, in order to give the integrated Intel HD Graphics 5300 chip a run for its money. It managed 14.7fps at High settings and 4x anti-aliasing, so while it’s not at all suited to extreme gaming, you may get away with a few light 3D games such as Minecraft on lower settings.

There’s 8GB of RAM buried inside too, so you’re quite unlikely to run out of memory unless you open programs and browser tabs with reckless abandon – we’re looking at you, memory hogging Chrome. The laptop istelf is pretty tightly sealed, so you won’t be able to replace the RAM, battery or small 120GB SSD unfortunately.

Battery life should really be considered as another strength of Core M-powered laptops, and while the 7h 24m the machine lasted in our laptop battery benchmark doesn’t really sound like a whole lot, you’ll definitely get through a full day’s work if you’re conservative enough with the screen screen brightness and preformanc hogging programs, as well as switching on a few power-saving options too.

Asus Zenbook UX305 versus MacBook

Side by side, the 12in MacBook is a more impressive beast when it comes down to just the specs than the Zenbook UX305. And first things first it did perform significantly better in our tough multimedia and battery benchmarks.

Let’s start with the processor, where the MacBook has a Dual-core 1.1GHz Intel Core M-5Y31, which can Turbo Boost to 2.4GHz. The Asus’ M-5Y10c, meanwhile, starts at 800MHz and can boost up to 2GHz, with both machines containing a decent 8GB of RAM. The MacBook managed an overall score of 26, while the Asus could only manage 22, losing a significant amount more points in the multitasking test, with the MacBook scored 20 while it only managed 7.

Battery life on the MacBook is also fantastic at 12 hours and 30 mins. The Asus’ 7h 24m lags more than five hours behind, yet it’s worth reiterating that this is still a decent result for such a small Windows laptop. Elsewhere, the MacBook’s 2,304×1,440 screen is incredible, although the Full HD panel in the Zenbook UX305 isn’t bad either. There’s a bit more storage in the MacBook with 256GB of storage compared to Asus’ paltry 128GB.

In other words, it’s clear to see where the money has gone in producing the MacBook, but when you get to laptops that cost in excess of £1,000, you’d expect these impressive results. When it comes down to pound for pound, the Zenbook UX305 will be much better value for most, while the MacBook would be considered as a high-class luxury, yet expensive, device.

Conclusion

The premium-feeling yet affordably-priced Zenbook UX305 is a great success in my book. While it doesn’t tick every box, and you can’t expect it given the price with the imperfect screen and couple of rough edges. However, if you’re looking for a nippy little laptop for under £550, it’s a fantastic choice. Just a fraction of the price than the 2015 MacBook Air, the UX305 has considerably more RAM and a thinner design, and it also has a higher resolution screen too. All being said, it also comes with Windows 10, which might be enough to put off a few fans of Apple’s snappy operating system. When you bring it down in terms of sheer value-for-money, the Zenbook UX305 is still a superb choice. If you feel like that Asus Zenbook UX305 isn’t quite for you and want to look at your other options, take a quick look at our Best Laptop 2016 guide to see if you can find a better fit for your needs and price range.

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