Pleased with cheap new Win8.1 laptop

I know the latest rage is the $799 13" infinity display Dell XPS 13 going around, but I picked up a nice “stealth refresh” of the ASUS ZenBook Prime (rebadged as ZenBook Touch last year) for $750 CAD this past weekend. I think I got a good deal–please tell otherwise if you think it’s not.

I got this here:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX55673

13.3" i5-2400U, 8GB RAM (soldered on), 128GB SSD (supposedly there’s an empty M.2 60mm slot for another SSD)
micro HDMI
micro DisplayPort

Great weight and size. Only issues might be shitty trackpad drivers but finding newer mfr-ElanTouch drivers (from another brand entirely) and some potential screen lightbleed.

I think you got a good deal, but i5-2400U…isn’t that Sandy Bridge? Your link says the CPU is an i5-4200U…is that Broadwell? Anyways, I heard that Broadwell chips get you much better battery life. Speaking of that, is the battery replaceable?

I hope you can expand the disk; 128GB is very tight, especially with your crazy Steam library.

Nope, it’s Haswell according to CPU-Z. i5-4200U. Intel 4400 graphics. The second M.2 slot might work with a $85 128GB SSD upgrade if I wanted to go to 256. (TS128GMTS600)

$750 canadian is $600 US so yes, that is a very good deal for the haswell zenbook prime.

Battery life isn’t great, but same problem with that new dell.

Whoops. Typed 2400 when I meant 4200U.

Shit! I thought you were joking but $600US really is $750CAD.

Huh? I got the new Dell XPS 13 at work and get about 9… well, a bit over 8, hours. Not Macbook Air numbers, but pretty decent. i5, 256gb SSD, 8GB RAM, and the 1080p screen. I wouldn’t have minded the IPS, but touch is nigh useless to me having used a number of touch enabled Windows laptops, and Windows scales fonts and the UI terribly on high res laptop screens.

All the reviews said more like 5 or 6 hours-- but they are using the high-density screen.

8 hours is acceptable, 5 or 6 really isn’t. The macbook air 13" gets over 12!

My ASUS G750 is essentially my day to day game comp. So regardless of the battery life, it’s always plugged in. And the battery life is only tested when I have to do a quick job outside of my house. 4 to 5 hours is acceptable if I can’t plug it in at a client’s house. And let’s be honest, when does that ever happen?

If it’s always plugged in, battery life obviously doesn’t matter at all. But your asus is a gaming laptop, you wouldn’t expect it to have decent battery life. Rei’s laptop is an ultrabook.

Yeah, this’ll just be my personal laptop. I’m swimming in PCs.

Work laptop 1: Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 11e
Work laptop 2: Macbook Air
Main PC: ATX i5-4670K 32GB RAM 780 GTX 600W PSU (I think, been a while since I looked)
File Server: ATXi7-920 24GB RAM probably put 660 GTX here 600W PSU
MAME PC: mini ITX AMD E-350 Fusion APU 8GB RAM
Steam cube: mini ITX i5-2400 970 GTX 400W PSU
new Mac mini: late-2012 Mac mini 8GB RAM
old Mac mini: 2009 Mac mini 8GB RAM

The 2 ultrabooks and the MBA stacked on top of each other weighs less than the HP ProBook 17" we used to use at work.

The ASUS UX305 (256GB, non-touch) was $699 CAD in the Microsoft Canada Store for a while. Went up to $799 today.

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msca/en_CA/pdp/ASUS-Zenbook-UX305FA-USM1-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.313368800?tduid=2088220f0280659fbb82cbc3fc6ec669

Hmm, I was eying a Surface Pro 3 for the wife, but that is starting to get pricy with all the bells and whistles. Does it come with a touchscreen?

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msca/en_CA/pdp/ASUS-Zenbook-UX303LA-US51T-Signature-Edition-Laptop/productID.313369000

This does. I swear it was 899 an hour ago. Apparently the deal threads are saying you can choose Education and get the discount without them verifying.

Yeah, choose Education price and it’s 899.

Posted this in the other thread too, but the only review I saw claiming 5-6 hours for the Dell XPS 13 was The Verge. And they don’t give any insight into their battery test methodology, they just throw a random number out there with zero context behind it.

ArsTechnica and AnandTech, on the other hand, have had standardized battery testing methodologies for years that they use to be consistent across all devices, with screens of all brightness capabilities (standardizing around 200 nits instead of something meaningless like "50% brightness)

Wow! That is completely the opposite conclusion. The Verge (and others did come to the same conclusion) really messed up somewhere.

Wow that XPS 13 battery life.

Broadwell FTW. But the ultra high-res model negates that.