20 Asus Zenbook UX410UA
A laptop with a screen that won’t miss a thing and a battery that runs all day
The more that manufacturers focus their efforts on high-end lightweight laptops, more affordable alternatives can be underwhelming. But we were impressed with Asus’s Zenbook UX310UA when we tested it last year (see our review, Issue 503), and here’s another great laptop at a value price. The big change is that the screen, previously a standard 13.3in from bottom left to top right, is now 14in, even though the whole thing stays the same size. By reducing the bezel around the LCD panel, they’re giving you over 10 per cent extra work space with no more to carry around.
You’ll look good out and about with it, too – assuming such things concern you. Asus’s polished-aluminium finish is as sleek as ever, and the Macbook-style minimalist design sticks with simple elegance rather than adding the garish touches we’ve seen in some laptops recently.
It’s not as wafer-thin as some rivals, but the UX410UA still feels compact and lightweight while squeezing in full-size USB 3.1 and HDMI ports, as well as the reversible USB Type-c, to connect peripherals and a monitor. Two more USB 2.0 ports and an SD card reader complete the connections, and as well as a headphone jack there’s a very decent pair of Harman Kardon speakers under the front edge. Our only complaint is that the Type-c port doesn’t allow charging, which requires Asus’ supplied mains adapter – a bulkier item for your bag to accommodate.
This particular configuration has a plain Full HD screen rather than the 3200x1800-pixel one in the UX310UA, but at this size the resolution feels sharp. More importantly, the colour reproduction is better than on most budget laptops, covering 94.6 per cent of the SRGB range in our tests with good enough accuracy for anyone except professional photographers. It even goes bright enough to use comfortably outdoors, with auto-adjustment to dim it (and save battery) when ambient light is lower.
The tile-style keyboard is pretty average, but does have backlighting, and the reasonably large gesture- sensing touchpad works well, responding to a press anywhere on its surface rather than requiring separate mouse buttons.
Our video-playback test ran for 10 hours 35 minutes, much longer than the UX310UA and a fantastic result for a laptop in this price bracket. That’s partly because our model had the lowest processor option, an i3-7100u from Intel’s Kaby Lake series, but an i5 would probably only knock half an hour off. Although it’s a shame you don’t get the new quad- core i3, we found it quite adequate for general Windows 10 use, despite having only 4GB of memory. Only heavy multitasking and video editing showed it up.
Potentially more of a limitation is the 128GB SSD, which won’t be enough if you want to keep photos, videos and music on your laptop alongside software and documents. An SD card or USB drive could help, but these will be slower to access, so it’s worth considering the option of an i5, 8GB and a 256GB SSD configuration (£750 from Ebuyer www. snipca.com/26456).
The basic model, though, is a perfectly usable Windows 10 system at a very reasonable price, and with the metal case and high-quality screen it seems worth the extra over Asus’s slightly cheaper Vivobook S14 (£499 for a similar specification from Amazon www. snipca.com/26442). If portability and screen quality aren’t important, consider the chunkier Vivobook X405 (£399 from Currys www.snipca.com/26443), but you can see where the compromises have been made.
Its sleek design includes a sharp screen and decent battery
VERDICT: Whether you connect it to an HDTV, carry around between workplaces or make a semi-portable setup, this is a good device for the money
★★★★☆
ALTERNATIVE: Asus Chromebit CS10 £102 If you only need very basic computing, this runs Google’s Chrome OS in just 2GB of memory with 16GB of storage