Asus ZenBook UX331
A premium ultraportable that very nearly matches the best from Dell and HP, but for less money
SCORE PRICE £999 (£1,199 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com
Asus’s strength has always been in delivering a similar experience to big name, high-end laptops, but for a whole lot less. With the ZenBook UX331U we have a laptop that’s still cheaper than the Dell and HP equivalents, but that can go toe-to-toe with them on nearly every level. We have some minor reservations about the screen, but this is an exceptional thin-and-light laptop balancing performance with features and design.
Let’s start with the latter. The UX331 has a gorgeous, slimline all-metal chassis with a spun-metal finish, a royal blue paint job and a luxurious gloss coating that’s almost pearlescent in the right light. It’s highly portable, too: just under 14mm thick and not much more than 1kg in weight. To achieve this, Asus has pulled off Dell’s trick of squeezing a 13.3in screen into a smaller frame, with a 6.86mm bezel that barely detracts from the display. It’s not as jaw-dropping as Dell’s premium Infinity display, but it’s pretty close, and you get a laptop you’ll barely notice in a bag or backpack until it’s open and you’re ready to start work.
The design isn’t just beautiful but practical, too. There’s plenty of room for a full-sized keyboard and a surprisingly large touchpad, with a smooth glass-like surface and enough sensitivity to track Windows gestures. A fingerprint reader is below the right cursor key, and it’s easy to set up and hassle-free in use. Even the keyboard is excellent, with a straightforward layout and more travel than on some ultra-thin machines. It’s a very comfortable laptop, particularly considering its compact size.
And, while the Acer Swift 7 is even thinner, the Asus does without its compromises. The touchpad has proper working buttons, while you get a full range of connections, including two USB 3.1 ports, a USB-C port, an HDMI output and an SD memory card slot. The USB-C port isn’t used for charging, but at least the power adapter is one of Asus’s compact, cube-like efforts. We can also forgive the lack of Ethernet when you get dual-band 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi.
This is such a likable laptop that its few failings are all the more annoying. The screen is bright, with a maximum luminance of 325cd/m2, but the contrast isn’t quite as strong as on the HP Spectre or the Dell XPS, and colour accuracy is mediocre. The deficiencies aren’t actually that noticeable in everyday use, and HD programmes streamed through Netflix look amazing. The figures aren’t ideal for designers or photographers, though, so if colour accuracy is important, look elsewhere.
We were more impressed with the audio than we expected. The Asus doesn’t go as loud as some rivals, but there’s more low-end body and oomph in the mid-range, and the output doesn’t sound brash or tinny. We would still probably plug in some headphones for serious listening, but you can happily binge your way through a series without putting on a pair.
It’s in performance, though, that the UX331 really comes into its own.
“There’s plenty of room for a full-sized keyboard and a surprisingly large touchpad, with a smooth glass-like surface”
Asus has hobbled our review sample slightly by only fitting it with 8GB of RAM, but the Core i7-8550U processor still has enough power for most mainstream business and graphics applications. More unusually, our model also ships with a discrete graphics card: the Nvidia GeForce MX150. It’s no powerhouse, but there’s just enough performance to enjoy playable frame rates in Rise of the Tomb Raider at 720p. Older or less demanding titles should run similarly well.
Battery life isn’t phenomenal – despite Asus’s promises of a 14-hour battery life, we only had eight-and-a-half hours of looping video playback before the UX331 conked out. That’s still enough for most people’s working day, though, so no reason to count the Asus out.
There are certain areas where the Dell XPS 13 or HP Spectre surge in front of the ZenBook, and areas where Asus could do better, but the UX331 gives most of the quality for a little less money, and with discrete graphics, too. If you can’t quite stretch to the Dell or HP competition, you know where to come.