Item Details

ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (12 Hours of Battery Life)

(149 Customer Reviews)

Price: $649.99
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Technical Details

• 1.3GHz Intel SU7300 Core 2 Duo Processor
• 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 2 slots, 4GB Max
• 500GB SATA Hard Drive (5400 RPM)
• 13.3" HD LED LCD Display, Intel GMA 4500MHD, Wi-Fi 802.11 bgn, 0.3M Webcam
• Windows 7 Home Premium Operating System (64 bit)

 

Product Details

Product Weight: 3.74 pounds

Shipping Weight: 6.60 pounds

Model: UL30A-X5

Manufacturer: ASUS Computer International Direct

Sales Rank: 141

 

Accessories

Customer Reviews

Great computer for light use,
by James Ralston, 2010-07-11

I recently purchased this computer (~ 2 months ago) after my old hp stopped working. I did quite a bit a research into this purchase for a computer with the following features:
- Lightweight
- Long battery life
- Small profile
- Full version of windows
- wireless N
- non cramped keyboard
- reasonably priced

I must say that this computer fit the bill quite well. I am currently a college student and was looking for a computer that I could easily carry with me all day and not be bogged by the massive size, I also did not want to try and find a charger every couple hours. Carrying this computer is not a problem, it is very light weight and you almost forget it is there. The battery almost always lasts the entire day, and when it doesn't its really because of heavy use while running video or something. After about two months I have compiled a list of pros and cons as I see it with normal use.

PROS:
- Keyboard is a dream for casual typing
- Looks great and feels very sturdy
- Screen is wonderful and brightness is perfect
- Extra function on the touchpad are very handy
- Online backup storage is a relief, especially for those who have had crashes in the past.
- Charges very quickly
- HDMI port


CONS:
- Fingerprints really stick, even after wiping with electronic cleaning pads
- Decent amount of bloatware from ASUS preinstalled
- Facial recognition for log in does not work very well, see below
- Web-cam is very low power, probably causing problems with face recognition
- Not recommend for any type of serious use, because ergonomic disaster if working over a couple hours

So All in all this is a great computer to have for checking mail, light office application use, and internet browsing. I would seriously recommend it for those purposes, as it is very enjoyable to use. I have purchased a monitor and external keyboard for heavy use when I am away from my desktop, but that is because I will be working for 5+ hours on this machine. The HDMI port is wonderful for this.

 

Excellent linux ulta-portable,
by Pete V, 2010-07-08

I purchased this system as a more portable counterpart to the larger desktop replacement laptop I use for consulting work. I was planning on reloading it with Linux (Ubuntu 10.04) when I bought it. I also purchased an Intel X25-V SSD replacement hard drive at the same time. While I have no idea what the Windows 7 performance is (never even booted the stock drive), the Linux performance on the SSD is quite impressive. After performing some of the recommended configuration changes to accommodate the SSD, my boot time is under 15 seconds (from switch-on to login). Running productivity related software (office, browser, IDEs) I have never notice any performance lag. I've started using this system to prove that processor speed is not the remedy to performance problems.

Battery life has been good in 2-3 hour chunks with WiFi going, but I haven't pushed it to 8+ hours endurance yet. This is the first laptop that I've used where I felt like I could leave the power brick behind when I leave the house.

It's still a fingerprint magnet, and it would have made my life a lot easier if they had used a Synaptics touchpad, but all an all a good solid system that does it's job at a good price. The build quality, system layout and configuration are quite good, it has everything I was looking for in an ultra-portable.

 

A Good Deal,
by Falade Arthur Olawale, 2010-07-08

Definitely a finger print magnet, but aren't they all? Probably the brushed aluminium option would fare better.

I've had this laptop for about two months and i can say it is a good bargain. Wish the 12 hour battery life quote was real, with a little tweaking of the "battery saving" option of Power4Gear hybrid, been able to squeeze out almost 8 hrs of battery life.

Virtualization, using Virtualbox, i can run 3 guests OSes (probably more) comfortably at the same time with RAM usage less than 3GB but with the processor straining itself. Probably overclocking it through the bios setup would improve things

Greatest limitation is the lack of in-built bluetooth.

 

did not have dvd-rom and recovery was impossible without dvd..,
by regular shopper, 2010-07-05

I only bought this item less than 2months ago and it started booting errors.. so I called the tech support and went through over an hour to restore without losing the files I saved.. but it did not work... what they suggested was, I need to buy or get extrenal dvd drive and use the recovery dvd to restore the entire hard drive...which I will need to buy.. because I don't have one nor my friends or family..

 

not half bad,
by Austin Grace, 2010-07-02

this is a good computer for the money. it has a good keyboard, good batery life and a lot faster then a netbook. i had 3 or 4 different netbooks and was getting sick of them. the first version of the computer i had the hardrive went out on me but amazon relpaced :). i was defanatly happy about that. my only complains with computer is asus could have put a better quality harddrive like a wd or toshiba or something like that. i would say this computer is good for people that need a somewhat powerful computer and need it portable. i defanatly would not play the latest games on here but it could play some older games. overall a good computer.