ASUS ZENBOOK UX32A Pro Reviews

The Asus UX32A offers a familiar line-up of features for a cheaper Ultrabook. There's nothing outstanding in terms of performance here but you do get a much more stylish and well-built laptop compared to some of the competition.

The customer is doubtlessly given a lot of extras for this price range. The slim, very well-built and rigid case is not a unibody casing like the UX31A. However, it is comprised of an aluminum-plastic compound that was adopted 1:1 from the UX32VD, just like the excellent Bang & Olufsen speakers or the sophisticated, quiet cooling system featuring 2 heat pipes and 2 fans right away. The 13 inch TN screen bids surprisingly good contrasts (due to a very good black value) and sufficient viewing angle stability. 250 cd/m2 alongside the solid battery life of over 4 hours should reassure all ultrabook fans - it is possible to create an outdoor suitable, portable and yet inexpensive ultrabook. However, Asus had to make cutbacks in other areas in view of all these premium features. For example, not only a comparatively weak and, as a precursor of the Ivy Bridge generation, outdated Sandy Bridge Core i3 2367M processor (2x 1.4 GHz) is installed that did not knock anyone's sock off at the time either. This CPU is available in Lenovo's Ideapad U310 for EUR 180 less. For a price of around EUR 800, almost every other ultrabook contender installs the considerably faster Core i5 3317U, which benefits from Turbo Boost (2.6 GHz max.) to such an extent that some opponents partly calculate twice as fast as our test device.

A well-built laptop, but the screen is a little disappointing

Asus’ Zenbook UX32A manages to be both gorgeous and affordable, but it’s far from being the perfect Ultrabook

The Zenbook UX32A is a solid Ultrabook – thanks to the remarkably attractive design and the addition of an Ivy Bridge chipset. If there's one criticism to be levelled, it's that the battery life could have been better. While it would have been nice to see a 1080p display panel and a bit more RAM, these are the preserve of the top-flight Asus Zenbook Prime. Ultimately though, if you're on a budget and looking to make the step up from a cumbersome laptop to a gleaming new Ultrabook, you won't find many better options than this one.

Asus makes some of the most full-featured ultrabooks available, but this stripped-down Zenbook UX32A version is missing those extras and faces tough competition in its price range.