Asus ZenBook UX303UA review

Asus’ Zenbooks have consistently been some of our favourite ultra-portable laptops. The UX303UA builds on this heritage with updated specifications and some bold new colours. Unfortunately, not all colours are available in every country; depending on where you look, you might get Rose Gold, Smoky Brown or Icicle Gold.

Common to whichever colour you opt for is the ‘spun-metal’ finish synonymous with many of Asus’ laptops. Concentric circles on the lid add some elegance to the design, catching the light and making the UX303UA look every bit the premium laptop. My Smoky Brown review model looked and felt great. The aluminium construction helps the UX303UA remain a reasonably light 1.45kg, although this isn't as light as Dell's XPS 13 or the MacBook Air.

The tapered design reduces down from 19.2m at the back to just 3mm at the front. It’s certainly thin and light enough to comfortably slip into a bag and not cause any discomfort after a day of carrying. A fabric sleeve is included, which, while not padded, will help protect the chassis from any scratches.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Typing proved a little frustrating, with the chiclet-style keys lacking much in the way of travel, yet still feeling quite spongey. With the need for a firm press to activate each keystroke, accuracy took a hit; anything but a concerted, forceful press meant a stroke would be missed.

Key placement was at least conventional, with none of the major keys using a reduced size. The cursor keys are smaller than usual, but are isolated in such a way that they’re still easy to locate when you need them.

The touchpad is a generous size for a 13.3in laptop, with a shiny, reflective bezel around the edge. The mouse buttons are integrated into the touchpad, but accurately detected clicks without any issues. The touchpad coating is nice and smooth, so your fingers glide across with consummate ease. Inputs were detected accurately and the usual multitouch gestures, like pinch to zoom and two-finger scroll, worked fantastically well. Windows 10 has some other great multitouch gestures like three-finger swipes that came off without a hitch.

Connections

Three USB3 ports are respectable for an ultra-portable; competing laptops make do with two. There are also full-size HDMI and mini DisplayPort video outputs, and a combination headset jack for audio. Usefully, Asus includes VGA and Ethernet adaptors, and there’s also an integrated SD card reader. The USB Ethernet adaptor doesn’t run at Gigabit speeds, so you’ll get faster transfer speeds if you use the integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi chip – as long as your router supports the standard.  

Display

Certain UX303UA configurations include a touchscreen, but my model had a non-touch, 1,920x1,080 resolution panel. It’s a step up from the 1,600x900 display found on last year’s UX303UA, with the increased resolution making this new model better suited to working on two documents side-by-side. Windows 10’s scaling options make it easy to zoom in, too, should you find icons and text too small at 100% resolution.

The matt coating makes it easy to use the UX303UA without contesting with glare and reflections, and a respectable 1,035:1 contrast ratio was a cut above the UX303LA as well. A peak brightness of 333.4cd/m2 was exceptional, meaning outdoor use isn’t an issue, and colour accuracy was also a vast improvement over the UX303LA, with 90.2% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut. While colours were rich and vibrant, viewing angles weren’t as wide as I would have liked, and a black level of 0.32cd/m2 wasn’t particularly deep either. At least the backlight was evenly distributed when viewed face-on. 

Performance

With power coming from a dual-core, 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-7500U processor, with Turbo Boost speeds of up to 3.1GHz, and a generous 12GB of 1,600MHz DDR3 memory, the UX303UA put in a very respectable performance for an ultra-portable laptop. It did particularly well in the image editing portion of the multimedia benchmarks, scoring 81. With only a dual-core processor, it was unsurprisingly the multitasking test that brought the overall average down to 46, but this is still much better than average for an ultra-portable laptop at this price. It should be more than capable of everyday tasks.

Intel’s HD Graphics 520 integrated GPU is also surprisingly capable. In Dirt Showdown, at 1,280x720 resolution, 4x anti-aliasing and High quality, it produced a very playable 32.6fps – that’s 12fps higher than the UX303LA. It means you’ll get by with some light gaming, which isn’t something you can say about most ultra-portable laptops.

In the video playback battery test, the Asus UX303UA lasted an excellent 9 hours and 50 minutes. You’re going to be able to get a whole day’s use without needing to find a mains outlet. That being said, the Asus charging brick is relatively compact.

Conclusion

The UX303UA is robustly constructed, so it’s not the lightest ultra-portable laptop around, but it has great performance. It can handle most everyday tasks, and even a little light gaming, with a battery that should get you most of the way through the day. The new display panel is a big improvement over the one found in the UX303UA, making this the better buy overall.