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I just recently bought a ASUS ZenBook UX360UAK with a 7th gen i7, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD. It's made out of aluminium, has a glass touchpad and costs around h
by mactunes 10y ago
I just recently bought a ASUS ZenBook UX360UAK with a 7th gen i7, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD.
It's made out of aluminium, has a glass touchpad and costs around half of what a similarly priced MacBook pro costs in Germany.
It's my first non-Mac after 20 years. I've owned it for a good week and so far I'm very happy. It has superb battery life, great build quality and is fast. Only 1 minor con: the fan always runs, but it's not too loud and I can live with it...
- farresito 10y agoHow's the keyboard? I'm so so sad that most laptops' keyboards are terrible... You can't imagine. I so much would love to buy an ASUS or similar laptop as the one you purchased, especially since they are affordable, but every time I check some laptops, their keyboards are beyond terrible. It's a shame, really. I will have to stick to Thinkpads.
- mactunes 10y agoTo be honest it's not as good as my MacBook Air's. I have very low requirements when it comes to that. If it is of importance to you I guess you might not be happy with the ASUS...
- mgazzer 10y agoMy GF has one and I was surprised when I used it, as it was great for a slim laptop. I'm used to using a mechanical keyboard or a MBP keyboard.
- djsumdog 10y agoIf you really cared about the keyboard, they all suck. Get an external mechanical keyboard. I've used one with Cherry MX blue switches at two jobs and no one has threatened to murder and/or fire me yet. Guess I'm lucky. :)
- farresito 10y agoI've actually thought about doing so, but I'm always moving back and forth, so right now I think my best choice is to stick with a laptop. I agree that they all suck, but some (most?) of them suck so much they are out of question. I don't know what happened, really. 10 years ago you bought a laptop, no matter which brand, and you would get a decent keyboard. They have sacrificed quality for aesthetics too much, but maybe you are right; I should just buy a mechanical. I looked into the Happy Hacking keyboard. It's a bit pricey, but I've heard very nice things.
- gravypod 10y agoIf you buy a 10-keyless keyboard they are usually small. You can pick up chinese cloan switches now for extremely cheap right now. This one looks good enough: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Water-Resistant-VicTop-Mechanical-Waterproof-Anti-ghosting/dp/B01DBYNVSY/ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Water-Resistant-VicTop-Mechanical-W... IF you're concerned wrap it in some kind of cloth but for under 30 bucks it's not a major concern if you get a decent lifespand out of it. I'd say anything over 2 years is a huge win.
- farresito 10y agoThank you very much for the link! That one is pretty affordable. I might purchase it actually.
- pbowyer 10y agoThanks for alerting me to these, I've kept looking at the proper 10keyless keyboards like Topre [0] thinking "Really? Is it worth that much?". Be good to try something cheaper, though the single-height enter key would drive me CRAZY. [0] http://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/realforce-88ub-45g-key-black-on-black-mini-keyboards.asp http://www.keyboardco.com/keyboard/realforce-88ub-45g-key-bl.... £192!!
- gravypod 10y agoSomething is only worth how much you will use it. If you will use your keyboard every day from now until the cataracts and arthritis gets you then you'll probably find it worth the money to invest in good tooling. My keyboard was is actually and open boz/broken from manufacturer version of an OK one, I paid 37$. Worth twice that for how easy it makes typing and these are bad switches mind you.
- ianhowson 10y agoOn Cherry Browns, my managers believed that I was more productive because they could hear lots of key noise. I have Cherry Blues at home but wouldn't dare use them in an open-plan office environment - far too noisy.
- mjolk 10y agoMacbook/Macbook Pro/Macbook Air keyboards are probably the highest quality laptop keyboards I've found (I have 2x cherry red mechanical keyboards at home). Every other laptop keyboard I've tried feels like _garbage_ in comparison.
- ElijahLynn 10y agoLinux or Windows?
- mactunes 10y agoCurrently running Windows with Bash installed though. I briefly tried Xubuntu, but occasionally it froze while booting up. Didn't have time to check what was wrong (needed to hurry for a project) so decided for Windows.
- lobster_johnson 10y agoI took a look at the ZenBook range. The range looks decent, but the 15'' has a hard drive (!) (no option to choose SSD only, apparently), a numeric keypad (!!) and the highest-performing model is a dual-core i7 with 16GB RAM — so aside from the price, not a good alternative to a MBP. (I find the shiny brushed aluminium look to be embarrassingly tacky, though not quite as bad as the rose gold model.)
- sydd 10y agoNot true, you can find them with SSDs. For example heres a revieew for one: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ZenBook-Pro-UX501VW-Notebook-Review.158762.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-ZenBook-Pro-UX501VW-Notebo... Also unlike in Macs you can buy extra RAM to go above 16GB.
- lobster_johnson 10y agoThanks. Weird, I didn't find that model on Asus' site. Shame about the keyboard not coming in different variants, though. I am sure that some people like numeric keypads, but ever since my first PC cirka 1992 I've always hated them. It's the last thing I need on a small laptop.
- temac 10y agoSadly, most recent 15", of all brands, have a numeric keypad. IIRC I only found one non-MBP beside the XPS15 that still have no keypad, but it has way worse issues (very bad heat issues). So you pretty much only have the choice between an MBP and an XPS if you don't want a numeric keypad(and an off centered touchpad, beurk!) on a recent 15"
- lobster_johnson 10y agoReally? The Asus and some ThinkPad models are the only ones I have seen this in. For example, none of the models offered in this Verge article [1] have a keypad. The 14'' Razer Blade [2] also has a normal keyboard, and comes close to being a MBP replacement, though it's not perfect. Apparently a lot of these laptops have issues with heat and noisy fans. Some articles say i7 laptops (the quad-core ones) tend to have low battery life. I'm getting about 4 hours from my MBP 2015 using only Safari, Terminal and VSCode, and I can't imagine these other laptops would be worse than that. [1] http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/2/13497094/best-macbook-pro-alternative-windows-laptops http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/11/2/13497094/be... [2] http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade
- bulatb 10y ago> the fan always runs Are there laptops where it doesn't? I've had 4 different models from 4 different makers, including a MacBook Pro, and every one has run the fan 100℅ of the time.
- babyrainbow 10y agoAccording to this page, the asus laptop costs around 2500USD. If you buy a MBP (Mid 2012 non retina), it would cost around 900USD and then you swap out hdd for ssd and max out RAM at 16 GB so the total price would be something around 1250 USD. Can't beat that. [1] http://www.amazon.in/ZenBook-UX360CA-13-3-inch-Touchscreen-Windows/dp/B01GHQOD8U http://www.amazon.in/ZenBook-UX360CA-13-3-inch-Touchscreen-W...
- mactunes 10y agoIn Germany it's 1300 euros which is half of what the new MB Pro without touch bar costs: https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/product.php/asus+ux360uak+bb285t+zenbook https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/product.php/asus+ux360uak+b...
- innocentoldguy 10y agoI looked an the ASUS ZenBook, but the screen was too dim and the trackpad not functional enough for my tastes. I've grown less enamored with Apple since Job's passing, but I've yet to find anything that really compares, even with Apple's current warts.
- mactunes 10y agoThis is the first one that comes more than close enough for me to make the switch. Was worried at first but am really happy with my decision now :)