Long battery life and a thin, lightweight casing at a surprisingly reasonable price
The best ultra-portable laptops tend to be expensive - slender lightweight casings, large long-lasting batteries and power-efficient components don’t come cheap. This makes the relatively low price and high quality of the Asus ZenBook UX305 all the more surprising.
The UX305 is remarkably thin with its metal casing only just thick enough to accommodate its three USB 3.0 ports. Despite how slender and lightweight (1.2kg) it is, its metal build is robust with only a little flexing in its base and lid. Its mauve design is attractive too, as is the circular pattern etched into the lid.
We were worried that such a thin casing would mean a less comfortable keyboard (thin casings tend to leave less room for the key mechanisms, resulting in less travel). But it still had enough, and combined with plenty of feedback, it made for fast, error-free typing. The keys aren’t backlit for typing in low-lit conditions, but that’s a minor quibble. The touchpad is large and accurate, even though some of the gestures, such as scrolling by swiping two fingers up or down, feel a little juddery and imprecise.
There’s no touchscreen, but we’ve never been fans of this feature on laptops. While the screen is a little grainy, it does have an anti-glare finish that keeps overhead light reflections to a minimum. Both contrast and colour accuracy are good, while the viewing angles are wide. Thanks to the generous 1920x1080-pixel resolution, text looks sharp, if a little on the small side. A small tweak of Windows’ display settings helps to compensate for this.
The UX305 is completely silent because it uses one of Intel’s new Core M processors, which doesn’t need a cooling fan. Despite this, the underside of the laptop never became uncomfortably warm - even when we ran our most strenuous benchmark tests, designed to really stretch the processor. Its energy-efficient design helped the UX305 achieve an impressive 12 hours of battery life in our light-usage test - a significant achievement given the battery is smaller than those found in many rival laptops.
The downside is that the Core M processor is noticeably slower than fourth- or fifth-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. While it’s on a par when it comes to image editing, it’s around 50 per cent slower when editing video, and about a third as fast when running multiple programs at the same time. It’s more than fast enough for more mundane tasks though.
Starting up and waking from sleep are almost instantaneous, thanks to the 128GB SSD. You can’t buy it with a bigger SSD though. And while it’s possible to upgrade the SSD yourself, disassembling this laptop means dealing with lots of tiny, fiddly screws. Another thing to remember is that the SSD is an M.2 type, which cost more per gigabyte than a SATA model. If you have lots of files then you’ll probably have to rely on external or online storage.
The Asus ZenBook UX305 is a remarkably good-value laptop with the battery life, build and screen quality normally found in a laptop twice the price. The only downside is the so-so performance. If you want an ultraportable laptop that’s powerful enough for use as your main computer, then the Asus ZenBook UX303LA is a better buy. Although thicker and a tad heavier, it’s far faster with a comparable battery life. Still, if you frequently work on the go and value portability above all else, then the UX305 is ideal.
VERDICT
This almost flawless ultraportable laptop is superb value.
SPECIFICATIONS
800MHz Intel Core M 5Y10 dual-core processor • 8GB memory • 128GB SSD • Intel HD 5300 Integrated graphics • 13.3in 1920x1080-pixel screen • 802.11ac/ a/b/g/n • Windows 8.1 • 1.2kg (1.4kg with charger) • 12x324x226mm (HxWxD) • One-year warranty