Zenbook Prime (UX21A)

D

Denamian

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2005
Messages
198
Hello there, I will do my best to keep it short.

I need you guys' help looking for a thin-and-light ultrabook.

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I am thinking 11.6" or no more than 13.3". Highly prefer at least a 3rd gen i7 and 4 gigs of ram. 120gb SSD is fine and a 1920x1080 screen.

After some looking around, I have kind-of decided upon the Asus Zenbook Prime UX21A.

It's pretty much exactly what I am looking for in terms of hardware specs. However, I was really hoping to keep it under $1000. Now, I realize I may have to break the budget a little bit, but by the time you add in shipping and tax, that's like $1200. 20% isn't exactly "a little."

This model is about 14 months old, and I figured I would be able to find some on amazon or something for a decent price. I found the best buy link that I included above, as well as one on Amazon too. Amazon had it for $1050 instead, which was very tempting, and they had an open-box for $870. If I had posessed the money at that point (about a week ago), I would have simply bought the open-box. However, we had just recently finished paying off wedding expenses, and I didn't have the cash or the credit to handle the purchase at that time.

Now that expenses are paid off, I tried to look it up again to start deal-searching. All of a sudden, it's totally gone from Amazon (all I can find is the UX21E... the 2+ year-old model). Newegg doesn't have it either, and neither does Microsoft.

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I guess my question is two-fold.
1) Does anyone know of any other reliable eTailers to check for the laptop I am looking for?
2) Does anyone know if there is a refresh of the Zenbook Prime lineup due in the near future? Perhaps that is why the older models are starting to disappear.

Thank you very much for your time.
 
i7 ultrabooks are ALL dual core as far as I have found, If it doesn't end in QM, it's dual core. there is almost 0 advantage over the i5

You can thus save significant money, or allocate it in to improving other specs dramatically.
 
Just a suggestion, at that price point have you considered getting a MacBook Air and running Windows on it?

Looking at Microcenter, at $1099 you get 256GB SSD. HD5000 graphics versus the HD4000 in the UX21. It's a little slower processor 1.3Ghz i5 versus 1.9Ghz i7, but the purpose it to keep the battery going longer. Same with the use of a more traditional panel 1440x900 versus 1920x1080.

The Air is generally regarded as very high quality in terms of construction and keyboard/mouse feel.

This is from a year ago, but might give you some insight.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/10/2...ndows-7-review-the-ultrabook-to-rule-them-all

If I had that kind of money this is what I would do (and have thought about doing). I don't think I would use OSX on a daily basis just because Windows is so prolific in the work environment I am in, but having native unix support would be nice where as now I run virtualbox inside Windows.
 
If you don't want to go with the MacBook (or MacBook Air) purchased direct from Apple, check out XoticPC - they're one of the better resellers for Asus, Sager, and now Lenovo. They offer several versions of the Zenbook Prime, customization, and you can sort them by what kind of processor model and system size you're looking for (ie If you only want a laptop with a Haswell 4000 series Intel CPU, you can sort only those out et.c.).
 
Not to threadjack but since we are talking ultra books......


What is the thinnest one out there as of now? Anyone hear of them getting any thinner? By thinnest I do mean the thickest part being the thinnest part since most tapper....

I was thinking about getting an Asus Zenbook......
But, I see a lot of MBP Retina's used going for about the same price.

In the same boat as OP.
 
0mega said:
i7 ultrabooks are ALL dual core as far as I have found, If it doesn't end in QM, it's dual core. there is almost 0 advantage over the i5

You can thus save significant money, or allocate it in to improving other specs dramatically.
Click to expand...

That was what I thought at first as well, but benchmarks actually place the i7 over the same-model i5 by 12-18% depending on the application. It's not huge, but it's a reasonable increase. It also only actually costs about $100 to go from the i5 to the i7 in the 21a and 31a models - there aren't many upgrades you could add in for that. Discrete graphics will cost you $200 more easily... you could add another small SSD, but 120gb is really enough for me.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't really see much of a benefit in this particular case.

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@ westrock2000, thank you for the suggestion. Although I admit that I am a little gun-shy of the subject, I would be willing to consider it if I was looking for a 13.3" model. However, I am looking for the smaller 11.6" version.

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Someone mentioned xoticpc. I had thought of that as well. They have the ux21e, the ux31e, and the ux31a models, but for whatever reason there is simply a gap when it comes to the ux21a (the one I want, of course).

I still find it odd that the internet is littered with UX21E ultrabooks, which are much older, but I can hardly find a UX21A anywhere (as a matter of fact, I haven't found ANY (i7) - with the exception of the Best Buy link above).

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On a different note, is it possible that they are holding off on the third generation of Zenbook to get the new Haswell i7 chips into them?

There is a part of me that wants to wait for that, but there is also a part of me that worries that the Zenbooks may not be refreshed again in favor of the newer Vivo Books.

Thoughts?
 
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