ASUS took their very popular Zenbook and built a larger, 15.6” supercharged machine with the Zenbook UX51Vz. Even though there the 13.3” UX32VD model was a powerful enough Ultrabook, ASUS provided this larger model for those that was even more power in their thin and light laptop. This is the perfect machine for those looking for a strong performance, gaming Ultrabook.
The Good: It shares the same sexy design style and build quality of the Zenbook line. The 1080p IPS display looks beautiful. The performance is amazing, especially with the addition of Nvidia GT 650M dedicated graphics.
The Bad: This Zenbook is very expensive! The battery life takes a hit from the dedicated graphics card. Some may be disappointed by the lack of a touchscreen on an Ultrabook at this price-range.
Verdict: The quad-core i7-3612QM paired with dedicated NVIDIA graphics make this thing a beast, but you’ll have to pay a pretty hefty price to get one in your hands. Though this Zenbook is bigger and heavier than the others, the 15.6” screen may be exactly what those of you want in your video editing or gaming machine.
Design
The UX51Vz shares the same sexy look as the previous Zenbooks, the sturdy body being all-metal with a silver finish. With the height of .99-1.2” and weight being 4.5 pounds, it is definitely thicker and heavier than the 13.3” Zenbook UX31a which is 0.11-0.71″ thick and 2.9 pounds, but this is a price to pay when gettings a larger 15.6” display.
Display
Also like previous Zenbooks, this one has the beautiful 1080p display with very wide viewing angles so you can still see clearly at radical angles. The display shows small text very clearly thanks to the high resolution. The colors also pop out very well, making even Window 8’s new Metro start menu look awesome.
One major aspect the display is lacking is touch, which a lot of people would expect on an Ultrabook at this price. The touchpad does a very good job with the gestures, but after using touchscreens a lot lately, it’s easier to start missing it. This may not be a big issue to most gamers and others out there though, as touchscreens do tend to leave those annoying fingerprints and smudges.
Performance
Thanks to the quad-core Intel Core i7-3612QM and the dedicated 2GB Nvidia GT 650M graphics, this Zenbook is an absolute beast when it comes to demanding applications and 3D games. It scored 14,267 on the 3DMark06 benchmark test according to Engadget, which is almost three times the score the high-end, Acer Aspire S7 (without dedicated graphics) scored.
The wickedly fast solid state memory also makes this Zenbook fly through applications and boot-up Windows 8 in around 11 seconds and resume from sleep in under 2 seconds. The UX51Vz uses dual SSD drives to perform even more efficiently, with models being equipped with either two 128GB or two 256GB SSD drives.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard is very nice on and uses island-style keys with plenty of room to make typing comfortable. A plus to the keyboard is the numerical pad and it is all back-lit making typing in the dark easy, though at this price it was be a huge mistake not to add back-lit keys.
The touchpad is also very responsive and accurate using multi-touch and gesture commands with Windows 8’s new touch features. The touchpad does an excellent job, but still may not satisfy those who wanted a touchscreen display.
Battery Life
The battery life is about an hour below average in the video playback battery tests, lasting only around 5 hours while continuously looping videos until death. With the dedicated graphics in use, it only lasted around 4.5 hours in heavy stress battery tests. The average Ultrabook without dedicated graphics survive around 6 hours in the battery test, like the Dell XPS 14 which lasted a little over 6.
Features
Along the right side of the UX51Vz there is a Micro SD card slot, a USB 3.0 port, a mini-VGA port and a port to connect the small subwoofer included with this Zenbook. The left side has an HDMI , Ethernet and two more USB 3.0 ports.
Customer Reviews
“Since they have corrected the fan noise with BIOS 203, and since the Kensington lock is not an issue for me, nor is needing a touchscreen, it is as perfect a laptop as one can get.
The sound is amazing, one of the best in speaker quality I have heard. The display is top notch. The GPU is what I was looking for, a game worthy card. Having that on an i7 with 8GB of RAM, and an SSD, with three USB 3 ports, this doesn’t lack for anything on my list.
I understand the price is high, but anything in the 1000-1500$ range comes with serious compromise: Only 4GB of RAM, a spinning HDD, an Intel HD 4000 onboard card. I wouldn’t have any of that at this stage, and could not find anything with those specs in a light (sub 3 lbs.), thin Ultrabook. When you need those specs in a light, slick-looking package, suddenly the $2000 range is what you end up looking at.” By A. Torres
“If you’re someone who prefers Windows over OS X, then you’ve probably identified the Asus UX51VZ as a potential windows-competitor to the Apple Macbook Pro Retina. My wife has the MBPr, so I have had some experience with it. While Asus gets most things right, I think it falls a little bit short in the hardware department. But don’t get me wrong, this is a great laptop.
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