Asus ZenBook UX305 review

A respectable budget addition to the ZenBook line

The ZenBook UX305 starts at £649 and is one of the more affordable models in Asus' ZenBook series that has made the Taiwanese firm a four-year veteran of producing slim but strong ultrabooks.

Competing devices commonly nudge the £1,000 mark, including the 2015 Apple MacBook Air, so the ZenBook UX305 definitely seemed worthy of a look. We spent a few days trying it out to see whether Asus has delivered a bargain or whether the low price tag comes at a rather different cost.

Design
The ZenBook UX305 looks like a much more expensive product than it actually is. Besides an attractive laser-etched lid, the case is all tasteful matte aluminium which gives the whole thing a pleasant feel, along with a sturdiness and an impressive resistance to scratches.

It's more than light enough to carry around comfortably, despite the abundance of metal. In fact, at just 1.2kg it weighs less than the MacBook Air of the same 13.3in screen size. It's thinner too, at 324x226x12.3mm.

That's still enough for a nice, roomy keyboard and a generous trackpad that's as spacious as it is responsive. It would have been even better if the keys were backlit, but they're well-proportioned enough that we could type accurately even in the dark.

Or at least, we could after changing the language settings. US English was set as the default input despite physically using the UK English keyboard layout, thwarting our ability to type pound signs. An odd little oversight, albeit one that can at least be quickly fixed.

The ZenBook UX305 also has room for quite a few connectivity options - more than we've come to expect from such a skinny ultrabook. There are three USB 3.0 ports, a 2-in-1 SD/SDXC card reader and a micro HDMI port, as well as a bundled USB-to-Ethernet adapter.

Of course, the ZenBook UX305 is designed to go wireless (where it can take advantage of the 802.11ac WiFi support), but it's good to know that it can still stay connected even in environments where cable-cutting remains an alien concept.

Like an increasing number of notebooks and ultrabooks that also use Intel's cool-running Core M chips, the ZenBook UX305 eschews a fan and is therefore practically silent.

There was one period where, after running for a couple of hours, the entire right side (including the keyboard) became uncomfortably warm, although to be fair this occurred during the UK's hottest July day on record. Temperatures, both of the ZenBook UX305 and London, were far more tolerable afterwards.

Display
The ZenBook UX305's IPS display is large and sharp enough for most tasks at 13.3in diagonally and with a full HD resolution of 1920x1080. We've seen brighter whites and deeper blacks, but colour quality is otherwise high and viewing angles very nearly reach a full 180 degrees.

In other words, this is a very good screen, which is why it's so disappointing to see the anti-glare coating give the entire thing an unfortunate grainy effect.

Don't get us wrong: we criticise other displays for their reflectivity on a fairly regular basis, and the coating on the ZenBook UX305 does an admirably effective job of preventing glare.

It's just that the graininess is very noticeable indeed, especially over blocks of a single colour. We can definitely see this being a problem for creatives who need a display to be immaculately clear, even if most people could probably live with it.

Next: Operating system, software and performance

Asus ZenBook UX305 review

A respectable budget addition to the ZenBook line

Operating system and software
Asus has stuck with the most up-to-date OS options, offering Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Pro. Our test unit ran the former, and there's obviously a price premium on the latter, but enterprise users should definitely consider the Pro version.

It includes additional encryption protection via BitLocker, as well as the ability to host remote desktop access from another PC.

Still, even the basic Windows 8.1 has the benefit of running any and all Windows-designed software and legacy applications, and the ZenBook UX305's excellent trackpad helps to compensate for the lack of a touchscreen when navigating the Metro UI's tiles.

We're a little less happy that Asus has also loaded the ZenBook UX305 with an assortment of its own dubiously useful applications. We could uninstall them without problems, but we'd prefer not to have to do so in the first place.

There's also a distinct lack of enterprise-oriented software. Skype and OneNote are the only pre-installed programs likely to see much use in a business context, and there's nothing in the way of additional drive encryption or device management tools. Such features could have greatly improved the ZenBook UX305's business and security credentials.

Performance
Our test model of the ZenBook UX305, like most models we've seen available online, packed a 5th-generation Intel Core M-5Y10, a dual-core CPU with a modest base clock speed of 800MHz.

The 1.2GHz dual-core Core M-5Y71 is an option from US retailers, but we couldn't find any UK sellers offering the more powerful processor. Both are, in any case, slower on paper than the MacBook Air's 1.6GHz dual-core Intel i5, although the ZenBook UX305 boasts double the Air's RAM with a hearty 8GB.

In any case, the ZenBook UX305 put in some fine benchmark scores: 410.6ms in Sunspider and 1891.1ms in Kraken. These marks fall short of premium ultrabook performance, which is to be expected given the price, but it's worth noting that they are very close to those of the recently reviewed HP Elite x2 1011 G1, a top-end Windows convertible costing well over twice as much.

As for how it coped with everyday tasks, the ZenBook UX305 had no trouble with web browsing or document editing, although it lagged quite heavily when we tried editing pictures in Gimp. The stuttering lessened when we closed some other windows, but still noticeably persisted.

The ZenBook UX305 did much better with video editing and basic 3D modelling, remaining swift and smooth throughout both, but the sustained sluggishness when working with images is a considerable cause for concern.

The fact that closing a handful of other applications significantly improved performance is also a worrying sign that the 8GB of RAM isn't actually that helpful for intensive multitasking.

Next: Camera, battery, storage and conclusion

Asus ZenBook UX305 review

A respectable budget addition to the ZenBook line

Camera
Integrated webcams tend to produce fuzzy, desaturated images, and the 1.2MP camera sitting above the ZenBook UX305's screen is no different. Even in well-lit rooms, the stills and 720p videos we captured were uniformly washed out and noisy.

On the positive side, movement appears surprisingly smooth - no blurred-out gesticulations here - making it an adequate video calling tool.

Battery and storage
Asus claims that the ZenBook UX305 will provide up to 10 hours of normal working use, or up to eight hours of video playback. Amazingly, this was one of the rare cases where the official estimates turn out to be conservative.

We burned the battery by looping a video file on full screen, and found that the ZenBook UX305 lasted eight hours and 19 minutes on average, thanks in part to Intel's power-sipping Broadwell CPU.

The flipside is that, despite running three such tests under identical conditions, individual results were inconsistent, ranging from a marathon nine hours and 50 minutes to just six hours and 25 minutes.

We're happy that the majority of strong results worked out at a high overall average, but we're not terribly keen on the idea of being forced to carry the charger around just in case we get unlucky with a (seemingly random) sub-seven hour battery life.

The SSD capacity is also on the small side at just 128GB, with 104GB of usable space left over from the OS, firmware and pre-installed apps. Again, the UK seems to be missing out here, as US and Australian sellers stock models with up to 512GB of storage.

Asus does throw in a free 16GB of Asus WebStorage, which is more than most other cloud providers offer, although it's not likely to tempt individuals and businesses that have already settled on the likes of Dropbox, Google Drive, Box or OneDrive.

Overall
A functional but unspectacular ultrabook, the ZenBook UX305's strengths lie in superior portability and competitive price rather than performance or enterprise features.

As such, it's a decent choice for home and office users who want an affordable desktop replacement or notebook upgrade. As is often the way, however, the pursuit of a lower price has resulted in a number of compromises, most notably to the CPU and SSD.

Those who need their laptop to keep pace with more demanding tasks than web browsing and word processing should therefore keep their eyes open and their wallets braced.