Asus UX330CA and Asus X541U Review

themctipers · July 21, 2017

I was on a hunt for a laptop, and I found the UX330CA. Originally, it had fit everything I wanted it to have. 1080p, IPS, SSD, 7th gen, and it is all packaged into a nice little laptop. But, parents wanted to wait for it to be on a sale. Well, when it went on sale, they found another laptop. The Asus X541U. More specifically, since Asus's product pages suck, the model with a 1080p TN screen, i5 7200u, AC wifi and Bluetooth. This one was about $100 cheaper, but I didn't know how good it was. So I convinced them to buy both, and for me to test out which one was the better laptop for me to use (Coming from a Core Duo laptop that could barely do 144p YouTube in Firefox running BunsenLabs, yeah.)

For future reference, I will be using 'Laptop 1' as the UX330CA, and 'Laptop 2' as the X541U.

Packaging:

Laptop 2:

Spoiler

The packaging was a bit dull. I had only experienced opening a laptop box once in my life, so I had 'high' expectations. This laptop came this box:

Which doesn't really tell you much I guess. The back has some information about the specs, and the fact that it had a battery and AC adapter.

Opening the box was something that I did not expect. You would have to slide out the laptop carefully, as you could not open the front cover. After that, the AC adapter and the two manuals it comes with fell out.

The laptop came with a keyboard cover when I opened it up, and there was a wrapping around it.

My previous Asus laptop, the Asus S56CM came like this too. Although the back had the brushed aluminium go sideways instead of vertically,

Laptop 1:

Spoiler

It came with a more interesting box, with a picture showcasing the laptop.

There were two flaps you had to open, and then you could lift up the box cover to reveal your laptop, the AC adapter to the right, and below the laptop was a compartment with two manuals.

Came with a keyboard cover too, the back has a circled back pattern like the one in the picture.

Here is a comparison between the two laptops for size. And a iPhone 5 for scale

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Thermals:

Laptop 2:

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Not much to say. There is a heatsink and fan cooling down the i5 7200u, and it does an alright job at maintaining temperatures, but the noise is pretty loud for my liking.

15 minutes of Intel XTU stress test.

Here is what the fan sounds like under load:

New_Recording_12.m4a

It has the same sound when 'idle', and the temperatures are about 50-60c. It is just quieter by a bit.

Laptop 1:

Spoiler

This laptop has no fan, and the aluminium body is the heatsink. This is why it got pretty hot on the bottom. The top was warm too, a nice warm temperature. The F keys were normal temperature and the keyboard, palm rest, and trackpad was normal.

Not bad, but don't expect it to be pleasant when it reaches its maximum frequency for more than half a minute as it gets hot FAST.

Test was done with stock, minimal applications (damn you Spotify..) and on a table. High power preset was used, 100% brightness, both connected to the same AC wifi. Bluetooth was not enabled.

Cinebench R15 'R15.038':

Spoiler

Laptop 2:

Laptop 1:

Battery:

Spoiler

Played back a YouTube video in Chrome Incognito, 1080p 30FPS, 100% brightness.

Laptop 2 came in at 15% left, and Laptop 1 came in at 55% left.

The battery capacity of Laptop 1 is 54Wh

The battery capacity of Laptop 2 is 34.5Wh.

CSGO:

Spoiler

Fucking LTT didn't autosave this.

Did not expect much out of these laptops, expected just enough performance to maybe play a round of CS on the go. Nope..

Settings used:

Laptop 2:

Laptop 1:

Minecraft:

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Yeah, don't really have much to say for this. Don't play Minecraft on a Ultrabook I guess, it never ends up well, especially on these U class CPUs (Ultra SHIT)

Wifi Performance:

Spoiler

Laptop 2 couldn't hold a stable AC connection in my basement. Which is bad, since I am almost in my basement all the time..

Worst case scenario:

In my basement.

Laptop 2:

Laptop 1:

Just because there is a decent Mbit reading doesn't mean that it will perform good for me. Laptop 2 takes about 10 seconds to load Google for me..

Average case:

In the living room.

Laptop 2:

Laptop 1:

Best case:

Right up near the router, which is in the master bedroom on the top floor.

Laptop 2:

Laptop 1:

Don't ask me why the closer I get the worse the speeds go.

Ethernet:

Laptop 2:

I have no idea why it is so low compared to WiFi speeds. It's the same slowness on all the Ethernet devices I use, probably because of 10/100 being used somewhere as we have 3-4 switches in use for Ethernet.

Laptop 1: NA, no Ethernet jack.

Display:

Spoiler

Well this is a no brainer. Obviously Laptop 1 is going to win. Both have the same resolution, one is slightly larger and the other is slighty smaller though, but the slightly smaller one has IPS. This being my first laptop with IPS, I had high expectations for how it was going to be much better than any other display I've used. Sadly, that's not the case. It feels like I am using my regular 4k monitor in terms of colours and blacks.

Charging Speed:

Spoiler

Laptop 2 - 1:50 to charge up from 3% to 90%
It was charging rapidly, faster than laptop 1 by almost 10% in the beginning, but then it slowed down dramatically after 80%. Then it fell behind Laptop 1.

Laptop 1 - 1:50 to charge up from 3% to 93%

Was charging slowly in the beginning, and well the whole time. But it remained the same charging rate and didn't slow down as much as Laptop 2 at 80%.

Misc:

Spoiler

Microphone!

Recording.m4a - Laptop 1

Recording (2).m4a - Laptop 2

Web cam!

Laptop 2:

Laptop 1:

LED Backlighting! (Only on UX330CA)

Full brightness minimum backlit:

Minimum brightness minimum backlighting:

Brightest backlighting minimum brightness:

Maximum brightness maximum backlighting:

Fingerprint reader! (Only on UX330CA)
About the same as my 6s in speed, it gets my fingerprint right most of the time.

Keyboard sounds!

New Recording 13.m4a - Laptop 1

Trackpad!
Laptop 2 has a terrible trackpad. Terrible, not smooth feeling plastic on that one, and Laptop 1 has a 'almost a MacBook Pro' feel to it's trackpad. Like, a light layer of glass, opposed to their thick layer of glass on the trackpad.

Both are microsoft precision.

Speakers!

They both sound average. Laptop 2 has better bass though, but that probably has to do with the 'SonicMaster' speakers it has and its driver to EQ the audio.

Bootup test!

CSMark 0.11.0.0 by @AluminiumTech

Spoiler

Plugged into AC, high performance preset, single run, level '1' accuracy

Laptop 2: