Asus Zenbook UX303UB-DH74T Notebook Review

[Redaktion]

High resolution at a cost. The UX303 series has been around since the days of Sandy Bridge, but this is the first Skylake QHD model to make it into our labs. Unfortunately, the upgrade comes with a couple of consequences.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-UX303UB-DH74T-Notebook-Review.156912.0.html

[markbowen]

Great review but with one inconsistency.  Under the maintenance section, you mention an M.2 slot, but list the lack of M.2 as a con in the summary.  I don't see an M.2 slot in the photo, and I think there is not one.

Anyway, just bought the European version of this notebook for my wife, since it ticked all the boxes of what she wanted in a laptop (smaller and lighter than her current 15.6" notebook, touchscreen, backlit keyboard, quiet) and has generally favorable real-world user reviews, unlike the other notebook I seriously considered, the XPS 13.

The only thing I can comment on is the emissions, and being very picky about that sort of thing I have to say the UX303UB is astonishingly quiet, considering the presence of two cooling fans for the CPU and the video, while also remaining quite cool.  I do not hear the electronic noise you mention even with my ear right up to the keyboard, except in certain cases when the SSD is working (e.g. installing programs).  I would attribute that to Asus' unfortunate choice to use a cheapo Hynix SSD, which is a shame in an otherwise well-designed and built notebook. 

To be fair, the installed SSD has decent enough read/write speeds (about 500/400), but at this price point Asus should have gone with an M.2 SSD or at least a higher quality SATA SSD.  Doubtful it will be an issue for the wife since she's not a power user who would be putting the SSD through its paces, but if it is then I'll open it up and install something better.

So I would say user mileage may vary on the emissions, but the rest of the review seems spot on.

[Collin]

Hi there,

Thanks for such a detailed review of this notebook. I've purchased it and found it to be a solid machine, but I've found the electronic noise you mentioned in the review to be more irritating than I anticipated. Is there anything I can do to fix it?