The ASUS UX430UN promises to pack good specs, including a dedicated GPU, into an Ultrabook form-factor
at an affordable price.
Does it deliver on this promise?
Let's find out.
The model I'm reviewing ships with an Intel Core i5-8250U processor, a dedicated GPU from
Nvidia, the MX150 with 2GB of VRAM, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
You can get this model at Best Buy in Canada for $1,399 or you can pick up an even faster
model with an i7-8550U processor on Amazon in the U.S. for $1,138.
The grey aluminum enclosure is well-machined and well-assembled with no flex on the bottom,
but a significant amount of flex on top.
The brushed aluminum lid has a really nice reflection, but it is a fingerprint magnet.
The bezels are plastic, but they're fairly narrow allowing ASUS to fit a 14-inch panel
into a fairly compact form that weighs only 1.25 kg or 2.76 lbs.
But the footprint of the laptop is significantly larger than the 13-inch HP Spectre x360, for
example, or the Dell XPS 13.
Overall though, I'd say this laptop is light and easy to carry.
Okay, let's take a look at the ports.
Along the left side of the laptop you've got a barrel plug power connector, USB 3.1 port,
a Micro-HDMI port, your headphone jack, and a USB-C port.
On the right side you've got a USB 2.0 legacy port and an SD card reader.
The 14-inch IPS display on this computer has a native resolution of 1920x1080, a pixel
density of 157 PPI, and an aspect ratio of 16:9.
The display is fairly vibrant and it can get fairly bright too, if you follow one piece
of advice.
See, out of the box the ambient light sensor is on and it's a hot piece of garbage.
So, turn off auto-brightness and you'll actually be able to boost the screen to maximum brightness.
The feature is broken, so you should leave it off.
The keyboard... it's just okay.
The layout's pretty standard, though, because I live in Canada I still have to put up with
the bilingual model.
The keys have 1.4 mm of travel and they press pretty evenly, but they're pretty soft, so
I wish there was more tactile feedback.
The trackpad's also a mixed bag.
This is a Windows Precision Touchpad so it is precise and it's accurate and it handles
multi-touch gestures really well.
The button's firm, but the problem is that it sticks and that makes double-clicking really
hard.
So you pretty much have to use tap-to-click here.
There's a fingerprint reader in the upper-right, which I think is a great location.
It's fast, it's accurate, and it was my preferred method of logging in on this laptop.
Performance is sort of middle-of-the-road.
I measured an average Geekbench score of 13,245 and an average PCMark 10 score of 3,690.
And on the SSD, I measured an average sequential read of 558 MB/s and an average sequential
write of 530 MB/s.
Now the SSD is not an NVMe, so you're not going to get the fastest speeds, but it's
still an SSD so boot and application load times are still going to be really quick.
Like the last laptop I reviewed, the Acer Aspire 5, this has both an integrated Intel
UHD Graphics 620 for everyday tasks and a dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX150 with 2GB of memory.
On paper, it should do well playing most games at
720 or 1080p with low or medium settings,
but performance seems to be limited, maybe by bad thermals.
It performs significantly worse than the Aspire 5.
I saw an average of 55 fps in Overwatch at 1080p and on medium settings, versus 67 fps
on the Aspire 5.
And I saw 15 fps on Deus Ex at the same settings versus 18 on the Aspire 5.
Civilization VI saw an average of 49 fps in the early game and 25 fps in the late game,
which was also less than the Aspire 5.
And you can find all of my detailed benchmarks, including 3DMark scores, in the description
below.
This laptop has two speakers and they carry the Harman Kardon badge.
They're loud and fairly full-sounding, but they're downward-facing, so they can get muffled
pretty easily if the laptop's sitting in your lap or on a soft surface.
Battery life on this computer is something of an anomaly.
I measured a PCMark 8 score of 3 hours and 29 minutes, which is extremely low for a laptop
in this category.
For example, I measured 5 hours and 14 minutes for the 13-inch HP Spectre x360 and 5 hours
and 39 minutes for the Acer Aspire 5.
Now, I only ran the test once—it's all I had time for—so it might not be accurate.
My advice is to do your own research on this and then make your own decisions before pulling
the trigger.
There's one more thing I want to talk to you about and that's this ...
[annoying static]
Right?
It's annoying.
It's coil whine and you can definitely hear it in a quiet room.
So, what's the verdict?
Well on paper you get good specs at an affordable price and I really like the design.
But in the real world, the negatives, the middle-of-the-road performance, the coil whine,
the soft keys, the touchpad button that sticks and the battery life mystery, those all outweigh
the positives like the decent screen, and the good speakers, and the compact and light-weight
design.
And I think there are other Ultrabooks out there that offer better performance without
the issues.
And if it's a dedicated GPU you're looking for, well the MX150 is showing up in a lot
of other laptops so I think you should look elsewhere.
Alright folks, well, thats it for this video.
If you have feedback feel free to leave it in the comments below.
If you've got suggestions for other laptops people should consider, leave those in the
comments as well.
If you like this video, like, share, subscribe, and turn on notifications.
Thanks again and we'll see you next time.