Asus U32U is a combination of AMD's Fusion APU fuel-efficient E-450 with luxurious features and a strong battery. Whether this has been achieved despite reflective 13.3-inch display and other weaknesses, we will tell you here.
Ultrabook is a great mobile device but the price is quiet expensive for most potential buyers, thanks to AMD yet another alternative to choose from: Based on the APU, the E-series has a wide range of affordable ultrabook-like laptop, and one of them is the Asus U32U.
The compact Asus 13.3 inch model quipped with the fast 1.65 GHz dual-core E-450, impressive 6 GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard drive. A special highlight, however, is the strong 8-cell battery, which should bring the Asus laptop very long running time.
With a starting price of less than $500 the Asus U32U is great alternative to the more expensive ultrabooks.
Asus U32U Housing
The color of Asus U32U ranges from dull gray to shiny silver classic black, not too eye-catching. But not all buyers prefer a colorful and playful design; a more conservative look has its charms.
Upon closer inspection revealed that the metallic-looking surfaces are in fact largely of plastic. Only the back of the display was covered with a thin cover of brushed aluminum. The housing is not too thin; however, a thickness of 1 inch is still very slim.
The bottom line is that the housing and manufacturing quality moves at an average level.
Equipment of The Asus 13.3 inch Laptop
Unfortunately, in terms of connectivity the Asus U32U only comes with standard equipment. There are in total three USB ports, of which at least two already dominate the current USB 3.0 standard. External displays can be controlled via both VGA and HDMI.
The positioning of the interface leaves a sophisticated impression. All connections are located at the rear of the left or right side. Asus has paid attention also to a meaningful sequence: furthest forward are frequently used ports such as audio connectors or the 3-in-1 card reader (SD, MS, MMC), Kensington lock and the Gigabit LAN port, however, were further back.
The wireless card is manufactured by Atheros (now part of Qualcomm.) The entry model is only capable of the IEEE 802.11b and can not be connected with networks in the 5 GHz band. Because only one transmission stream is supported, the maximum gross data rate of 150 Mbit / s is limited.
The same adapter is also Bluetooth 3.0 + HS ready, but not the current version 4.0. Must also be waived on an integrated WWAN module, UMTS or LTE, the user can simply upgrade to a USB stick itself.
With 0.3 megapixel webcam, the sensor is not quiet good, which is reflected in a poor image quality of photos and videos. Sharpness and noise performance can not convince, and possibly meet for casual video chats. The same goes for the microphone too disappointed with this faint voice recording, slight noise and a limited dynamic range.
The operating system, Windows 7 has been in the 64-bit version, as well as all necessary drivers already installed. There are also various utilities from the manufacturer, for example, to set up a backup or use the webcam.
Keyboard
Asus has equipped the Asus U32U with a black chiclet keyboard. The layout is based on current standards, what makes a short adjustment period. Even the arrow keys have been performed in full size; in addition, the manufacturer has implemented practical shortcuts for various multimedia functions.
The surface of 85 x 50 millimeters wide touchpad from Synaptics has proven to be extremely smooth, which only allows for completely dry hands a smooth sweeping. Who uses his device in the summer with sweaty hands, has up struggling with faltering movements. Apart from that, the pad provides a high accuracy and supports all major multi-touch gestures (including pinch-zoom, rotate, scroll with two fingers).
Below the touchpad are the mouse buttons. Both have a hard and loud clicky tactile feedback, but only at central control.
Asus U32U’s Display
The Asus 13.3-inch displays 1366 x 768 pixels. The resulting pixel density of 118 dpi provides legible fonts and symbols, without the need for the scaling settings.
Although the U32U in color reproduction suggests something better than some of its direct competitors, the display for professional applications in the field of photo editing is still inadequate. By strong reflections on the mirrored surface of the U32U can practically be used only in the shade.
The range of motion of the user is in the vertical especially in highly is restricted, only at absolute vertical viewing an unadulterated view of the image content is possible.
Finally a few words of praise for the analog VGA output of the Asus U32U: This provides an excellent signal quality, even with 1920 x 1200 pixels on an external monitor for us there’s very little difference to the digital HDMI transmission identified.
Asus U32U performance
AMD's low-cost E-450 comes from the APU Zacate series, which competes with Intel's ULV processors, the Celeron and Pentium series. The fast 1.65 GHz dual-core CPU based on the very low power Bobcat architecture, but scores with a low TDP of only 18 watts.
At the center of the fusion concept of an APU is the integration of a powerful graphics processor. In the E-450, these are the Radeon HD 6320, which features 80 shader ALUs in VLIW5 arrangement. With turbo-core, the card can raise its core clock speed of 508 MHz up to 600 MHz automatically if the power granted the necessary clearance. Despite their age, the HD 6320 is also DirectX 11-compatible.
Graphics card and processor share a narrow 64-bit memory interface, which has been generously equipped by Asus with 6 GB of DDR3 RAM.
Apart from its slightly higher clock rate (1.65 to 1.6 GHz) the different between the E-450 and E-350 is not too significant. In our benchmarks, we can detect only small performance differences that are usually barely outside the measurement tolerance.
In Cinebench 11.5 (64 bit) achieves a score of 0.60 points CPU, which is on par with the Atom netbook processor series. In everyday life however, the slightly better single thread performance of the E-450 work vey well.
According to benchmarks with CrystalDiskMark and HD Tune, we can attest to drive a pretty decent performance. 74.8 MB / s sequential transfer rate and access time of 20.7 milliseconds, it is certainly not a record, for an entry-level device however, these values are perfectly adequate.
Let us now take a look at the performance of the entire Asus laptop. The synthetic PCMark Vantage provides only a modest profit of 1636 points in PCMark 7.
Graphics Card
Technologically, the Radeon HD 6320 is closely related to the dedicated Mobility Radeon HD 5400-series. In 3DMark 11, the card provides only a meager 335 points.
The highest with 32.6 fps frame rate we could find in FIFA 12, even if we had to limit ourselves to 800 x 600 pixels and minimal details. In these settings, the football game is quite playable, occasional stuttering, especially when repeated, however, must be taken into account.
Noise, Temperature & Speaker
The small fan is running constantly, producing a noise level from 31.5 to 34.0 dB (A). The Asus U32U is not disturbing in quiet environments, but clearly perceived. This also relates to the hard drive, which mainly when accessing small files with a faint chirping (32.7 dB (A)) stands out.
Heavy exposure in a 3D game increases the noise level in the medium to 36.3 dB (A), the maximum is 37.1 dB (A) obtained in our stress test. AMD notebook here benefits from its slightly thicker casing, which allows a more efficient cooling system.
Even in normal Windows mode a warming of the housing is noticeable, both on the top and also lower at around 33 degrees Celsius.
After all, the palm rests stay relatively cool, but the heat is concentrated increasingly in the area of the keyboard.
The performance of the two stereo speakers quite satisfied.
Power Consumption and Battery Performance
While some laptops with E-450 APU requirements being far less than 6 watts at idle, we measured in the Asus U32U at least 10.8 watts - more than many multimedia devices with 17-inch display.
We can’t really understand this unusually high power consumption, since the power saving processor access seems fine. It can be speculated at this point, whether under certain circumstances an inefficient power supply or other component is responsible for this.
In 3DMark 06, the consumption of 30.1 watts is also above a few percent of competitors. Our stress test brings to light a maximum of 33.2 watts, no problem for the included 65-watt power supply.
The large 8-cell battery delivers 8 hours and 43 minutes in Battery Eater Reader's test (energy saving mode, minimum brightness, radios off) are indeed a very good result, but some laptops are already achieved the same result with a smaller battery, or even surpassed.
The same goes for our WLAN test (energy saving mode, 156 cd / m²). For this measurement, we call on the 40-second intervals of various Web pages or HD video to simulate a practical operation. Here the Asus 13.3 inch laptop runs at least 5 hours and 17 minutes.
Under load, tested with the Battery Eater Classic Test (maximum power, maximum brightness, wireless modules), the Asus U32U delivers 3 hours and 32 minutes.
Conclusion
When buying a cheap notebook or subnotebook, customer must be aware that certain restrictions and compromises inevitable in this price class. This is also true for the Asus U32U. Before going into more detail but on the individual points of criticism, first we want to emphasize the positive aspects of the Asus laptop.
Among other things, the rich equipment, which includes ample storage, two USB 3.0 ports are great things. The built-in E-450 in terms of performance is a little dusty and can not stand against the (more expensive) ULV processors of the competition, but still provides sufficient performance for many everyday tasks. Who uses his laptop mainly for office work, surfing and video playback does not necessarily faster hardware.
Asus U32U 13.3 Inch Laptop Specifications
- Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
- Display: 13.3-inch LED display (1366 x 768)
- CPU: AMD E450 (1.65Ghz)
- Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6320G
- Wireless: 802.11 b/g/n (@ 2.4GHz)
- LAN: 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
- Memory: 4GB DDR3 SDRAM, 2 x SODIMM Sockets (up to 8GB)
- Storage: 320GB 5400RPM
- Camera: 0.3 megapixel
- Speakers: Altec Lansing speakers
- Card Reader: 3-in-1 card reader (SD, MMC, MS)
- Battery Pack: 8- cell
- Dimensions: 112.9” x 9.2” x 1” (W x D x H)
- Weight: 4lbs (with 8-cell battery)
- Input/ Output: 1 x Mic-in 1 x Headphone-out 1 x VGA port/Mini D-Sub 15-pin for external monitor 1 x RJ-45 port 3 x USB 2.0 ports 1 x Bluetooth 3.0 1 x HDMI port
What's in the Box
- U32U-ES21 Notebook
- AC Adapter
- 8-cell Battery Pack
- Warranty Information Card
Title Post: Asus 13.3 Inch Laptop in Review - Asus U32U
Rating: 100% based on 3109 ratings. 5 user reviews.
Author: onSquid
Thank You for Visiting Asus Zenbook Fans
Rating: 100% based on 3109 ratings. 5 user reviews.
Author: onSquid
Thank You for Visiting Asus Zenbook Fans
