ASUS A8He quick review

[E.B.E.]

I have recently bought an ASUS A8He for a friend of mine. I've been tinkering with it last evening, and I thought of sharing the experience.

Summary

I think the A8He is a very good budget notebook. For its price (725 EUR including VAT here in Netherlands, around 730 including shipping) it offers a very respectable array of features that I believe are quite difficult to beat:
- connectivity: GB Ethernet, Wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth
- webcam (0.3MP), Express Card extension slot, 5in1 card reader, S-Video out
- 14" and 2.7kg weight including 6-cell battery (approximately 3kg including the adapter, mouse, and cables)
- 2 years global warranty
- a large HDD
- Windows Vista Business in one of 5 or 6 languages
- included carrying case and mouse

At least as importantly, the build quality seems solid, and the looks are not that bad, either.

Configuration

CPU: Core Duo T2130, 1.83GHz / 1MB L2 cache, FSB 533MHz
GPU: Mobile Intel 943GML Express
RAM: DDR2 1x1GB, 1 free slot
HDD: Seagate SATA 160GB 5400 RPM
ODD: DVD RW SuperMulti
LCD: WXGA 14.1"
BATT: 6-cell 4800 mAh
WLAN: IEEE 802.11a/b/g
PORTS: 5xUSB, GB Ethernet, Modem, 1394, Express Card, 5in1 Card Reader (SD, MMC, MS, MS PRO), VGA out, line out/SPDIF, line in, Kensington lock
MISC: 0.3MP VGA webcam, included Logitech wired notebook mouse, included carrying case

Weight and size:
* 2.39 kg w/o batt, 2.7 kg w/ batt, ~3kg w/batt, adapter, mouse, cables
* H34.8 - 37.3 x L245 x W335 (advertised so please add to the height around 3mm for the feet)

Build quality

* The notebook feels quite solid. There is very little wobble in the hinges, there is absolutely no ripple in the LCD no matter how hard you push its cover from behind; the plastic in the cover is very hard. I feel shall we say 75% comfortable with picking it up from one corner. It holds just fine, but there is a hint of bending which makes me think I shouldn't do this on a regular basis.
* The keyboard feels a little soft when compares to the V6J, but there is no significant flex anywhere on it.
* The color is silver and will wear out in time. Especially painting silver over the touch pad is a bad idea, since it will certainly look ugly and patchy after a few months or so.
* The lid already picked up two very small scratches after a few hours of use on a table. Perhaps investing in lid and palmrest protection is a good idea.

In summary, the build quality is good but take care with that silver paint.

Performance

* The CPU scored 1min33 seconds in SuperPI. Given that my 2MB-cache Core Duo scores 1min20sec, and considering that the T2130 has only half the cache, the score is respectable.
* The GPU runs Aero very smoothly in WXGA, although Vista only gives it a 2.0 in the Experience index.
* The performance out of the box was absolutely horrendous, half of the screen width was filled by the system tray, but after tinkering with the installed and starting programs, changing the antivirus, disabling unneeded services, a few more Vista tricks and a defrag, I was able to make it run smoothly enough. It boots up and shuts down faster than my V6J XP -- but of course I have installed all the software I need on the V6J whereas the A8 is quite fresh and nearly nothing is installed.
* Vista feels a bit tight in the 1GB of RAM, it always uses at least 600 MB of it. Given that the GPU also takes its share of 100 to 200 MB, that leaves precious little for applications. While I was doing Vista updates with the stock applications turned on, it did a HUGE amount of swapping. If you need the laptop for more than emailing, surfing, and document editing, upgrading to 2GB is a must. Of course that's easy because the provided RAM is 1x1GB and there is one free slot, as opposed to many other notebooks in this price range which offer 2x512MB making you necessarily waste 512MB after an upgrade.

Battery life

On battery saving profile, with Aero & Vista gadgets turned off, wireless on, and the screen around 60% brightness (which is quite readable), I estimate a realistic lifetime of around 2:40.

If you really want to squeeze more you turn off the wireless and turn down the screen even more, you can probably beat 3 hours.

Running with Aero and Vista gadgets on will get you around 2 hours 15 mins I believe.

Update: Idle battery rundown time 3 hours and 5 minutes, until notebook hibernation with the default Vista settings. No aero, no gadgets, wireless on, brightness 60%.

Screen quality

Crisp and clear, very good brightness, easily readable at around 50% brightness, hurts your eyes at 100% . Viewing angles are about the same as my V6J, which is to say not so good (see pictures below).

Heat and noise

No noticeable heat problem, even if the Vista updates and me uninstalling stuff in the meantime was pushing the notebook quite hard (mostly HDD-wise but anyway). The fan always runs and makes its "woosh" but it's not worse than my V6J which also always runs. The air that comes out is most of the times quite cold, much colder than what comes out of my V6J. This is probably thanks mainly to the integrated GPU but also to the less powerful CPU.

I did not bother installing software to get exact temp readings.

Layout (ports and others)

I think it's quite well-done. 2 USBs on the right, 1 on the left, and 2 in the back is nearly ideal in my opinion (ideal would be 2 on the left and 1 on the right, for right-handers ). The only problem I have is that the 2USBs in the back are very close to the power plug, and taking into account that the ASUS plugs are L-shaped, having the long side of the L facing the USB ports means they can't be used. Of course all you have to do is turn the power cable around 180 degrees, so this is just a minor annoyance.

VGA and Svideo are at the back, also good.

Vents are on the right-hand side but that's fine with me.

The battery goes to the front of the computer which means the lower side will stay put when you open the screen; which in turn means you'll be able to open it with one hand. That's a very nice feature of the M6BNe that I find in this notebook!

Included accessories; Miscellanea

The Logitech mouse is alright for regular use.

The carrying case is a generic 15.4 one, which means that it's larger than what it could have been and still accommodate the notebook. Also there isn't much room for anything besides the notebook, cables, adapter, and mouse in the case. But that comes with the territory (budget notebook) can't expect too much here...

The wall-side cable for the adapter is very short (about 50cm). They got cheap on that one, but you can always buy a longer one.

I find it very nice that you can select your OS language on the first boot. This has two advantages:
1. No need to do a recovery if your language is different from the default. (which in my case was Dutch, but I am not a Dutch speaker).
2. No need to use the recovery DVDs; can always recover straight from HDD in under half an hour.

Conclusion

In order not to repeat the summary, I will mainly give a list of pros and cons.

Pros:
- more than decent build quality
- many features and ports for a notebook in this price range
- battery life good when compared to other ASUS notebooks of nowadays (even in absolute terms 2:40 in Vista on a 6cell is not so bad)
- tough to find another 14" in this price range
- 2 year global warranty by default

Cons:
- Silver paint will wear off and show scratches, especially on the touchpad
- Short wall-side power cable (going from adapter to the wall socket)

I can't really think of more... in all other respects this notebook delivers very well as a budget machine. If you are considering a budget machine for office or even CPU-intensive work, the ASUS A8He is a very good option.

(Be aware it's possible it's only available in the EU)

Photo Gallery

Top and bottom views. Bottom view shows battery (top-right), HDD compartment (top-left), RAM and CPU compartment (bottom-right)


Side views with ports:


Open:



Detail of keyboard with hotbuttons; status LEDs; and touchpad.


With mouse and adapter. Notice the adapter is small. Also notice the very short wall-side cable of the adapter!


The full bag, and open with picture of notebook and adapter inside.



Compared with V6J
Notice the V6J is thinner by around 1cm, less wide by around 1 - 1.5cm; but longer (deeper) with about 3 cm.
The weights are about the same for the two notebooks.




Screen quality and view angles
(again compared with V6J)

Brighter than the matte V6J. About the same viewing angles. First picture is 100% brightness, the rest 50%. The auto exposure of the camera of course hides the difference between these two settings.







Hoping this helps,

E.B.E.

[E.B.E.]

I might edit in and add stuff as I tinker with it some more.

[Redline]

The horizontal viewing angles aren't too bad, but the vertical viewing angles are predictably crap.

And I think this notebook would do a lot better with XP as opposed to Vista. I wonder, how difficult would it be to do a clean install?

[E.B.E.]

The point is that one would need a separate, paid-for XP system, whereas one has already paid for the Vista (resource-hog as it is).

Also drivers might present a problem (I don't know to what extent though).