E.B.E.'s ASUS F6Ve User Review

[E.B.E.]

ASUS F6Ve User Review


At the end of March 2009 I bought an ASUS F6Ve from GenTechPC with the help of Ken Lee. I take this opportunity to thank Ken again for his absolutely outstanding help; this was my best experience so far purchasing an electronic equipment.

As I usually do when I buy a new notebook, I will review it. My review will focus on the usability and build of the notebook, adding further insight and novel information to the already existing ASUS F6Ve Review by Kevin. Readers interested in this model might also want to read the review for the predecessor model: ASUS F6V User Review by ChickenRoyale. While the configuration has changed, the chassis has not, so the remarks about the build and materials of the F6V remain valid also for the F6Ve.

My specifications are the same as in the main review so I will not repeat them here.

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Reasons for buying

I bought the F6Ve as a replacement for my aging (but still running great) ASUS V6J. I needed a subdued-looking notebook that was small while still being usable as my main (work and leisure) machine; and that provided sufficient power to run intensive mathematical simulations, as well as some current and upcoming games at low settings (most notably, Half Life 2 Episodes 1, 2, the upcoming Half Life 2 Episode 3; Risen; and Gothic 4).

The F6Ve fit my requirements perfectly. It was a 13.3" machine, which is a good compromise between portability and usability as a main machine. It had a T9550 CPU which provided sufficient power for running mathematical simulations and games; and an ATI Radeon HD 4570 GPU, which was among the best GPUs offered in a 13.3" machine by any manufacturer. I was also swayed by the excellent connectivity of the notebook (most relevant, 3xUSB, ESATA, VGA + HDMI, -- see the Ports section below for details), by the warranty package offered by ASUS (2 years parts & labor + 1 year accidental), and -- last but not least -- by the fact that I am familiar with the ASUS brand, and so I knew roughly what to expect from the laptop.

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Build quality

The build of the F6Ve is what I had expected: satisfactory without being stellar. I was aware before buying that I should not expect the excellent build quality with which I was accustomed from my older ASUS machines (M6BNe, V6J, and to a lesser extent W7Sg), because the F6Ve is a budget machine, and the build quality of ASUS notebooks has been going steadily down over the past few years.

The chassis is quite strong, and there is no bending when picking up from any corner. The plastics that make up the surface of the notebook are average in quality. There is some creaking when picked up from the optical drive corner. The screen bends to an acceptable degree (unfortunately almost every mainstream notebook has a bendable screen); and there is no rippling on the screen surface when forcefully poked by fingers from behind. The hinges are flexible yet strong enough to avoid "wobbling" when using the notebook on the lap or in a moving vehicle.

My main complaint on the build of this notebook concerns the keyboard. It flexes at many points, mainly because there are no screws holding it from underneath. Instead, the keyboard plate is supposed to go under tabs on the top, left, and right; and under the keyboard rim at the bottom. On the bottom, the keyboard is indeed strongly and securedly fixed. However, it has problems reaching the tabs to the left and right at the same time, because the keyboard plate is a milimeter or two too narrow. Additionally, on the first unit I received, the keyboard also had problems reaching all the tabs at the top; as a result, the keyboard was bent out of shape, and it wobbled a lot while typing. Ken was kind enough to exchange the defective unit for a new one, on a very short notice. I suspect the unit that Kevin got for his review also had this defect, hence his remarks:

Keyboard support was lacking in certain areas causing some flex or trampoline feeling while typing. At times this was distracting or just plain annoying if the movement caused the keyboard to rub and "pop" against the surrounding trim.

The computer is slightly heavier than expected given its size. This is probably due to the relatively large cooling system needed to deal with all the heat eliminated by the strong CPU and GPU.

Other minor build issues:

• There is some flexing of the palmrest near the top-left corner of the touchpad, including some of the touchpad surface.
• There is a small click when moving the power tip in the power jack, which indicates something is not entirely fixed in there. The movement itself is very minor though, so I don't expect this to cause issues in the long run.
• The wireless on/off hotbutton feels a bit too small and flimsy. This is just an impression, the button may in fact be quite robust.

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Aesthetics and materials

The notebook has sober, subdued looks, less "flashy" than other recent ASUS notebooks -- and this was one important reason for which I chose it. I must note that I strongly disagree on this point with Kevin's review, which faults the notebook for its subdued looks. I am quite satisfied with the looks of the F6Ve. This doesn't mean, of course, that Kevin is wrong. It simply means that assessing looks is very subjective, one person's "beautiful" is another person's "ugly".

The notebook is black, with a combination of glossy and matte materials, and silver accents along the top of the keyboard and around the touchpad (including the touchpad buttons). Even though I would prefer no glossy surfaces at all, at least the palmrest is matte, together with most of the LCD bezel. This is a good choice, since the palmrest is where the notebook is touched most of the time. The palmrest also has a textured surface which increases friction. The glossy parts are: LCD top (not a very good idea since fingers go there often, as well); a 0.5cm rim around the LCD screen; a similarly narrow bezel around the keyboard; and a band at the bottom of the palmrest, which includes the status LEDs. The LCD top has a barely noticeable spirograph pattern; all the better, since I would prefer the pattern to not be there at all.

The LCD bezels are rather large (1.5cm each side, 2.8cm on the bottom where speakers are located, and 2.5cm on the top where the camera is located). The larger size of the LCD frame is probably necessary to accommodate the larger size of the machine box itself, where the powerful components are located. However, I have noticed some open spaces inside the notebook when I removed the keyboard; so, a better-designed layout might have saved some space.

Glossy LCD top. Open notebook

Matte, textured palmrest. Keyboard, palmrest, touchpad


The webcam is an accessory that I could do without, but it seems it's more and more difficult to find a notebook without one nowadays. It's not intrusive, so I don't have a problem with it.

An important disadvantage of this notebook is that the standard 6-cell battery is protruding by 1.8cm. This is aesthetically unpleasant and increases the effective size of the notebook. There is a 3-cell battery which is flush with the body of the notebook, but halves the battery life. There is also a 9-cell battery which protrudes even more.

1.3MP webcam. Back with protruding battery


I will say this here, although it is related to olfactory aesthetics, rather than visual aesthetics. The notebook is marketed as "scented". This scent is in fact a noticeable and unpleasant smell, generated by the fan pulling air through a cloth. This cloth is imbibed with a chemical that generates the smell. This smelly problem can easily be solved by removing the keyboard and then the cloth in question. The cloth leaves some sticky residue behind on the chassis, which can be removed with some work. (Needless to say, I did this as soon as possible.)

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Included accessories

The accessories included are standard for an ASUS notebook:

• 6-cell battery.
• 90W power adapter, with a strap attached to the computer-side cable, for tying it in a loop. The adapter is quite large, but that's the standard size for ASUS adapters nowadays.
• Wired Logitech mouse.
• Good looking, reasonable-quality, but not very spacious 13.3" carry bag.
• Screen protection cloth, dustcloth.
• Wired modem cable and S-Video cable (standard accesory, although this notebook does not have S-Video out).
• Vista recovery disk.
• Drivers and utilities disk.
• DVD burning software disk.
• Possibly other disks that I don't remember because I'll never use them.

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Keyboard and touchpad

Besides reminding you of the keyboard support issues mentioned in the Build section, I will make a few other remarks. The keys themselves are slightly shiny but do not pick up fingerprints. The key feedback is good; typing produces small "clacking" sounds because there is very little space to disperse the sound under the keyboard. The Enter, Backspace, Backslash, and Tilde keys, together with the Del-Home-PgUp-PgDn-End column, are not full-width; and the Esc-F1---F12-Del row is not full-height, in order to make the keyboard fit in the 13.3" frame. However, this layout does not slow down typing once you've adjusted to it. The Control button is in the corner of the keyboard, to the left of the Fn button. This does require some adjusting if, like me, you are used to the Fn button being in the corner (as was the case in many older ASUS notebooks).

Besides the flex issue mentioned in the Build section, the touchpad works well, has a good sensitivity and a good, smooth surface texture. One particularity worth mentioning is that the active area of the touchpad seems to be slightly smaller than its physical area. This can cause problems when using the Edge Motion feature to drag objects over a large distance (this feature continues moving the pointer with the dragged object, in the same direction, after the edge of the touchpad has been reached, if the finger keeps pressing the touchpad). Before reaching the edge of the physical touchpad, the object can be dropped because the finger has left the active touchpad area.

Keyboard. Touchpad with LEDs

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Internals

As already mentioned, the internal components of this notebook are remarkably powerful for its size. The T9550 CPU will cut through most tasks without an issue, helped by the 4GB of RAM. The ATI Radeon HD 4570 GPU is among the best that can be found in a 13.3" frame. The only 13.3" notebook with a better GPU that I know of (in May 2009) is the LG P310, which has an nVidia 9600GT. The HDD, at 320GB, is not the largest that can be found, but will accomodate the needs of many users.

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Ports & placement. Hotbuttons. LEDs

Connectivity is outstanding for a notebook of this size: GB Ethernet, Modem, VGA and HDMI out, ESATA, 34mm Express Slot, SD/SDHC/MMC SDcard reader, Atheros WLAN, Bluetooth, Line In and headphone/SPDIF out.

The USB ports are acceptably arranged: 2 to the left and 1 to the right, although the small distance between the 2 ports on the left will prevent wider devices from being simultaneously plugged into those 2 ports. I could have used an extra USB port, but that's probably too much to ask from this little notebook. The ESATA port is in a rather uncomfortable position: left and towards the user, at the very corner of the notebook; this is aggravated by the fact that ESATA cables are usually quite stiff and difficult to bend. A much better location for the ESATA port would have been at the back.

The VGA plug does not go in all the way inside the socket; it protrudes by a couple of milimeters. Together with the fact that here are no screwholes for the VGA plug, this makes the connection feel insecure.

The fact that ports are distributed along three sides of the notebook may create some cable spaghetti in an office environment. Unfortunately, this problem is difficult to avoid while having so many connections in such a small notebook.

The vent is placed towards the left, which will satisfy people that do not like having warm air blown on their right (mouse) hand.

Port layout: Left, right, and back views


As to hotbuttons, they are nearly nonexistent. To the left of the notebook, there is a main wireless on/off switch which toggles the WLAN as well as bluetooth, and an ExpressGate power on button which doubles as a power-profile switch in Windows (if Power4Gear is installed). All the other hotbutton functionality is achieved through Fn+button combinations. There are no dedicated combinations for WLAN on/off and for Bluetooth on/off. Instead, the Wireless Console software has to run in the background, and then Fn+F2 cycles through WLAN-Bluetooth on/on, on/off, off/on, off/off (alternatively, a lot of clicks in Device Manager are required to selectively turn these two devices on and off). Requiring an additional piece of software to run for this basic functionality is not a great solution; however, all the other Fn+F* combinations are occupied with other functions, so I can't blame the designers much on this issue.

The status LEDs are OK, without being outstanding. They are white, and placed just under the touchpad, on the rim of the notebook, so that they are visible when the screen is closed. They are nowhere as nice as the blue LEDs on the W7Sg or V6J models. Also, unlike in those computers, no LEDs are replicated on the LCD cover.

Hotbutton bar. LEDs


Oh yes, there is also a fingerprint reader located between the touchpad buttons. I always forget about it because I never use it.

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Heat and noise

Heat and noise management is very good on this notebook, suprisingly so given the powerful components in such a small chassis. When idling (without large loads on CPU or GPU) the fan is running at a very low speed, and the notebook is near-silent -- it would only be possible to hear it in the quietest of environments. The fan speeds up in stress conditions and becomes audible, but not exceedingly so. The heat propagated to the palmrest is well managed, and never becomes annoying, not even when the notebook is running at full blast. Overall, excellent performance in this area.

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Battery life

The battery life is only average. With all my usual background applications running, the USB radio dongle for my wireless mouse in use, WLAN off, and brightness at 40% (which is still quite usable), I get a power consumption of around 16W when the GPU is set to a power-saving mode. This corresponds to about 3 hours battery life from the 52Wh 6-cell battery. In fact, the 16W power consumption is quite good (I didn't manage to get such a low consumption ever since my Pentium-M M6BNe computer), but the 6-cell battery itself doesn't hold much charge. The 9-cell battery would improve the battery life, but would protrude more from the back.

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Screen

The screen is very bright, with good colors and good contrast. Typical viewing angles: horizontal quite good, vertical rather bad. The 1280x800 resolution is, in my opinion, perfect for a 13.3" 16:10 screen. Although I would have personally preferred a 4:3 screen, those are all but extinct nowadays.

The screen is glossy, like virtually all new notebook screens. That is a significant annoyance for me. In daylight and even inside a bright room, the screen of the F6Ve comfortably acts as a mirror. In the first few days, before getting accustomed to the glossy screen, I used to get headaches due to my brain always working hard at filtering out the reflections from the image. Glossy screens are bad, and that's my final word. But just like webcams, they're necessary evils nowadays.

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Speakers

The speakers are rather bad. They have no lows, and no mid-range, and should not be used unless absolutely necessary. Headphones or external speakers are strongly recommended. The F6Ve speakers are located on the LCD bezel, below the LCD itself.

Speakers

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Windows XP

Rather with bothering with Vista, I installed Windows XP on the F6Ve. (Windows 7 is just around the corner, so I don't want to invest time in Vista.) I used XP drivers graciously provided by Ken from GenTechPC. In the meantime, ASUS have added XP drivers for this model on their support website (support.asus.com), so I strongly suggest using those if you want to install XP.

One thing to keep in mind is that the IATA 78 SATA drivers did not support the ICH9M SATA controller on this notebook, so I had to slipstream the IATA 88 version on the XP disk before being able to install XP. Alternatively, you can put the SATA interface into PATA emulation mode from the BIOS, and then you don't have to use any SATA drivers at all.

My 3DMark06 score is 3229, under XP with the ATI Catalyst 9.3 suite for desktop cards. This score is slightly better than the one obtained by Ken Lee under the stock Vista configuration (he got 3166, see the GenTechPC F6Ve page).

I still have some minor issues with Windows XP, and I believe they are caused by incompatibilities in the drivers. Namely:

• The sound "stutters" sometimes; this is far from being a serious problem, but it is mildly annoying.
• My 1TB external drive is not working via ESATA connection, while it did work in the default Vista installation.

If you have any ideas on addressing the two unsolved issues, please post on this thread -- I would be grateful for a solution.

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Photo comparison: F6Ve vs. W7Sg

The W7Sg is an earlier notebook from ASUS, similar to the F6Ve: high performance in a 13.3" package. In this section, I provide a photo comparison between the two notebooks. The W7Sg is on top, the F6Ve on the bottom. They are both equipped with their 6-cell batteries.

The two notebooks are very similar in size, with the W7Sg being slightly smaller and having slimmer top and bottom LCD bezels. The advantage gained by this is nearly eliminated by its protruding webcam. The keyboard is placed higher up on the F6Ve, which helps with wrist support while typing.

Open notebooks. Screen and bezel. Keyboard, palmrest, touchpad


The two notebooks have nearly the same height, with the W7Sg being fractionally higher. The layout is almost reversed left-to-right.

Side views: left, right. Front view


The W7Sg is slightly less tall than the F6Ve, but the advantage thus gained is almost fully eliminated by the protruding webcam. On the other hand, the protruding 6-cell battery of the F6Ve is an important disadvantage relative to the W7Sg.

Top views: front, back

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Conclusions

I am overall quite satisfied with this notebook. It is, in almost every way, what I expected it to be. However, some build and aesthetics issues prevent it to be the "love at first sight" that the M6BNe and V6J were (and even the W7Sg, to some extent). I want to stress again that, although it is not very popular, the F6Ve provides excellent performance in a small 13.3" package, at an acceptable price. So, if you want a fast, small notebook, take a closer look at the F6Ve.

Pros:

• Excellent performance in a 13.3" package
• Very good connectivity
• Reasonable build quality with good, subdued looks
• Excellent heat and noise management
• Matte palmrest helps reducing fingerprint issues
• Good warranty from ASUS

Cons:

• Some build issues, especially with the keyboard
• The "necessary evil" of nowadays' computers: a glossy, 16:10 screen
• Mediocre battery life due to the low capacity of the 6-cell battery
• Battery protrudes adding to the effective size of the notebook
• Glossy LCD top
• Bad speakers
• Looks do not match those of ASUS notebooks from the "golden age" (2004-early 2006)

Hoping this helps,

E.B.E.

[David]

Excellent review EBE, and it's nice to see you back.

[sgogeta4]

Consider an anti-glare screen from 3M or Viewguard? I know it's not an ideal solution, but you just have to do with whatever you can to minimize the glare!

[E.B.E.]

Originally Posted by David

Excellent review EBE, and it's nice to see you back.

Thanks! It's nice to be back, too.

Originally Posted by sgogeta4

Consider an anti-glare screen from 3M or Viewguard? I know it's not an ideal solution, but you just have to do with whatever you can to minimize the glare!

I may take a look at this, thanks for the suggestion. I got reasonably used to the glare in the meantime, I guess my brain developed an effective, automatic filtering procedure that works efficiently, without causing headaches.

[David]

Have you noticed any keyboard lag issues with this notebook like we've seen with other Asus models?

[Delta_CT]

Nice review!

Originally Posted by sgogeta4

Consider an anti-glare screen from 3M or Viewguard? I know it's not an ideal solution, but you just have to do with whatever you can to minimize the glare!

Looks like the 3M and Viewguard products also act as privacy filters. Are there any anti-glare products without the privacy option?

[E.B.E.]

Originally Posted by David

Have you noticed any keyboard lag issues with this notebook like we've seen with other Asus models?

No keyboard lag. Not even in Vista, which I used for a few days.

[David]

That's good to know

[siLc]

Although not really important to the end user, I think ASUS has managed a good level of parts commonality and unity in the way their laptops' specific systems operate.
First thing I saw was the battery from 13,3" ASUS Z37E/Z37S barebone. The "Fn+F2" Wireless Console BT/WiFi switch program has been commonplace since good ol' Z96J barebones, problably even before that. I reinstall ASUS barebones almost on a daily basis and its good that I can use the same drivers for all the said models.

[E.B.E.]

Yes, the Fn+F2 is quite common and old. My point was that on some (possibly only older) ASUS notebooks, there were separate, dedicated WiFi and Bluetooth hotbutton toggles. In such a case Wireless Console and the Fn+F2 combination become optional.

I am unsure what you mean about the battery.