ASUS Zenbook UX303LB (Nvidia GT 940M)

If you're like me and were about to purchase the UX303LN, I recommend holding off as this one with the 940M is coming soon!

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...00u_2_4g_12gb_256ssdd_windows_8_1_13_3_t.html

 

The 940M is not that interesting since it is just a rebrand.

The broadwell CPU might help extend the battery a bit though.

 

How about this one with a 960m?
Unless its an error.

http://www.amazon.de/UX303LB-R4060H...F8&qid=1427461214&sr=1-1&keywords=ux303lb+960

 

While the 960m is also a rebrand the 860m was never offered in this model so if true that would be a step up. It would be a new motherboard though.

 

This neat-looking thing is already available for a starting price of $1210 on XoticPC.

I'm a little skeptical about buying it now though. It was just added last month, and there are practically no reviews of the machine on the Internet anywhere. I can only hope it lives up to its well-received predecessor, the UX303LN.

 

It's basically the same machine, just with 940m instead of 840m, and i7-5500u instead of i7-4510u. Performance should be nearly identical.

 

So you're telling me that both models have

• the same performance
• the same look
• the same size and weight
• the same price
• and pretty much the same everything else

Not much of an upgrade there. Still, the 940m is marginally faster than the 840m, and apparently its efficiency might be better.

Anyway, I'm probably buying it. My only annoyances are the color (I prefer black) and the glossy screen (which I can easily fix with an anti-glare cover). I only wish there was a real review of this thing.

 

I prefer black color and matte (non-touch) screen also, and 1080p personally. But yes it is pretty much the same machine, size, weight. The 940m *IS* the 840m. Both are GM108 Maxwell with the same shader cores (384), same vRAM (2GB DDR3 64-bit). Only difference is the clock speed, which is 1029 for 840m and 1072 for 940m. 43MHz or 4% increase in clock speed won't amount to much.

In any case I guess my point is that if you can get the UX303LN for cheaper than UX303LB, might as well save a few bucks and get the UX303LN. I picked up an "Open Box" UX303LN for < $1000, so I think it will be worth it to me. We'll see how it is when I get it. I wish Samsung made one of their Ativ Book 9 plus laptops with a dedicated GPU. I love my Samsung NP940X3G.

 

One more thing about the screen resolution. I'm not sure why laptop manufacturers assume "higher resolution means better product." That might be true of desktops, but laptops with smaller monitors don't benefit much from 3K or 4K resolutions, and it drains battery life faster than necessary.

I'm hoping that the UX303LB matches the 9 hours of unplugged time as its predecessor.

 

Asus website says there is a 1080p option, but it seems this is for EU only. I don't know why. I'll take a 1080p LCD any day. I might try to swap out the LCD myself if I can find a compatible one.