Looking to downsize

Nymins

Nymins

Nymins

Soldato
Joined
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Ok so at the minute I have a Dell Studio 1555, which has been great ever since I got it. However, I'm going to Uni this September, so I would like something a little more portable and longer battery life (the 1555 already has a decent battery life, but looking at the CULV notebooks, they look better). I bought the 1555 since it has a Radeon 4570 GPU with the intention of some light gaming, but I have never really gamed on it at all apart from when I first bought it to try it out (yea Crysis :D, suprisingly it ran well on medium!)

Anyway, I have been looking around and have seen the Asus UL30 for £319.99 which seems very good. I have been reading a lot about it and it seems to get nothing but positive responses. The battery life looks fantastic at a rated 8hours (in reality obviously it will be less, but still pretty high) and I think the size would also be suited better to me, coming from 15.6" on the Dell to 13.3" on the Asus. I tried measuring the difference on my Dell and it seems like a nice medium between netbook and notebook size.

Couple of things though;

1) I would ideally not like to spend anymore than £350 here, so the Asus looks great there, however I have been reading about the AMD Fusion stuff coming out. Is there anything here worth waiting for in comparison to what is out now in my price bracket of around £350?

2) My 1555 has a Pentium Dual Core T4300 (2.1Ghz) processor. The UL30 has the lower powered C2D SU7300 (1.3Ghz). Will the drop in speed be noticeable? I only use my 1555 for web browsing, word, videos etc.

3) Also, my 1555 has 4Gb DDR2 ram and the UL30 I spotted has 3Gb DDR3. Now 2Gb DDR3 sticks are only like £18 in places, but again will the drop be noticeable if I don't upgrade?

4) Looking at reviews of the UL30, it's been out for over a year now. I guess this relates back to question 1 in the sense that should I opt for the UL30 and be happy? Or do the inevitable wait and see what comes out?

Hope these questions aren't too boring! I appreciate any advice :)
 
Ok so now that I have sold my Studio 1555, I'm left with £360 +/- £20 or so, for a new notebook.

The Asus UL30a still seems to be number one at the minute for around £350.

Any other suggestions for good build quality, good battery life (probably most important) and a decent enough speed?

Been looking at some netbooks, but the small size would worry me and the speeds aren't near the SU7300 for the cost. Also the battery life doesn't seem to meet the UL30's either, so i'm at a bit of a crossrounds here!
 
I bought my wife the ul30a. Its a good notebook and if you were happy with the 1555 build quality and screen then you will be happy with it (ie both are average but then they are cheap laptops).

The battery life is phenominal and my wife easily gets 8hrs and sometimes more. And she doesnt ever try and maximise power savings. The cpu is more than adequate for your use. My wife uses hers for web browsing, music, videos, photoshop CS4 perfectly.

The only thing better on the 1555 is the speakers but you can easily pick yourself up some decent speakers or use headphones.

All in all for the price I doubt you will find anything better
 
Thanks for the reply.

Yea the UL30 is seems to be the one to go for. I've been measuring out the screen and chassis sizes on bits of A4! Sad I know but it helps to try and gauge the size of these things.

Coming from a 15.6" 1555, would the UL30 be noticeably smaller? I do want something smaller, but not ridiculously small which is what is putting me off netbooks. 13.3" screens seem like a nice compromise between the standard 10.1" and 15.4/15.6" netbooks and laptops.
 
yeah, its definately noticeably smaller and also weighs a lot less making it easier to carry around.

I have had 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18" laptops in mine time. I find the 13" best for portability. If you check my sig you will see I currently own a 13" and a 17" laptop. The 13" is my daily beater. It goes everywhere with me and is really handy if onsite as I have plenty of battery.
The 17" is my DTR, its to big to be lugging around but the 1920x1200 screen is so useful for x-code and photoshop.

If I had to just own 1, I would probably have the 13" and get a LCD for use at home
 
Perhaps look into Acer 8371/3810/3820 - not sure about current prices, but there was a glut of forumites (including me !) picking these up for approx. £350 towards the end of last year.....

clicky
 
I've had a 13.3" Sony SZ series laptop for the last 4 yrs and find its the perfect balance of size/weight/performance. It's just a shame there aren't more choices in this size range. Sadly It no longer cuts it for gaming and I'm struggling to play Rift when i'm away - down to 7 fps on low settings!!

Time for an upgrade, but I can't seem to find anything suitable that doesn't look like some hideous 80/90s plastic stealth fighter.
 
Seen the Acer thread there, but can't seem to find them for those prices anymore! :(

I went ahead and bought the UL30A. Should hopefully come this week. Its odd that there isn't as much choice for ultraportables here than there is in the US. But no bother, I'm sure ill love the UL30!
 
I have a Samsung NC110, whilst the speed isn't as fast as a normal laptop, no netbook ever is. The battery life I can get from mine ranges from about 8 - 12 hours depending on what you are doing with it.

It is small and I barely notice it when I'm carrying it. If all you want it for is the internet and doing essays then I can't see why you would need much more than this. If you want something that has performance and can handle games, then you will be sacrificing battery life. My first laptop was a mistake on that front, I thought I needed something that was faster, but it turned out that the battery drain was more annoying that the slowness is with my netbook now.

Hope that helps.
 
cedrada said:
I have a Samsung NC110, whilst the speed isn't as fast as a normal laptop, no netbook ever is. The battery life I can get from mine ranges from about 8 - 12 hours depending on what you are doing with it.

It is small and I barely notice it when I'm carrying it. If all you want it for is the internet and doing essays then I can't see why you would need much more than this. If you want something that has performance and can handle games, then you will be sacrificing battery life. My first laptop was a mistake on that front, I thought I needed something that was faster, but it turned out that the battery drain was more annoying that the slowness is with my netbook now.

Hope that helps.
Click to expand...

The only thing that puts me off netbooks is the screen size. I don't think I could type or browse on it very long without hurting my eyes.

I was in the same situation as you. I bought a laptop thinking I needed in the power for light gaming etc, but all I did was browse and word process.

I think the 13.3" screen on the UL30 will suit me quite well. Not too big, not too small and the 8 hour (8-cell) battery should be great too.
 
+1 on the screen size thing, FWIW
I did have an Eee901 for a while, and whilst it was a great machine in terms of light and decent battery, with reasonable usability, I do find that my 8371's 13" screen more usable in general. Add to this the resolution hike - found 1024x600 a little annoying on occasion with the Eee - and the marked improvement in performance (multi-tasking, I am looking at you !) and scope to do more......and, in all fairness, weight is very similar (1.6kg for the 8371 v 1.3kg or so for the Eee) and battery life, if anything, is better on the 8371.
I think the UL30 is a good choice, by all accounts, and there are a few happy users on these forums.
Not bashing netbooks - horses for courses :)
 
I've noticed the price that these were selling at has now completely gone and replaced with a stupid high price, shame really as they are fantastic devices..
 
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Forgot to update this thread!

Yea I got the UL30a. Really nice notebook, smaller than I imagined, but in a good way. Really nice build quality, really like the brushed metal look on the lid. Battery life is around 6.5hours or so with normal web browsing at 50% brightness. It does have an 8-cell, but its rated at 4400mAH, 63Wh, so its not the most powerful 8-cell (think the 5600mAH was used in the reviews that got 8-9hours).

Only niggles I have is the glossy plastic on the palm rest and screen bezel. Finger print magnet!! But its not too bad unless in directly sunlight when its really noticeable. The hard-drive isn't the quietest either, its a Seagate 320Gb and you can hear it constantly "whirling". The fan is silent, even when it spins you can only hear a very slight humm. If you put an SSD in this thing, it would be truly silent. The speakers are pretty average as well because they are placed underneath the palm rest. Makes them a bit muffled, but I don't really listen to much music on this and only watch Youtube videos anyway.

All in all its a great notebook and I'm glad I got it. The weight, build and battery life are superb for the cost. Few "issues" like the gloss and hard drive noise, but they aren't much of an issue at all. I thought the C2D SU7300 would be slow, but there really isn't much of a difference from my old Pentium Dual Core T4300.
 
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