Asus S96J

USAPatriots S96J Review

1. Overview and Introduction: This is an Asus S96J VBI Notebook, it is a 15.4inch laptop with some heavy duty power. It is made by Asus, but Intel is the one that provides the warranty. Its not what I would call a desktop replacement because it is only 6.3lbs in weight. The specs configured with mine off Gentechpc.com are as follow:

15.4inch Glossy WXGA Display
Intel Core Duo T2400 1.83Ghz
2Gigabyte Corsair Value select/Patriot Value RAM 667mhz Dual Channel (I added another gig, two months later)
80 Gigabyte 5,400rpm Samsung Hard drive
ATI Radeon Mobility X1600 with 256mb dedicated video memory
Intel A/B/G Wireless
DVD-R/W/CD-R/W (Supports Dual Layer DVD's)
Windows XP Home Service Pack 2
Integrated Web cam
6- Cell Battery

2.Reasons for Buying: My reasons for buying this notebook was that my 4yr old Athalon XP desktop wasn't cutting it for me in performance and gaming abilities. I also wanted something mobile, that I could move around the house and take to places with me. I had look at the E1505 and E1705 as well as it some of the HP's, but when I found this, I couldn't pass up what I was gonna get for the near same price.

3.Where and How Purchased: After shopping around for a place to buy the S96J, I found GentechPC.com, it offered the best price out of all the others and had all the options I wanted. They also have very good support. I paid $1,282 for it in the end, they had free ground shipping. It was definitely a good price for what I got. I highly recommend GentechPC.com, I will definitely purchase from them in the future.

4.Build and Design: Its definitely looks very sturdy by the first look and it is. It is very well built and does not feel cheap at all. The screen does ripple if you press the lid, but you have to press it pretty hard for it to happen. Overall the plastic is very good and sturdy, none of the plastic flex's only the plastic on the screen if you press hard. The case is mostly gray, except on the bottom and the screen border. The weight at 6.3lbs roughly isn't bad at all, id say it weighs a bit less if you ask me. It is fine to carry around and can be put on your laptop comfortably, but it does get a bit warm after a while.

5.Screen: I have to say I was impressed by the screen on this thing. It appears very well built, it is also bright enough that I keep it two notches down from 100% most of the time. It has Asus's “Color Shine” technology. The display is a WXGA glossy screen. The res for me is very good and I think it provides enough real estate on the screen for me. I have 0 dead pixels, none, which is great! The is also almost no ghosting visible. The back lighting is very, very even and nice, the screen does leak a bit of light around the bottom left and right, when view dark images on the screen, but that is with most notebooks anyways.


6.Speakers: This is definitely one of the weak points in this laptop. They are not very loud at all and the sound quality isn't too good, considering this thing has Realtek HD Audio with some good external speakers you will be good to go. As well as some good headphones. The audio out and microphone in are on the front of the notebook.

7.Processor and Performance: The CPU I got is the Core Duo T2400 1.83Ghz CPU, it is more than fast enough for my needs. I tested it by running a virus scan, and an anti-spy ware scan all while having 14 other apps open such as Firefox, Mozilla, Open Office, AIM, Quick Time, I tunes, WMP, Windows Movie Maker, Google Sketchup, Audacity, Lime wire and playing a DVD!!! This is definitely pushing it to its limits, CPU usage was hovering around 80% and varying while doing this. There was basically no lag while switching and using each application. I had plenty of ram left even with all these apps open ( I have 1gb RAM). All this I was doing is way more than a typical user ever will. Overall it feels quick, responsive and snappy. Games? Pfft, this thing kills games, im running all my games high so far, the CPU isn't the bottleneck its the GPU for sure.


8. Benchmarks:










9. Heat and Noise: These are definitely one of the strong points in this notebook. It does not get very, hot at all, only warm at most. It runs cool enough to run on your lap with much discomfort for a while. Heat wise its very cooling efficient. The fan is barely audible as well. The noise level is also very low, unless you use the DVD drive. Otherwise it is very good in these two points.

10.Keyboard and Touch pad: The keyboard is also in my opinion pretty high up there, there is some flex but not that big of a deal. It is very nice in my opinion for me, as I am using it right now, its actually battery than my desktop keyboard. Now the touch pad, I love this thing, its very good and accurate, also if you tap on the pad anywhere its like clicking which that is a great feature, considering the touch pad buttons are a little loud and make an audible click when you use them. The S96J also has a very helpful touch pad off button, up to the top right by the power button, so you can turn on the touch pad by hitting a simple switch. That is awesome.

11.Input and Output: Well it has 4 USB 2.0 Ports, 1 Fire wire Port, 1 VGA Out Port, 1 S-Video Out, 1 LAN Port, 1 Modem Port, 1 Express Card Slot, 1 5 in 1 Media Card Reader, as well as an Sound Out and Mic In Port on the front.

12.Wireless: My S96J came with an Intel A/B/G 3945 wireless card, it is very good and I get 90% to 100% connection all over my house as well as picking up three other wireless networks around me. It is very stable, I can even play BF2 on it, although there is a bit of connection lag.
13.Battery: For sure this is a weak point, and have not gotten past 2:10 minutes with it, with the screen at an acceptable brightness and the CPU throttled down. I have the 6-cell, the 9-cell should give you a nice boost of an hour or so.
14.Operating System and Software: Mine has Windows XP Home SP2, it came with Nero, and some Asus Utilities. Thats it, it very good, no bloat ware.

15.Customer Support: I ordered mine of GentechPC.com they have one year standard warranty. The reseller covers the warranty and customer support while you are on their warranty. For me it was an extra $130 to upgrade to the 3-year warranty. GentechPC has very good customer support.

16.Conclusion: The S96J is way better than I expected it to be in terms of looks, power, and features. It is very well built.

Pros:
Looks
Power
GPU
Screen
Keyboard and touch pad
Powerful Features

Cons:
Battery Life
Speakers
Audio Out Jack (For Me at Least)

Hello all,
I've been using my S96J for 5 days now, and would like to share some comments. Overall, I love my S96J, but here are some things to note if you are thinking of buying one:

Pros
- The body is really is much better looking in person than in pictures.
- The screen can be set really, really bright (but see con below)
- In terms of noise, the S96J is really quiet. When the fan does kick in during high processing, the sound is still gentle and non-intrusive.
- runs new video games really well.

Cons
- The keyboard and touchpad buttons feel cheap. They both have flex, and the that cheap keyboard sound when you type/click.
- The screen doesn't have "light leakage", as much as a poor contrast ratio. - Even at 50% brightness the blacks are somewhat grey.
- The viewing angle of the screen is poor. If you are look at the screen from the sides or especially up/down, the edges quickly become dark.
- The Fn key is placed in the bottom left corner, and pushes the Control key to the right of where it is normally. This makes cutting and pasting an experience in frustration, but I'm slowly adapting to the new key position. The backspace/delete key is also shifted over to the left.

More comments about the screen:
The greyish blacks are only noticable when the overall screen is black. During normal work, where the black sections are right next to brighter sections (like a windowed dos box), the blacks do look black. If you've never used a really good lcd screen before, you probably won't notice at all.

Other Comments:
How the S96J handles heat is a tricky issue. On the positive side, after playing Oblivion for 3 hours, the CPU did not go over 58C. On the negative side, both the left and right palm rests do get luke warm (aka: not hot at all, just warm).

Reason for buying:
In early January my notebook died and I needed a new one. I decided that I wanted to save some money and use some of my parts and OS from my old notebook in the new notebook. I then started looking at barebones. I wanted a 15.4" notebook with a WXGA screen (which I prefer for 15.4" screen). About this time the new MSI and Asus Barebones were announced. I was going to get the MSI MS-1039 but the US release kept getting pushed back. When is became obvious that the Z96j(S96j) was going to be released about the same time I started to re-think my choices. I ended up going with the S96j because I really appreciate having 2 cores on my desktop computer and I wanted that same benefit on my notebook. I also really wanted 64 bit support later on and probably being able upgrade to Merom (Core 2 Duo) later is a big bonus.

Specs (as I configured):
Asus S96j W/WXGA (1280x800) glossy screen
Core Duo T2400 (1.83 GHz)
ATI Mobility X1600 Graphics Card
1 gb Corsair DDR2 667 ram
80 gb Hitachi 7,200 rpm SATA HD (7K100)
NEC ND-6650A DVD burner
Build and Design:
Build is very good. Very little flex in lid and keyboard. This notebook feels very solid. The hinge is very stiff and this is how I like it. Even though I know the materials are all plastic it does not feel like it is made out of plastic. This is my first Asus and I’m very impressed. The design of the notebook is exceptional while the looks are kind of average. It does grow on you. I like the way the notebook tapers with thinnest part facing you. I like the simplistic look with very nice lines.

Ergonomics:
The keyboard is very nice, typing over long periods of time is very comfortable. I like the placement of the ports with the exception of the VGA which I would like on the rear. I like having a couple USB ports in rear which some other recent models are moving away from. The placement of the touch pad is perfect, it is just the right distance from keyboard. I never accidently touch it when hitting the space bar. The touch pad itself is also very nice. The touch pad buttons work well but are kind of loud when clicking. I would have liked to at least have volume buttons instead of the function+F keys. I'm a little bummed that there is not a PCMCIA card slot as well as the ExpressCard slot but as more cards come out this will be less of an issue. The notebook has a lot of the weight in the rear so it can get a little tricky when actually using on your lap.

Screen:
Very nice 15.4" WXGA glossy screen with a res of 1280x800. The screen is made by AUO and has a pixel pitch of 0.259, response time of 16ms, contrast of 300:1, and brightness of 180. The screen has above average brightness, is sharp, and has decent contrast. The colors are not as saturated as some LCDs I have used and tones tend to be on the cool side. It came with zero dead pixels. The manual says that the notebook has “Splendid Video Intelligent Technology” where you can adjust contrast, brightness, skin tone, and color saturation but I can not figure out how to activate. I had never had a glossy screen before and I was worried. I really like the glossy screen once I got used to it. Viewing angles are very good.

Multimedia:
The speakers are weak. The sound is OK but the volume is low. I compared it to a Dell e1505 and the e1505 was louder at half volume. The sound from the S96j is not nearly as full sounding either. This is not a big deal for me because I use headphones mainly anyway when gaming or watching DVDs. The output on the headphone jack is loud and sounds very good with both music and DVDs. DVDs look very nice, ghosting is not overly noticeable. Black levels are fairly descent for a notebook LCD. The webcam works very well, even in low light.

Assembly:
While I recommend that people buy this notebook with at least the CPU and optical drive from a reseller, I bought the barebones and most the parts and assembled myself. Assembly could not be easier. It probably takes 30 minutes tops to do it. I took off the thermal compound that the CPU and GPU heat sinks came with and used AC5 instead. The heat sinks for both CPU and GPU are copper and touch CPU and GPU directly. Something to keep in mind is that the barebones by itself does not come with the brackets and screws needed to secure the optical drive in the notebook. In the end I could not use optical drive I had. I ended up buying the optical drive that is sold with notebook, I could not buy the brackets and screws separately.

Cooling, Heat, and Noise:
The cooling in the S96j is very efficient. While idle and browsing the web the notebook CPU hovers around 49 -53C. At these temps the fan is not on. The fan kicks in the mid 50s. The fan is very quite. My last notebook’s fans were very noticeable when they were on, that is not the case with the S96j. I really have to get close to notebook to hear it. The warmest the CPU has ever gotten was 62C and this was when running Prime 95 torture test. The right palm rest is actually its warmest when the computer is at its lower temp because the fan is not running. The right palm rest does get noticeably warm but not uncomfortable. The left palm rest and touch pad does not get warm at all for me and I’m running a 7,200 rpm hard drive which is under left palm rest. I imagine that having the fan kick in at a lower temp with a fan utility would alleviate the heat issue on right palm rest completely. The intake vents are in multiple locations and placement of them is well thought out. The exhaust vent is thankfully in the rear of the notebook so no hot air on mouse hand. The underside of the notebook stays relatively cool so you can definately use on your lap.

Performance:
I’m very happy with the performance of the notebook. The performance rivals my Desktop computer (Athlon 64 X2). Everything is very snappy. Super Pi to 2 million digits was in 1:20. The 7,200 SATA drive is very fast. Multitasking performance like this on a notebook is a dream, it really changes the way you use your notebook.

Gaming:
I have played F.E.A.R., HL 2, and Quake 4 and the games run great with mostly maximum settings at 1280x800 (no AA, 4XAF, and no soft shadows). I much prefer playing games at their native resolution on a LCD and this is very possible with new games on this notebook. Quake 4 with its multiple core support (in latest patch) is amazingly smooth. I got 3,921 3dmarks in 3Dmark05 with latest Omega Drivers.

Battery Life:
I’m happy with battery time. The fact that this notebook comes with the powerful X1600 obviously impacts battery time. Following is summary for regular notebook activity (without wireless):
100% brightness - 2:00
80% brightness - 2:15
50% brightness – 2:45
30% brightness – 3:30
With DVD playback I get a little over 2 hours at 80% brightness and 2 ½ hours at 50% brightness. When gaming I got 1:10 playing Quake 4 at 80% brightness and 1 ½ hours playing at 50% brightness (at maximum performance with both cores). There is a larger 9 cell battery available that extends a bit out of the notebook that has an additional 2,400 mAh (for a total of 7,200 mAh).

Pictures in next post.

Pros:
*Very well designed.
*Solid build.
*Exceptional ergonomics.
*Fantastic cooling and very quiet.
*Easy to assemble.
*Very good gaming performance.
*SATA hard drive support.
*Very likely can upgrade to Core 2 Duo later with bios update.
*Decent headphone jack output.
*Great value.
*Average looks (wolf in Sheep's clothing).

Cons:
*Quiet speakers
*Average looks
*No DVI output

Note: Originally posted in NBR, I have equal love for both forums.

In appreciation for what these forums have done for my "laptop education", I want to document my experience with my s96j for your reference. If it wasn't for this forum I would have probably ended up with a Dell.

May 11, 2006
I received my s96j today after ordering on monday May 8, 2006 from GentechPC. SUPER FAST turnaround and delivery from Ken Lee at Gentech. PROPS!
Prelude-Why I chose s96j...
I was a hardcore asus fan since before the pentium M... (2 years ago?). With each passing hype (Z71V, Z70VA, W3J), I watched and wondered if the laptops were for me. With the W3J I realized this is the perfect laptop for any student/gamer. Power packed in a light, sleek, sexy package. My heart was set on it, then I read a review by hyperluminous that shattered my world. He reviewed the s96j, a model I had not payed much attention to. All i cared about was W3J BABY!! He gave specs and quoted that a well built system would cost about $1400. This sparked my interest. The next day I called Ken Lee at GentechPC and talked for about 45 minutes-1 hour, at the end of the discussion I decided I couldn't let this great bargain pass me by. I ended up paying $1651 for a powerful notebook manufactured from an extremely reputable company: ASUS.
The Specs
CPU: Intel® Yonah Core-Duo T2400 1.83GHz 2M 667 FSB
RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR-2 667 SODIMM (2X1024)
HD: Seagate Momentus 100GB 7200rpm S-ATA
Internal Wireless Card: Intel® PRO/Wireless 3945 Tri-mode
Display: 15.4" WXGA 1280 x 800 Color Shine (Glare)
VGA: ATI Mobility X1600 256MB PCI Express
Optical Drive: 8 x DVD-RW Dual Layer Super Multi
Camera: Built-in Camera
3 year warranty
Free Hardware Install
No OS

Anybody can see this is a great deal for an Asus, I can't believe I thought twice about it. I guess W3J had me on a chain.
Initial Reactions
LCD: The past couple days I worried about if I would be so excited to be installing windows and after the install a dead pixel would stab me in the eye. Thankfully, that daydream never happened. HALLELUJAH! Zero dead pixels on a BEAUTIFUL screen. I was very impressed with the even lighting and the vibrant, sharp colors. Asus splendid is as great as I hyped it up in my head to be. It's better than my Sony LCD desktop monitor.

Keyboard: I love it! Very responsive, and sturdy. I've never typed on the laptop keyboard before and the transition was instant.

Heat: From the moment I booted it up to install windows the fans were running very quietly, and they've stayed that way all day. While surfing the web and installing various programs the CPU stayed a steady 55 degrees C,
and the HD was around 47 degrees C. Considerably this is good because the dvd drive was running almost nonstop. The palmrest got warm after about 2-3 hours, but nothing to be worried about.

Batterylife: With the LCD at it's brightest setting, and speedstep enabled the notebook clocked about 2 hours and 30 minutes before it went into standby mode. For the 2 hours and 30 minutes I was surfing the internet and installing programs via the DVD drive.

Looks: one of my main concerns as is expected when I was a few weeks from owning the most beautiful laptop: W3J. Surprisingly, the s96j is not ugly, not beautiful, just nice. I'll post pics soon. It looks nothing like the pics given from Asus or Intel. While it's no W3J, i love my baby for who she is, including her looks.

Speakers: Honestly, they are pretty worthless. Music sounds like a garbled mess, and the highest volume is not so great. I will probably be getting headphones anyway. Does anybody know a way to improve sound? I have just the standard drivers that came with the laptop. There is a equilizer in the Realtek HD audio manager, maybe i'll try messing with those later. I'll let you know how it goes.

Overall, I am very happy with this laptop. If there's any aspects I missed that you would like to know about, let me know.
Program Install
Installing programs took all day. Maybe its because Im not accustomed to using the touchpad. The touchpad works well, and I like the feature where you can just tap the pad and it works like the click of a mouse, instead of pushing the "mouse buttons" underneath the touchpad. The buttons make a fairly loud click if you don't hit them in the "sweet spot". I miss about 80% of the time, which means this "spot" is small. No big deal though. Life could have been easier if buy.com was more reliable. To give you an idea of how fast GentechPC was in sending my laptop; I ordered the laptop and a logitech v400 mouse from buy.com at the same time. By the time I received the laptop, buy.com finally shipped my mouse. Its already 2 days late.
Anyway, I used this guide that I found linked from ProPortable's website. Thanks guys at ProPortable! http://www.laptoplogic.com/resources/detail.php?id=33
It provided usefull freeware/shareware to keep your system performing well. I also installed AVG free, spybot, and adaware.
After all this installing I was curious what my favorite anime, Bleach would be like on my new baby, so i transfered a few of my favorite episodes from my desktop, and enjoyed the wonder of splendid technology. At times I felt like I was watching T.V. It was GREAT!
I also installed Windowsblinds and Object Dock. Here's a screenshot of what my desktop looks like so far...

Question: Does anybody know of a good system monitoring tool that will display on the desktop? I want readouts for CPU and RAM usage, batterylife, temperatures and possibly fan speed. I tried Samurize but didn't like it
Updated to come shortly: GAMES! Need for Speed Underground: Most Wanted, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Tomb Raider: Legend, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, and even Ragnarok Online. Also pics and integrated camera performance.

Specs
Asus S96J 15.4" 1280x800 Glare type screen X1600 graphics
Core Duo T2400
2 x 1GB 667
100GB 7200
3945ABG Wireless
QSI MultiDrive

Appearance
As always, it's subjective. No doubt you've seen the pictures of this in the Core Duo thread and all I can say is that it doesn't get any prettier in person. Definitely sleek and modern...running about in the middle of the pack in terms of looks, but not timeless and sophisticated like the really gorgeous notebooks out there.

Screen
VERY happy here. Significantly brighter than an E1705. The viewing angle is great. Horizontally, the screen is readable from any angle and just loses some brightness as you move beyond 45°. Vertically, things start washing out around 40°.

The panel that mine came with is the AUO B154EW01.
Pixel Pitch: 0.259
Response Time: 16ms
Contrast: 300:1
Brightness: 180

As far as the resolution, here is a screenshot of the notebook beside my VX924 19" monitor with 1280x1024 resolution.



For me, it's perfect. Low enough to be readable at a quick glance, but high enough to comfortably fit most things. In fact, the WXGA resolution was one of the main reasons I chose the S96J over the Z96J.

Benchmarks
Let me know what you want to see.

3DMark05: 3659
And here's the first revelation. When I check the display adapter properties it says the X1600 has 512MB memory. That leads me to believe (If it's not a display error) that it's stealing the second 256MB from system memory when needed. If so, then the specs out there for this system are wrong.

Ergonomics
The hottest it's got so far has been a little warm....not uncomfortably warm in the slightest.

Noise will be determined by how you spec it. The fan runs most of the time but is just barely audible while sitting normally infront of the notebook.

The keyboard is typical. Nothing exceptional in any regard...positive or negative. There is quite a bit of flex in the keyboard though.

The touch pad is superb. I didn't install the drivers for it, but the built-in XP drivers have perfect sensitivity. When I tried the touchpad drivers, there were some quirks with the scroll function....it didn't work nearly as smoothly as the E1705 scroll function. Clicking on the touch pad is a tad too sensitive. The buttons are really bad. If you click anywhere but the middle of the upper edge, they make a loud click noise.

Value
You can speced out this system with this config for a total out of pocket price of around $1400.

I ordered from GenTech. I ordered Tuesday and it was at my house Thursday and they very promptly answered all my inquiries.

Battery Life
With the standard 6-cell battery, I was watching a DVD and surfing/downloading for 1 hour and 50 minutes before it was about out of juice. Something to note is that I did this with full brightness.

DVD Viewing
Brightness is just perfect for me. The level of ghosting is just under the distracting threshold....i.e. there if you're looking for it, but almost unnoticeable if you're paying attention to the movie. But this is where I first noticed a very distracting issue with the notebook. Small clusters of lighter hued pixels look almost like freckles and make almost any application look grainy which is a big problem when watching movies or editing photos or video. The problem might be fixable, but, so far, there has been no word from Asus or Intel or any reseller that this issue is being looked at.

Assembly

This is the top of the notebook. Very plain and modern and unbranded.


If you order your notebook unassembled you'll get the heatsink/fan assembly uninstalled like this. That tiny little square there towards the middle that looks about the size of a Cheezit is the $40 3945ABG wireless card I also ordered. I went with the T2400 because the priceerformance ratio was about equivolent to the T2300. These take SATA hard drives.


You flip it over and unscrew a couple screws on the main plate and slide it off to reveal the business portion of the mainboard. On the lower left side you can see the GPU and it's four memory chips. The lower right is the slots for your sodimms. I used Corsair 667 and it worked perfectly. The socket for the CPU is there at the top.


This is after the heatsink fan assembly has been set. Some things to note. The CPU and GPU make direct contact with the copper portions of the heatsink......a very nice feature. Because of this I removed the stock gray goop and used AS5. Don't get impatient here as the stock gray goop is thick and sticky and you may be tempted to try to scrape it off........just use a dozen or so passes with alcohol on a paper towel and it will eventually come off. The heatsink is held down by seven little screws that do an excellent job of bringing it down nice and tight around the CPU and GPU. The graphics memory still needs thermal pads though.

Chances are, if you've never built a notebook or Athlon XP desktop that you'll be unfamiliar with CPUs that don't have an Integrated Heat Spreader. So you'll need to be a little more careful. There's no IHS, obviously, because heat dissipation is better without it.

Also, watch the screws. I stripped one of the tiny ones that's needed to hold the mini pci card down. Even a tiny philips srewdriver may not be tiny enough for those....but, in all fairness, they were really really on there. Once you get it installed you'll need to hook up the two wires taped to the chasis beside the mini pci slot, but since I haven't done that yet I won't give further details at this point.

Something else important. I found no assembly instructions whatsoever. Clearly Asus is expecting qualified/trained personnel to be doing this kind of thing. Not a big deal if you're very familiar with computer assembly, but you'll need to rely on common sense and reasoning and experience when figuring out which screws go where and what to peel off and what not too and have to place things. Thankfully the processor came with instructions for it's own installation.

Knowing what I know now, would I still have ordered it unassembled? Probably not. This is more akin to adding a heatsink to a video card than it is assembling a desktop computer. My experience with stripping the screw and feeling my way along assembly and distractions during the process and the time it takes to complete it all safely and cleanly just probably isn't worth it....especially when most places do assembly for free. I do feel good, however, for doing it because I know what will be involved if an upgrade to Merom is possible and because I got to see first hand how beautifully these Asus notebooks are designed inside. Say what you want about the aethetics of this notebook and the noisy touchpad buttons.....underneath all that are solid, performance components that fit together with precision.

To Come
Gaming impressions, temps, etc.

Conclusion
The notebook is a very high value and performance is exceptional. The keyboard and touchpad are really kinda middling, but haven't bothered me greatly.

Before purchasing this notebook, however, heavily consider whether or not the graininess of the screen will bother you. I'll try to get somne pics of it up in a few days.