Asus W3J

I've had my W3J refresh for about a week now (specs in sig below). Initially, I stuck with the factory default two partition drive, but noticed that startup was slow and I was having wierd issues like the lockups and no wakeup after standby that some people are experiencing. So I reformatted with my own copy of Windows XP Pro, repartitioned to my liking (C: Drive - 11GB and D: Drive - 82GB... both NTFS), and trimmed down the unnecessary processes. Now I'm getting considerably faster startup and it got rid of the issues mentioned above.

My opinions:
I love the build quality on this.. I've used a W3V before, so I knew what to expect. This machine is rock solid and beautiful. The keyboard is good.. though some of the bigger keys like Enter and Space make a bit of a sound, but it's nothing to complain about. Comparing to my ASUS Z70va that I've previously owned (which had the best matte screen I've ever seen).. I must say that the W3J screen is a bit disappointing though after getting used to the Z70va's gorgeous screen. Looking straight on.. the colors are vivid and sharp, but move your head a little and the colors start getting washed out. This is the one real con about this notebook.. the viewing angles need improving. But I can live with it. As for the noise factor.. there is none.. this machine is absolutely quiet. Again, comparing with my Z70va, the W3J controls the fan a lot better. Quite surprising considering the power this thing packs. As for heat, the air coming out the right side vent (another con for me, since I would prefer this was on the left.. but what can you do) when surfing the web, word processing, or listening to music and watching DVD's ..it is just warm. It gets hot when gaming, but nothing to worry about. It's not burn to the touch hot.. just a bit uncomfortable. The touchpad is a bit better than the previous one ASUS had been using. It feels more responsive. The speaker sound is weak, like most of you have heard.. but in the BIOS, there is a setting to raise the volume level to 8 (default at 4).. I'm still not sure if this is just for the bootup sound or if it also affects Windows. It does sound like the volume went up a bit though.. I'll keep testing.

I'll be gaming with Oblivion, Doom3, and COD2 next time, so I can get a feel on how much faster the x1600 is than the x700 that my Z70va had. Overall.. this notebook is an excellent buy. Definitely worth every penny spent.

I will be adding to this review later today including some photos but for now I will give you my first impressions after using the notebook for a few hours last night and this morning.

Specs:

Processor : Intel Centrino Duo T2400 1.83GHz
RAM : 1024 MB (2 x 512MB) DDR2 Memory
HDD : 100 GB Hard Drive
Display : 14 inch WXGA Colour shine Display
Optical Drive : DVDRW Dual Layer
Graphics : ATI Radeon X1600 256MB (512MB Hypermemory)
Wireless network : 802.11b/g + Bluetooth
Operating System : Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Warranty : 2-year limited global hardware warranty
DVDRW +/- Dual Layer


Packaging and looks.

The laptop was packed in a white asus box, nothing fancy but nice enough. Opening it up I found there was a free asus bag. Its like a messenger style with a shorter flap in dark grey. Its more or less what I was going to buy anyway so I am happy with it, saves me £50 or so.


Taking the laptop out of its protective cover to reveal its beautiful gunmetal finish top. Very stylish. The whole thing is small as expected for a 14" (330 x 32 x 247 mm). Nice and thin too. The screen size fills the top half and is the perfect 16:9 widescreen shape. The touchpad is black with small white dots and has a chrome surround and it has one grey button below that, not two, so pressing on the left side of the button or right to activate right or left. The keypad feels decent quality and not flimsy or cheap.
On the left side of the keyboard is a row of thin silver media buttons; activate music player, rewind, stop, play and fast forward. One the right of the keyboard are the same shape keys but for power profiles, bluetooth, screen profiles, wifi and touchpad enable/disable. All very useful which I will come to later.
The top I believe to be aluminum which is gunmetal and looks great with an asus logo in the centre. The inside and bottom is made of plastic which feels a little cheap to me but it looks totally fine, I am glad the whole laptop isnt made of this plastic though.
The battery clips into the back so all the inputs are on the sides. On the right is 1xUSB, s-video, 1 x IEEE 1394, 1 xExpress card slot, SD card slot. On the left side is 2 x USB, 1 x VGA, LAN and modem, DVDRW drive.
Oh yes, theres also a free asus logitech wireless optical mouse...which is nice

Switching it on

The round power button is on the right side edge on the hinge which lights up blue when I press it, mmm lovely. More blue lights appear on the front edge below the mouse pad, not sure what these are yet..one of them is for the power though. Windows kicks in and I hear the startup sound which isnt very impressive or loud but I expected that..The colours looks great, nice and saturated, it looks like theres a lot of light bleeding from the bottom but I tilt the screen back a bit and it goes away. In fact I cant see any bleeding at all. The resolution is 1280x768 and looks small enough. It is smaller than what I was using on my desktop and I wont need it any smaller. It all looks perfect on this size screen.
I have a netgear wireless router which the laptop picks up instantly and I enter my password and its online instantly and downloading norton updates. ( I didnt buy norton extra so its free. I think I will keep the norton firewall and take out the antivirus and replace it with AVG). Online is nice and quick, not one drop in 5 hours. As mentioned before you have hotkeys so can turn wifi off and on very easily when needed.
Next I pop in a dvd..the picture looks beautiful, again with no light bleeding from the bottom. I take out the power supply and the dvd starts to skip a frame every five seconds. I assume this is due to power saving options? I will look into that more later. I am very happy with the quality of the picture though, Perfect size screen and very rich colours with no bleeding at all! The blacks look decent too. I can lighten and darken it more than I need too. The asus colourshine display is spot on. I havent tried it outside yet but I couldnt have imagined it to look better than this inside. Yes, there are reflections but I expected that so change my lighting accordingly.
The sound isnt awful but it is very low. I have a seperate set of speakers to plug in which is a logic3 sound system made for a sony psp. It comes with a subwoofer and the sound is amazing for its size and very good quality. Even if you dont have a psp I recommend one of these as it folds up and is thin enough to fit in the laptop bag. Anyway, the sound on the laptop is far too low with the volume and wave at maximum. Maybe I am missing something, I will look into this also and update the drivers. There is no external volume button or dial so the volume is done by the Fn button which I personally dont mind. There are so many handy hotkeys on this thing that I can sacrifice the volume.

There is a heat vent on the right hand side. There was warm air coming out of it almost instantly but this didnt get too much hotter while I was using the laptop on power supply surfing the internet, sending emails and working in photoshop. Same applies for battery use, not too hot with these tasks. I will see how it goes with games today.

Regular fan noises are virtually silent, I had to put my ear right against the vent area to hear it.

General thoughts:

The hotkeys are very useful. Running at full performance with the power supply then disconnect to sit on the sofa to do some photoshop work I simply click off wifi and bluetooth and change the profile to battery saving. This gave me 2 1/2 hours work time and the battery was around 85% when I unplugged it so I should get 3 hours or so powersaving time on it, maybe more. I will run a dvd later on battery to see how long it lasts.
I am very happy with the laptops looks, size and weight. The touchpad and lid give it a high quality look. The blue lights are a nice touch too.
Screen is beautiful, I couldnt be happier with it and with no notible leakage as yet makes it worth every penny.
Performance I cant really say too much at this point but I will test a few games on it later today and get back to you all with some
3Dmark scores. All I can say for now is the dvd was skipping every five seconds on battery (profile set to dvd, game and high performance didnt fix this) so games might have a similar problem. But on the power supply the dvd plays seamlessly so I will look into the profiles and see if I can change this.
Sound is decent but far too low, so I will update the drivers to see if I can fix this.
Heat isnt an issue with everyday tasks (not gaming), theres a constant warm breeze but its not going to grill your bacon. It may warm your pinkies enough if its a bit taters outside though

Summary:

So far I am very happy with the ASUS WJ3. I have been looking for a laptop since December and tried out a few but none gave me everything I needed. So far this laptop does everything I need and in a very nice workable size. I will give it a 7.5/10 score for now. If I can fix the dvd skipping and increase the sound a little then I would give it 8.5. If it plays games ok and doesnt generate too much heat then 9.5. Ive no intention of sending it back as yet.

Apologies for those of you wanting gaming scores and performance review at this point. I will do that today. But the laptop is mainly going to be used for work so games come second to all that. Its the perfect business machine in performance, size and battery life. I hope today I find out its inner beast lives up to its promise with the x1600 256mb.

I will add the gaming review below later today.

Please feel free ask any questions in the meantime



The box of joy




ASUS box



The messenger style bag from the outside



..and the inside. Its a nice bag but it doesnt offer much protection so I would advise against swinging it at anyone at this point until you got a bag with more padding



Aluminium lid logo



Gunmetal looks great and expensive



Front razor edge. Note no catch to hold the lid shut



east side with the vent



On the west side lives the dvdrw tray. I cant help but think that a slot dvd drive would have been perfect on this laptop and worked well with its overall style.



A very nice keyboard and mouse pad. Both of which feel like top quality. The surrounding black plastic on the other hand doesnt, its a bit cheapy to the touch like its wafer thin and will scratch up easy. Like the plastic on a budget mobile phone. I'll try not to mark it somehow.



media buttons but no volume



Very useful hotkeys which I have accidently pressed a few times, knocking my wifi offline and cutting off the bluetooth mouse. I will have to become less of a klutz or disable them.



screen reflection



DVD showing a little light leakage on the photo which is barely noticible watching it in reality. It could be how the screen it tilted. I have to say the viewing angle isnt large- up, down and to the sides. But when you get it right its perfect.



Afternoon delight



chameleon showing off the lovely colourshine display.



The free ASUS logitech mouse which feels good and works great so far via bluetooth.

Thats all for now. I will take some more screen photos later.

As I mentioned in the review, the sound was way too low but I was able to increase it in the BIOS and it sounds as it should now, actually better than I expected, a bit tinny of course but a nice sound which you could listen to music on and play games with if you are feeling too lazy to plug it into your woofer. So now ill give it an 8/10. I still havent managed to fix the dvd jump though. Ill try various dvds and get back to you
I couldnt find out about the HD speed so if you know how please tell me, the same goes for the ram. I bet its something really simple isnt it

Downloading 3Dscore05 and 06 so Ill put those in in a short while