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Here is a quick review after 24 hours of usage. After a little over a year of scouring the forums and internet sites, this is what I end up with. I had seriously considered several other laptops such as the Acer 8100 series and Acer Ferrari 3200.

I had specific need. I wanted something with wide screen so I could do photoshop and webdesign on. I wanted something configurable so I could pick and choose the components I want. Lastly I wanted something with enough juice at a reasonable price so I wouldn’t have to upgrade too quickly down the road.

Ordered: Asus Z71V
Pentium-M 1.86Ghz w/2MB L2 Cache
nVidia GO GeForce 6600 w/128MB Video Memory
60GB 7200RPM HD
2x1GB Corsair DDR2-533
Intel Wifi A/B/G
DVD+RW Dual Layer
Total Cost Under $2100.00
Purchased: http://www.proportable.com

Standard Specification:
Built-in SD/MMC/ Card Reader
5 USB 2.0 Ports
One VGA port
One Modem Port / One RJ 45 Network Port (gigabit)
One PCMCIA Type II slot
One 1394B Type Slot
SATA/PATA Support. Adapter included

Design:
The Asus Z71V have a rather round corner, gun metal color design. It seems fairly well built with no open cracks or spaces around the notebook. Upon first impression, the color looks very conservative and pleasing to the eye. The laptop is two tone gun metal colors. The darker shad makes up most of the laptop while the lighter shade offers a nice trim around the laptop. Another noticeable feature upon booting up this laptop is the cool blue color LED surrounding the power button. Similar to the Asus M6 series, the power button offers a nice distinctive look to the Asus laptop series.

In the center above the keyboard is the power button with a blue light around it. To the left of the power button are 6 led status lights. To the right of the power button are 5 quick keys control for email, wifi on/off, etc. This laptop has a touch point pad with a side scroller.

In front of the laptop in the center you have the LCD lid latch. To the right of that are 5 controls for the CD/DVD Rom drive. The battery is situated right below the palm rest towards the front of the laptop. This design allow the hard drive to be situated more towards the middle and back of the laptop where the heat from it would not cause the palm rest an uncomfortable heat feeling some people noticed with other laptops, such as Uniwill 258KA model. In the front on two side of the battery, are two well equipped speakers. Though they are not Harmon Kardon, they do output a nice solid sound.

LCD:
The LCD on this laptop is a 15.4 WSXGA+ with high resolution of 1680x1050. To team up with this high resolution LCD, the laptop comes with a nice nVidia GO GeForce 6600 128MB video adapter. The LCD is clear, non-glossy texture with pretty decent viewing angles. I am not sure is it due to the wide screen type, but it looks best at max resolution compared with any other resolution. At any other resolution, the screen looks a bit distorted. This laptop does come with a feature called A.L.S. (Ambient Light Sensor). This feature is rather useful in the sense it extend your battery life. In a notebook, the one component which takes up a huge amount of power is your LCD. The ALS will detect the amount of light around you and adjust the LCD brightness accordingly to help you conserve battery. If you are in a dark room, the LCD will auto dim down a bit to help you conserve battery. From Asus, this could assist in extending your battery usage up to 6 hours. So far, I prefer using it with the ALS feature enable as it is much easier on the eyes while using this laptop in low light condition. One thing to know is even in a total dark room with ALS active, it is still pretty bright. You don’t even know it was even active.

The 15.4” wide screen is extremely beneficial to those who use spreadsheets or photoshop. You have the extra wide space to utilize all the tools you enjoy in those applications. After 2 hours of usage at high resolutions, it doesn’t seem to take a heavy toll on the eyes.

Last note on LCD, no dead pixel found yet. This is awesome! But compare this LCD to a Sony, Sony still win hands down. But compared this with others, I think this LCD have a pretty good chance.

Height / Weight:
This laptop as you can see is a 15.4” laptop. With that, most laptop of this screen size out there are usually pretty heavy. While the specification says it is less than 7lbs, it seems rather light when carrying it around. Comparing it to IBM Think pad T30 or T22 for that matter, this is lighter. The documented dimension for this laptop is: 14” x 10.75” x 1.38” and weight approx 6.5lbs.

System Performance:
On the system performance, it is rather fast compared with the AMD-XP 3000+ desktop I have. Keep in mind one thing the Intel processors have always been superior to AMD in the fact of the additional multimedia instruction set. Though in benchmark AMD might be head in overall speed, in multimedia area, Intel is still the king of the hill. What I would like to see is someone else’s Sandra using the DDR2-400 memory, how would that compared to the DDR2-533.

Sandra 2005 Benchmarks CPU:
Benchmark Results
Dhrystone ALU : 8035 MIPS
Whetstone FPU : 2593 MFLOPS
Whetstone iSSE2 : 3315 MFLOPS

Sandra 2005 Benchmark Memory:
Benchmark Results
RAM Bandwidth Int Buff'd iSSE2 : 3032 MB/s
RAM Bandwidth Float Buff'd iSSE2 : 3041 MB/s

Int Buff'd iSSE2 (Integer STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2995MB/s
Scaling : 2978MB/s
Addition : 3107MB/s
Triad : 3048MB/s
Data Item Size : 16 byte(s)
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 71% (estimated)

Float Buff'd iSSE2 (Float STREAM) Results Breakdown
Assignment : 2984MB/s
Scaling : 2995MB/s
Addition : 3101MB/s
Triad : 3084MB/s
Data Item Size : 16 byte(s)
Buffering Used : Yes
Offset Displacement Used : Yes
Bandwidth Efficiency : 71% (estimated)

As you can see above, the numbers are pretty good.

Video Performance:
On the video performance, this is a bit interesting topic. It seems Asus have underclocked the nVidia card on the Z71V for the purpose of long battery life. Due to this, the numbers seem lower in comparison to ATI X700. Through gaming and normal usage you would not notice these differences, but in benchmark you would. Keep in mind the 3D Mark number below is based upon stocked clock speed. I have not over clocked the video card for these numbers.

Using stocked nVidia Driver v71.13
3D Mark 2005: 1720

Using XtremeG nVidia Driver v71.84
3D Mark 2005: 1780

Now let’s see the overclock benchmarks:

Using XtremeG nVidia Driver 71.84 (300 Core / 500 Memory)
3D Mark 2005: 1970

This seems to be the best setting. It is rock stable and still offers great performance.

In comparison to a Toshiba Tecra S2 that also uses the same nVidia GO GeForce 6600 w/128MB

Toshiba Tecra S2 w/nVidia Go Geforce 6600 128MB...

3DMark05: 1548

As you can see, even the stocked driver from Asus still beats the Toshiba up and down. I am interested to see other laptop using the same video card and some benchmark spec around it.

One thing to keep in mind is the current 71.84 version drive available on nVidia website does not support the GO GeForce 6600, due to this you would have to use a mod such as Omega or XtremeG which edit the INF file to include support for the GO GeForce 6600. You could download the Xtreme G from www.guru3d.com which contain the official nVidia 71.84 driver w/mod INF file for support on the GO GeForce 6600

Heat / Fan:
I have used this laptop for a few hours now. I have not noticed any heat issue and the fan is very quite. Given the fact I have a wife who is a light sleeper; using this laptop next to her at night doesn’t seem to be a problem with waking her up. In my previous laptop, IBM Thinkpad or Toshiba Satellite Pro series, the fan could be quite loud at times. The palm rest is very comfortable with little to no heat after a couple of hours of usage. This is due largely in part of them being able to situate the HD a little further back than most laptop out there. Someone nice is the fan ports are actually suction ports. They intake air and ventilate out to the back of the laptop, so the heat blowing on your lap isn’t hot air!

It is actually quite comfortable typing this with the laptop on my lap. No heat problem in the palm rest area or any heat problem on my lap. The fan is very faintly on you could barely notice.

Other Comments and Information:
In my opinion, this laptop is a great well designed laptop. Most of the pictures you see here or anywhere doesn’t do any justice to this laptop. It is solid built laptop with a lot of features for the price you pay. I consider it as one of the best bang for the buck type laptop. Since it is a true barebone (whitebook) laptop, it is pretty much configurable depending on there you purchases it.

This notebook comes with 5 USB 2.0 ports. In my opinion, I think this is overkill. Having 3 at most is good, but beyond that is overkill. If anyone who needs more, get a USB hub and use it on a docking station. I would rather see the slot be covered up to give it a more sleek design.

One thing about this notebook which is rather annoying is the brightness of the LED light. Granted it is nice, but when the laptop goes into standby mode and you have the laptop lid closed, at night the flashing blue LED light could get rather annoying.

On average usage with writing email, surfing the internet, etc, this laptop could dish out a nice 3.5 and up of battery life. Which is pretty nice compared with other laptop out there today. Of course, you could also purchase a 2nd battery kit to be used in the space where the DVD drive is located.

Summary:
Overall after 24 hours of usage and benchmark, I have to say this laptop is pretty good. While the nVidia GO GeForce 6600 was not as I expected, it still perform fairly well on EQ2 and other games. A mental note is that all of these benchmarks are mainly for bragging rights, to the average users playing games or any sort of function; you will rarely notice any differences between this video card and ATI X700.

It also seems Asus wasn’t the only one unclocking the video card for battery reason, as Toshiba Tecra S2 performance was pretty sad as well. In stocked drivers and clock speed, the Toshiba Tecra S2 actually performed over 200 points lower than the Asus Z71V in 3D Mark 2005.

Setting up this laptop was a breeze without any problem whatsoever. I was able to installed Windows XP SP2 in less than 20 minutes. All the drivers came with this laptop were simple installation. The wireless wifi was an easy install as well. Plug in my WEP key and off I go. It has pretty strong signal compared to the linksys wifi 802.11b card I have.

In the accessories department, you could purchase a 2nd battery kit which fit nicely in the place where the DVD drive is currently at. This gives you the option to go on full day usage w/o having to be plugged in. Another nice accessory is the dual hard drive kit. This allows you to use two hard drives, this is great for those who rarely uses their DVD drive and could live on the external version.

==========================================================
Okay, after over a week of using this and putting it to the "REAL" test, here are my updated comments.

Before the comments, a little background on my usage. I bought this laptop primary as a laptop for me to do photoshop, webdesign, and play games with. I recently had to do a wedding photoshoot so I used the laptop for that purpose...

LCD:
On the LCD piece, there was talk about sparkle screen and such. In the past couple of weeks, I've done some research. In order to understand the LCD you much first understand the LCD technology. There are WSXGA, WSXGA+, XGA, and WUXGA to name a few of the many out there. Each of them have a max resolution it can support. Usually this max resolution is also their native resolution. Meaning the screen will only look crisp, clear, and nice in this resolution. Any other resolution out of it will look a bit blurry and sometime distorred. You have to be aware of this when deciding on a laptop. So if you are getting a 15.4" screen, the WSXGA+ runs at 1680x1050. Which is pretty small fonts and icon. If you get a WUXGA on a 15.4" screen, expect it to be even SMALLER!. So before you go out and get a Laptop, keep in mine just because it say it is UXGA or WSXGA, etc make sure you are able to bare the small size of the resolution. Especially when it is on a laptop with 15" or smaller. If you are getting 15" or smaller, SXGA and XGA is plenty for it. Don't even bother with SXGA+ or higher because you will complain about it being a bit small if you are weak eyes.

Now as for the Asus Z71V LCD. After you understand LCD Technology, I have to say the Asus Z71V LCD is a very good LCD. It is not glossy like Sony or as bright as Toshiba TruBright, but it does hold up on its own weight. The quality is super. Clear, crisp, and no sparkle. Yes you do see a faint rainbow effect against a white background, but after looking through at least a dozen laptops that are non-glossy, non-trubright, non-all those fancy stuff, you have similar screen as this one. So it is not sparkle.

The screen performs very well with Photoshop. I used a Nikon D70 and a Canon 20D over the weekend. The D70 was a 6.xMP and the Canon 20D was a 8.xMP. So both of the files are fairly large and high quality as you can see. Both shown on this LCD very sharp, correct color contrast, and perform beautifully.

Weight:
This laptop was extremely comfortable to lug around. I also bought a nice Swiss Gear laptop from bestbuy to use with it. It was not heavy, but in fact it was extremely portable to use.

Heat / Noise:
This was an important factor. I have several IBM thinkpad and a few Toshiba and Gateway in my time. All of which have this little heat in the palm rest area after long usage, which is annoying. Since I will be doing a lot of photoshop and multimedia design / authoring, it will utilize the system CPU a lot. In this laptop heat wasn't an issue and the palm rest area was not hot one bit. The fan was on, but you have to really listen to it to hear. It is very quiet!!


Others:
The DVD drive performed nicely on this laptop. It burned at 8x fairly fast given I had to do a few SLIDE-SHOW DVD on the fly, which worked out well. I used this laptop to link up on a projector for a few slideshow, it performed nicely as well.

----

Those are my updated and revised comments on this laptop. PM me if you have questions on it.



==========================================================


For Asus Z71V Support Thread, please refer to: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=72349

User Reviews & Info:

• VooDoo PC m:515 version of Asus Z71V
• Notebook Forums' Asus Z71V Discussion Thread
• Notebook Forums' Asus Z71V Discussion Thread #2
• Laptop Logic's Asus Z71V Discussion Thread #4
• Notebook Review's Asus Z71V Discussion Thread
• The Unofficial Asus Z71V Support Thread
• Smilepak's Asus Z71V Review
• Olli3's Asus Z71V Review
• Djembe_Rob's Asus Z71V Review
• G2P's Asus Z71V Review
• Star Tech's - Asus Z71V

Where To Buy:

• RJTech.COM - Z71A Model
• RJTech.COM - Z71V Model
• Amax Elite Version
• XMeld - Z71v Model
• Integrated System Technology - Pre Order Z71V (nVidia GO 6600 Version)
• ProPortable - Pre Order Z71V (nVidia GO 6600 Version)
• VoodooPC M:515
• AgearNotebook Asus Z71V
• Hypersonic Aviator MX6 - Asus Z71V Version
• GamePC - Asus Z71V
• Discount Laptops - Asus Z71V
• ABS PC - Asus Z71V Version
• G2P - Asus Z71V

And of course the nice expensive painted version could be purchased at http://www.voodoopc.com. Which is known as the VoodooPC M:515 on their website.


Overall I give this laptop a 9 out of 10!


Now off to sleep, I have a serious flu and typing this out is making me tired

Yay the review is here! Let me read it now

ED1T-

Very nice review. Are you noticing any sparkly screen happening?

Thanks a lot for the review! I (and I'm sure a bunch of other people) really appreciate all of your input regarding this lappy. Mine'll be here Tuesday!!!

I have some news...

Someone have leaked out the latest and greatest nVidia driver version 76.44. That is a good news.

The bad news is the inf file doesn't support the GO 6600 on our Asus Z71V...

The good news from that is, someone updated the INF file so you could use it with this latest driver!!!

nVidia Leak Discussion: http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=3761

INF File To Support our Lappy: http://laptopvideo2go.com/infs/7644inf/nv4_disp.inf

Here is a sample:

3D Mark 2005: 2080!!!! ofcourse that is with 300 Core / 500 Memory, but still an improvement over previous version with that same core speed!!!!!

Woot!!!

The only thing I'd care about with the underclocked video card is if it drops the usable resolution -- if I could play UT2004 or something at wsxga on a normal version, but the underclocked version is only playable at a lesser resolution, then I'd be ticked.

I notice a similar resolution problem with my M6Ne; only the native resolution looks "clear" and any lower resolution looks burry/distorted...
I think this is common amongst many laptops in general.

For me the resolution won't be a problem - I don't think I'll mind doing winxp things in high-res. For games though I prefer slightly toned down - 1280x960 for instance... Just plug it into my 17" lcd and off I go!

nice review spak. I can't wait til mine gets here!

How long does it take for the system to boot up?

thank you smilepak - I think you have covered most of what I want to know about this model. Very good review...

Thanks fo the review. Now I just have to find somewhere in Western Australia that I can get one of these and I'll be one happy boy.

I think the blurriness of non-native resolution is something that is common to SXGA+ or WSXGA+, but not the standard XGA or WXGA LCDs. I was reading this somewhere but can't remember where.

This is a great review, you got the laptop bag too. I like it although not much protection is given its a nice addition.

Thank you for the review on this notebook. I am thinking of purchasing this one off of proportable.com.

Thank you smilepak you are the Z71V guru indeed and I purchased this lappy because of all the information you made avaliable on it.

Great review and keep the info coming!!!11

Smilepak,
Is it please possible to provide a bit more detail on your screen? As you may know I've got the unfortunate one of the bunch being 'sparkly' or with a 'prism or holographic effect' or when looking especially on whites etc. Does your screen exhibit any of these problems, or is a pure white matte?
Thanks.