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After using my brand new Asus Z71v for a week now, here is my review.

The pictures to complement this review can be found right here.

Speed and Battery Life
Damn! This thing is fast! It gets through anything within seconds, and opens program instantly. With the main battery, using general word processing I got about three hours with 20% remaining. I haven’t run it down on DVDs or games yet so I can’t tell you about that. I will soon however and will update you. The hard drive (7200rpm) makes a huge difference over the 4200rpm in my old computer. File retrieval is very fast. Windows boots in about 35 seconds and shuts down in less. Incredible speed overall.

The Screen
The WSXGA+ (1680x1050) LCD screen is very nice. Colors are sharp and clean, and the resolution is the perfect size for me. The blacks are incredible; they are very deep and rich – like black holes. The white is not perfectly white, but a little grainy. Not a lot mind you, but just enough to notice it’s not a perfect white. Some people have mentioned the sparkly screen, and how it looks holographic on solid colors, especially whites and greens. Personally, I notice it but it doesn’t bother me at all. The resolution is small, some think too small, but I love it and it gives me tons of real estate for programming. The widescreen is especially nice, as I have –never- even seen a widescreen notebook before in real life. It allows me to have to word documents open side-by-side at 100% zoom with absolutely no scrolling necessary. Absolutely awesome.

Video Card Performance
The GeForce Go 6600 128MB worked very well. I ran Splinter Cell at medium->high settings with good FPS. It can be overclocked somewhat, and there are many drivers for it. My stock 3DMark05 score was 1790, and overclocked to 325/570 with the 76.50 drivers was 1998. It can be overclocked more and used with better drivers to about 2250. However, my video card (I think) is shot at the moment. In any games it runs fine for a while and then the CPU usage goes to 100%, making the game implayable. IST and I are trying to resolve this problem, and I may have to return it, depending on what NVIDIA and Asus say about it. Overall, very solid scores and performance.

Keyboard and Touchpad
Keyboard feels very solid. It has very nice travel and is not too loud (quieter than my old IBM.) The function key is in the very bottom left corner, but as my old IBM had it actually feels more comfortable than having the ctrl key so far away, especially when you use it so much. A nice addition is it has the Windows key, which my old laptop didn’t have. A slight negative is the placement of the Delete, Home, PgUp, PgDn, and End keys. They are all squished in a single column along the right hand side. It gets a bit of used to. The arrow keys are nice, they have room above them so you don’t accidentally press other keys, and they seem plenty large. The keyboard has very little flex. The only apparent place is in the top right, where it flexes maybe 1.5mm. The touchpad is Synaptics. It works nicely, and the scroll bar on the left works well. The click keys are a little noise, but they get the job done.

Build Quality and Ports
Awsome! The computer feels very solid, like it could survive a drop. The latch to the screen is simple and doesn’t feel like it will break. There are rubber pads on the screen to prevent it scraping against the keyboard portion. The hinges are sturdy and smoother, although you need a little force to move them. On the right side is the DVD+-RW drive (haven’t burned anything yet, but have had not problems with. Your usually notebook drive). On the left side (left to right) is a USB 2.0 port, headphone jack, microphone jack, and 1364 Firewire port (note that its not the normal size, so you need an adapter), then the memory card reader, an express card slot with no express card slot, and the PCMCIA slot. The back side (from left to right) is the power cord, S-Video, VGA, four USB 2.0 slots, Ethernet port, and telephone line port.

Size and Weight
I don’t have an accurate scale, but someone else mentioned that it 6.39 pounds. It doesn’t feel very heavy at all, and I can carry it around in a backpack with books no problem (I’m not a big guy either). Physical dimensions I measure are 10.6” x 14.0” x 1.4”. The width is a bit wider than most widescreens, and so the screen has a little extra padding on the top and bottom. Just a little, but it’s noticeable.

Miscellaneous
The power brick is tiny! As you can see in the picture, it’s very small. The plug that goes into the computer is notched, so it can only enter one way. The microphone in the screen works okay, not great, but it gets the job done. The ALS (Ambient Light Sensor) is nice, saves some battery life, and the dimming is hardly noticeable. I personally love the AudioDJ as when I’m playing music when doing other work I don’t have to use WMP to change songs and stuff, I just have one quick press. The sound is very nice, best I have heard on a laptop yet. Crisp and clear. Although they are not as good as my external speakers, obviously. There are six buttons near the top of the keyboard for different stuff and are very useful. From left to right they are: Launch e-mail client, launch internet browser, turn LAN on/off, disable/enable touchpad, and Power4Gear chagner. The fans are very silent, and never really get loud even when on full. They are on most of the time, but go off when on battery power and settings are down.

Overall
Awsome fast lappy with a very nice screen. The keyboard is very nice, as are the extra button. It is pretty much silent and runs very cooly. I give it a 9.5/10!

Ask any question you want, I’ll be glad to answer all of them!

very nice review with nice pictures to boot

sounds like you didnt have the laptop in front of you when you wrote this

"The back side (from left to right) is the power cord, forgotten, forgotten, four USB 2.0 slots, Ethernet port, and telephone line port."???

forgotten, forgotten? i think you meant to say "S-Video and VGA"

also, what do you mean by an "express card slot with no express card slot"

i asked in other threads, but can you comment on the dual display if you have tried it.

thanks... looks beautiful

edit some more: commenting on the plug that goes into the computer, you mentioned is notched even though it looks circular in the pictures. if what you mean by notched is that i can only be plugged in one and only one way, w/o movement, that sucks and soon with time, the wire will bend and crack (ive seen this happen before).

The power cord can be rotated, but once in, it takes a little bit of extra force to unplug it. That may be what B meant by "notched". The express card slot is a covered opening on the left side of the notebook that doesn't do anything. I think it was an early option that Asus decided against.

As a side note, B Nietsnie, do you have Sandra installed on your computer? If so, can you verify that the USB port on the left can run at a faster speed than the four on the back? I wonder why?

And, oh yeah, Nice Review!

Those buttons on the top.. I think there should be:
1) e-mail client
2) internet browser (internet explorer)
3) Wireless LAN on/off
4) Touchpad on/off
5) Power4Gear

one more thing noone mentioned was the little sliding switch for the optical drive. how does it work, and does the dvd drive just slide out when you slide the switch? or is the dvd drive screwed into the chasis of the notebook.

I haven't tried dual-dispaly yet.

There is a covered slot that says Express beside it, but I think it was something that Asus decided to leave out at the last minute.

The plug only really comes out one way, but goes in all the ways. I just has a little tick on one side that keeps it from coming out accidentaly.

Sorry I don't have Sandra installed. I'll install it later and let you know.

The DVD drive just slides out easily when your move the switch.

hey just wondering, is the cd drive connected to the laptop via standard laptop disk drive connector thingie? i dunno, maybe a picture if its not too much?

thanks

Back of drive


Inside





My Toshiba Samsung drive seems a bit slow though, took me 15 mins to burn a CD just 42mins long.

olli3, nice clear pics

looks like they just stuck a little piece of plastic on the back of the drive to make it modular.

is it possible to see it w/o the dvd drive? just the little modular thing that hooks up to the drive?

hmm, might want to post in the pictures related thread of this post to keep things clean here.

anyone know if you can turn the blinking LED off when you close the laptop and have it on standby?

That is annoying huh?

But then you wouldn't be able to distinguish shutdown and standby...

I think you forgot to include one key element (that or i'm blind): The cost!

How much? where from? Ship time? ect.

Ack yeah I forgot that. It cost $2350 (including extra ac adapter, floppy drive, extra main battery, Windows XP Pro) from Integrated Systems Technologies. It was shipped on the first of April, and I received it on the 8th (from North Carolina to Ontario).

2350 CDN? USD?