ASUS ZenBook 13 Ultra-Slim Laptop 13.3" FHD Display, Intel 8th gen Core i5-8250U, 8GB RAM, 256GB M.2 SSD, Win10, Backlit KB, FP, Icicle Gold, UX331UA-AS51

Very nice ultrabook. Pluses: The startup is fast in about 5-6 secs. The fingerprint scanner is responsive also. SSD performs quite well. Screen is very sharp (not incredibly bright). Not sure what itd be like in sunlight. Touch pad is very accurate and responsive. Minuses: -No dedicated Insert key (might not be a big deal to most people but for someone who uses Shift-Ins for paste. Its a difficult adjustment to have to hit the Shift-Fn-delete to insert. -The keyboard isnt the best but not bad either. Keys not hit perfectly sometimes lead to missed letters. Its fine for a laptop keyboard though. -Not expandable for memory and SSD

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Performance: 5 stars Screen: 2 stars Finishes: 2 stars Power button location: -3 stars This computer got good performance reviews by tech sites and met most of my wants (SSD, light weight, RAM) so I bought it through Amazon. It looks nice but the top got scratched almost immediately. The screen looked terrible. It has a matte finish that may have blocked glare but it also blocked me seeing what was on the screen. I always had the brightness turned up very high, which eats up battery. I also found it difficult just to open the laptop. You have to hold it in one specifically notched out area. The deal breaker for me was something relatively small. The power button is intergrated into the keyboard. Its on the top right next to the delete button. There is no space away from the other keys. I was regularly turning off my computer instead of hitting the delete key, which leads to unsaved work and missed info during meetings/lectures. I highly recommemd finding this laptop (or another non-touchscreen zenbook model) on display somewhere before you buy online.

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As Indicated by another poster, the sensitive area of the touch pad overlaps the designated buttons for clicking. I have returned my brand new laptop for this very reason. I must agree that this is one of the most unbelievably annoying design choices I have ever had the misfortune of running across. Please fix this as it makes using the device hell, the complete opposite of what you want as user. The touch pad is the primary interface with the device, it makes sense to focus on this part of the design as most of the users contact with and utilization of the device occurs via the touch pad. In addition, the screen on this device is terrible. The tone is muted and dull. The colors are cartoonish at best, this laptop seriously reminds me of a budget basement piece of hardware. Behind the shiny aluminum cover lies a decent processor, in a light package. All of the rest regarding the beautiful colors and crisp visuals is garbage. Do not waste your time. I am personally disappointed that Amazon would designate this as an Amazon Choice product. When searching for deals, and excellent buys, it would be nice if this selection were curated to ensure that customers arent being pushed substandard products.

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As several other review-writers have noted, this laptop computer has a problem with the display flickering. As with others, I noticed the problem when watching Netflix videos that stream at 1080p (you have to watch in Edge or using the Netflix app; in Chrome and Firefox, Netflix streams at only 720p). I believe that the cause of this is that the computer generates electrical interference of some sort at 60hz, which is what the display is set at by default. But because it also comes with a video setting enabled called "Panel Self-Refresh" which causes the video card NOT to send a refresh every 1/60 of a second in order to conserve battery power, by default the display isnt actually running at 60hz despite it being set at that refresh rate. Watching a 1080p movie on Netflix kicks the display into a frequency that causes the flickering to become apparent. To make the problem go away, turn off all battery-saving settings that have to do with video, especially "Panel Self-Refresh," and then set the display refresh rate to 48hz, and there will be no more flickering. You can also make the flickering go away by connecting it to an external monitor with an HDMI cable. That acts as a ground for the video system and makes the flickering go away. I give this laptop 1-star for what is either a design flaw or a common manufacturing defect. I recommend that you dont buy this.

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I did a lot of research and read SO MANY reviews before deciding on this laptop, and Im so glad I did! I had a different ASUS laptop I bought 2 years ago (a 15-inch touchscreen model) and got really tired of shoving that huge thing into my backpack and lugging it around. It was just too heavy and unwieldy for college, and I didnt use the touchscreen feature nearly as much as I thought I would. So when it stopped working a month ago, I was excited to move to something that more fit what I needed. This seems perfect so far! Its just the size I wanted, small and light and definitely portable, but the screen is still amazing and I have no trouble seeing anything. The touchpad is great and I LOVE the fingerprint reader, I can have my computer open almost instantly which is so so cool! Some reviews said the keyboard is a little hard to type on and I can definitely see what theyre talking about, you do have to push harder than expected on the keys to get it to register the letters sometimes. But I feel its pretty easy to get used to after some use, and definitely not that huge of an issue in my opinion! Overall this computer is light, super fast, has a gorgeous outside, and has some really cool features you dont see everywhere. If you want a great computer for college that wont cost you $1,000+ I would definitely recommend this one!

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This is really my backup/travel computer. I have a high-end model that I do not like to take on the road. I purchased this model to fill in that gap. It has virtually everything I need. Backlit. Light. Good graphics. I dont game with it, so I cant speak to gaming. I only gave it 4 stars for a couple of reasons. 1) The on-off key is located on the upper right of the keyboard, right next to the DELETE key. I cant say how many times Ive gone to delete something and accidentally turned off the machine. 2) The ARROW keys are in a funky arrangement, and they are inappropriately sized. Update: May 2019. Its been two years since the purchase. I actually dropped the laptop about 4 feet, onto a concrete surface, twice. Once in 2018 and then two days ago. In the same place, separated by one year in time. The laptop still functions quite well. I have to say, I am impressed with its durability and robustness. All in all though, I like the machine. Since I keep everything on a cloud anyway, Im not too concerned if this dies. But its been very reliable. It starts incredibly fast. Some features are much better than my Yoga. No touch-screen though. But that would have added some serious $$ to the price.

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A couple days ago first one came in an unopened clean box. Laptop was clean and untouched. It was flawless! I was so happy after TEN years with my good old 5.8 lb VAIO, which Im writing this review on. Everything was great and laptop was so smooth, fast, lightweight, it has awesome track pad sensitivity and feeling (contrary to reviews Ive seen) and a beautiful design, BUT... There was an incredible buzzing noise whenever I scroll down/up. Im not sure if it was coming from the fan or something, but it sounded like itd be a serious problem in a foreseeable future. Ive returned it. The second one came today. Product box was already opened (black tape with ASUS logo on it was cut) and it was really disappointing. Still, I kept going to see if it were acceptable or not. There were fingerprints everywhere, a scratch on the screen and another one on the case. Annoying white dust stuck between the bottom side of the screen and the bezel (I dont know how did they manage to do that because there is almost no even any space between the screen and the bezel!). And lastly, Windows 10 installing guide was different than the first one. It was weird/clipped and made me uncomfortable. Frustrated, Ive returned that too and got a refund. Ill probably wait a little before I order another one or look for a different laptop. Im so sorry about all this because its a beautifully designed and really fast laptop -according to my 2 day experience with the first one-...

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Ive now had this laptop for a month, and I am delighted with my purchase. Theres a lot about this laptop to love too. It is lightweight, which makes it very portable, so you dont mind taking it with you. The solid aluminum body is strong, although it can flex if youre not careful. The fingerprint scanner works wonderfully. While the specs say the battery can last UP TO 12-hours, my experience has been that it lasts closer to 10-hours, which still isnt bad. The 8th generation i5-8250U processor, 256GB SSD drive, and 8GB of RAM make for a fast user experience. Ive had tons of tabs in Google Chrome open, multiple MS Word documents open while streaming music with no problems. While a great laptop, there are a few things I dont like about it. First would have to be the location of the power button, which is next to the delete key. On multiple occasions, Ive hit the power button while editing a document. I changed to the power button to put the laptop to sleep when you hit the power button, so I didnt lose any work, but it is still frustrating. My only other complaint so far is that neither the RAM nor the SSD drive is upgradeable. Using an external SSD drive solves the storage issue with negligible performance differences, so that issue has a workaround. As for the 8GB of RAM...

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Kept locking up. Perpetual blue screen of death. Customer service only solution was to restore again n again and then an Automatic repair. They were polite but pretty much useless and they never returned my calls. I probably called them a dozen times with my issue. Through my own research I found that Office 2007 wasn’t always compatible with Win 10. I upgraded to Office 2019 and this kept it from locking up. No thanks to Asus useless tech support. This Asus junk takes forever just to open File Explorer just to view the contents of folder. Then you’re sitting there looking as the icon spins round and round just to view contents. Even slower opening a program. Go make a sandwich as you wait. Connection to the internet times out every few minutes and takes a couple minutes to manually reconnect. All my other devices work fine on WiFi except the Asus junk. That’s why I’m writing this review on my phone. It’s easier and more reliable then using the laptop. See my attached pics of what I’m describing. The only reason I still have this piece of junk is because of my work schedule I had it for 30 days and couldn’t return it Amazon. My fault there.

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Overall, this is a fine machine with good battery life. Its quick, its light, it would be great if it didnt have a TERRIBLE trackpad. For the price, there is no excuse to have a trackpad this inconsistently responsive. I use my laptop all day every day for my job and I cant tell you how infuriating it is to have the trackpad just suddenly stop working. Sometimes I will not be able to scroll, sometimes I just sit for 2 minutes til it finds the pointer again. I lose time every single day because of this. I tried the solutions I found online but nothing helps and unfortunately, I live in a country where an external mouse will be quite expensive to buy, if I can even find one. This laptop would have had 5 stars no problem if it werent for this inconsistent, crappy trackpad. Id return it if I could. UPDATE: I keep finding more reasons to dislike this relatively expansive computer. The screen glitches often which can be quite a headache when working for long period of time. Often, programs wont work (e.g., Skype has a problem with the microphone, netflix reads as having too many windows open, steam wont launch at all) unless I restart entirely, which takes time and often messes with my work flow (I have a certain number of docs open that Im working on simultaneously and have to save and close all of them to make a business call in which I then have to re-open all of them). The number of issues I continue to have with this computer is unacceptable given the price. I dont know, maybe I got a lemon, but I am very dissatisfied.

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