Ultrabook Head to Head: Acer Aspire S3 vs. ASUS UX31E

ASUS UX31E Ultrabook

Where the Acer S3 looks impressive “for an Acer laptop”, the ASUS UX31E is flat out amazing looking. This is pretty much an ASUS equivalent of the MacBook Air—style and class in an extremely thin chassis. The construction of the chassis is all aluminum and it feels very solid, including hinges that look fairly robust (though admittedly they mat still wear out in a year or two—it’s hard to say without using the laptop for a long time). Like the Acer S3, this is the higher spec version of the UX31E, so let’s start there.

The ASUS UX31E is actually slightly thicker and heavier than the Acer S3, though I’m sure ASUS would argue otherwise. In something of an ultrabook pissing contest, everyone seems to be exaggerating the thinness of their offerings by neglecting to include the added height from the rubber feet, and I’m not sure I agree with that. Regardless, I can’t say that the difference between 0.81” and 0.79” is something anyone will notice or care about; what they likely will care about is the overall quality of craftsmanship, and this is where ASUS’ UX31E excels. The chassis has a construction highly reminiscent of the unibody MacBook casing, which is a good thing—well, good except for the hard corners, where I find myself preferring the rounded edges on the Acer S3, even if the hard edges look nicer.

In most areas, the ASUS UX31E is going to go toe-to-toe with the Acer laptop. It has a slightly faster CPU and a larger battery capacity, but the Sandisk SSD is a virtual unknown. Pricing is where ASUS is really going to struggle against other offerings, as the DH72 model we’re reviewing is currently selling for $1400, $170 more than the Acer S3. There are a few features you get from the ASUS that couple sway your decision however. First and most importantly, ASUS includes a 1600x900 LCD. The contrast ratio is still mediocre, but the display can get very bright and for office work I’m fine with mediocre contrast, particularly when I get a higher resolution with it. The second noteworthy feature is the single USB 3.0 port on the right side, providing at least one other way to quickly get data on or off the system. Finally, ASUS chips in with a USB 2.0 to Ethernet adapter; it’s only Fast Ethernet (100Mb), but latency and throughput are still much better than the single stream wireless solution.

There are other differences between the Acer and ASUS ultrabooks. I mentioned that Acer has a “hibernation partition” on the SSD, something I haven’t encountered with Windows before, and moreover the firmware doesn’t support Windows’ normal hibernate mode. Instead, when you put the Acer to sleep, it enters a pseudo-hibernate state where it can still resume in around three seconds but it can stay in standby for 50 days. Well, ASUS’ UX31E uses a traditional hard drive partition and hibernate mode, so putting it to sleep means it will still draw a moderate amount of power (compared to the Acer). ASUS has a utility that estimates standby time, and on a full charge you’ll get about a week of standby. Put the system into hibernate mode on the other hand and you can last as long as the battery will hold a charge—I don’t have a good way of measuring that, unfortunately. Other than that difference, ASUS does better in POST, boot, and resume times: 4 seconds to POST, 16 seconds to get to the Windows desktop from initial power on, and 19 seconds or so before you have an active wireless connection; resume from hibernate is only slightly faster, requiring 13 seconds to get back to the desktop. (Sadly, my desktop system takes longer just to get through the POST!) I’m not sure if it’s the ASUS firmware and BIOS optimzations, the choice of SSD, or perhaps both, but regardless the UX31E is a speedy little laptop.

The design of the UX series is very striking, and the construction is top notch. There’s no flex or twist in the chassis or display, and the casing is brushed aluminum throughout. The only plastic to be found is in the display bezel (matte black, thankfully!), the keyboard, and the touchpad—areas where the plastic makes sense and still looks nice. The top panel has a circular brushed aluminum finish that’s an interesting break from the regular streaked lines, and the ASUS logo at the center looks rather cool. Like so many other laptops, the keyboard is another chiclet offering, with a few minor layout quirks, and the keys have a matte-but-shiny surface. Out of all the ultrabooks I’ve seen so far (I’ve looked at all of them), this is the most attractive from an aesthetics point of view, with only the MacBook Air able to match it in most areas. What about actually using the UX31E, though?

Everything feels exceptionally solid well put together, which is great. Unfortunately, when you start typing things take a bit of a turn for the worse. I have a few complaints about the keyboard, some similar to the Acer and others shared by Apple. The hard edges on the chassis don’t feel nice at all if you happen to rest your wrists on them while typing; I know that’s probably bad typing form, but I still did it on occasion while writing this page of the review. Key travel is also quite shallow, right there with the Acer S3 at about 1.5mm. Finally, there’s the layout issue I have: the power button is in the top-right corner of the keyboard, right where I’m used to finding the Delete key on 95% of laptops; after the third errant press of the power button I was more than a little irked (each time you hit it, a dialog pops up asking if you want to sleep, hibernate, shut down, or do nothing—almost as though ASUS realized before shipping that a bunch of people would accidentally press the power button. Here’s an idea: move the power button away from the keyboard.

At least one reader has complained to me on several occasions about his experience with the keyboard, saying he returned a UX31E because the keyboard was unusable, with missed key presses and a very uncomfortable feel; I suspect the missed key presses may have been from a bad unit, as I didn’t have that problem in general (though you do have to be more precise in typing, similar to what I experienced on the S3), but I’m definitely not going to compare the feel favorably to a ThinkPad or Latitude. Most people should be able to find a local store to test out the UX31E in person to see if they’re okay with the keyboard; I am, but it’s more something I could live with rather than something I actually like. It’s not horrible, and I actually prefer the Fn+cursor key shortcuts over what Acer has done on the S3, but I’d still prefer a dedicated column of Home/End/PgUp/PgDn keys like some of the previous ASUS laptops had (e.g. U3x series)

The touchpad on the other hand does pretty well overall. It’s absolutely huge compared to most Windows laptops—about as large as what you’ll find on a MacBook. Also like the MacBook and Acer S3, the touchpad is clickable, allowing you to press and drag windows for example. While I found that feature to be potentially useful, like the Acer S3 the ability to click along the top area of the touchpad requires a lot more force and thus doesn’t always work when trying to click+drag. Tapping on the bottom-right and left corners give the expected right- and left-click mouse buttons, though I did miss the ability to configure a two-finger tap as the middle-click (something ASUS appears to have removed in their driver build). The touchpad hardware comes from Elan, just like the Acer, and given the size of the touchpad I was pleasantly surprised by ASUS’ Smart Detector feature that’s designed to eliminate errant touchpad activation while typing. I never had to fool with the touchpad settings (outside of disabling the pinch-to-zoom and rotate gestures that I never use).

There’s only one other item with the ASUS UX31E that I dislike, and while it’s generally minor it still warrants mention: the power brick is actually a step back in my book. I know putting the Windows License sticker on it might be novel, but I wouldn’t care about a sticker on the bottom of the laptop (a la Acer’s S3). What’s more, the plug/brick is just one more wall-wart that’s more unwieldy than a regular power brick with two cords, plus if you ever lose it or need a replacement you have to keep the old one for the sticker. That’s not the end of my complaints, though: the actual connector to the laptop is very tiny and seems fragile. I’ve had a few broken power connectors over the years, and this one looks more prone to damage than others. I hate to keep mentioning Apple, but the Maglock is a far superior solution, particularly for smaller laptops—one where you’re unlikely to damage the laptop side of the power connection. I’m not sure how much it would cost to license Maglock from Apple (or if they would even do it), but I wish we could get a more durable power connector standard. Outside of worn-out hinges, that’s the next most likely part to get broken in my experience over the past ten or so years.

Finishing up our look at the UX31E, like so many laptops the display is the one area where I wish ASUS had done a bit more. There are a limited number of LCD panel manufacturers, and it looks like given the choice between a higher resolution and brighter panel or a lower resolution and higher contrast panel, ASUS opted for the former. Mind you, the panel can get very bright—around 500 nits at maximum—so you can definitely use it outdoors. Black levels on the other hand are equally high, resulting in a pedestrian 200:1 contrast ratio. It’s the one area where Apple’s MacBook Air still has a clear advantage. It may not be faster or cheaper, but the MacBook Air 13 has a comparatively excellent 1440x900 panel with a 750:1 contrast ratio. Oh, and the MacBook Air 2011 models both offer backlit keyboards—something I really wish ASUS and Acer provided.