I read two European reviews of the ASUS UX31 yesterday and both of them said that the keyboard was fine. It confused me because I’ve read some bad feedback about the keyboard and my own testing of the UX21 resulted in disappointment in the keyboard department so I decided to venture out today to find a UX31 and test it myself. I found one at Saturn, a large electronics store here in Germany, who are offering the Core i7 / 128GB version for €1099. Sure enough, the keyboard wasn’t bad at all. The keys still have that slightly wobbly feeling that the UX21 had but here I am typing away now on the UX31 with far fewer problems than I did on the UX21. It’s not perfect (the space bar is catching me out at the moment) but I’m giving it a chance. In fact, I’ve bought it and have a few days in which to test it out. If I’m not happy, I can return it.
The Toshiba Satellite Z830 (Z830-10J, Core i5) is here and the waiting is finally over. This is one of the most popular of the Ultrabooks out there right now due to its feature set, weight and, in the USA, an interesting price on the Core i3 version. I’ve unboxed it on video for you below.
Thanks to everyone that turned up at the Acer Aspire S3 Live Review this evening. It was another great detailed session of testing and Q&A. The videos are now on our YouTube channel and embedded below.
Thanks also to @morganmobile who sent his personal Acer S3 over for Ultrabooknews to test. He’s doing tests on Ultrabooks himself so make sure you follow him on Twitter to keep up with his latest thoughts.
This could be the information that many of you were looking for. The SSD Review has given the Toshiba Z830 Ultrabook the editors choice award and retrofitted a 6 Gbps mSATA Runcore T50 SSD to the Ultrabook resulting in huge disk speed increases.
There’s obviously a cost in terms of warranty and parts here but for those that are looking for the ultimate Ultrabook spec, the Z830 looks like the winner.
I want to publicly thank Morgan, @morganmobile who’s just packaged up an Acer S3 and shipped it off from Finland to us here in Germany. Who needs PR people when you’ve got contacts like that! He’s been busy testing a number of solutions and I plan to get his thoughts here in text soon.
We’ll be running the Samsun 900X1B live review on Saturday [details here] and finalizing a written review over the next 3 or 4 days. After that we’ll be getting it together with the Acer S3 for a week. I’ll let you all know about the live session for that.
Once the S3 is out the way we should be lined-up with the Toshiba Z830. I know a lot of you have been waiting for a review of that so my apologies about the delay. It’s expected within the next 2 weeks. As for the Lenovo U300S, I’m working on it. [Any Lenovo PR people out there?]
Update: Session is finished now. A report will go up soon. is now available.
I think I’m right in saying that this is the first ever Ultrabook live review and Q&A. It happens tonight, here on Ultrabooknews.com/live
It starts at about 2100 GMT+1 (Berlin time. Your local time here)
We’ll be spending 2 hours (yes, it’s going to get detailed) testing the UX21 and we’ll include battery life testing, video video editing, gaming, web, usability and a whole lot more. There will be a chat session (already open at Ultrabooknews.com/live if you want to log in and start talking) and I’ll take general Ultrabook or UX21 questions and guidance from you. Some of the session (not all of it) will be recorded and posted tomorrow. You’ll need a flash-enabled browser and about 1mbps of bandwidth to join-in.
See you later. In the meantime, here’s a teaser and a bit of World of Warcraft on the UX21…
We’ve just had a note from Toshiba Europe to say that the Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J is now shipping in Germany, Austria and, I believe, the Benelux area. Specs are as we have then in the database (note it’s the Satellite and not the Portege in Europe…so far) and the official spec list confirms a matt screen. (Entspiegelt) Recommended retail price is €1099 but I see a number of retailers offering it for €999. Amazon for example. (Toshiba Satellite Z830-10J – aff.)
Those of you that are considering the Lenovo U300s should check this good video review out. Ultimately, the UX31 is regarded as better than the U300S, even where the trackpad is concerned. I was surprised.
Screen brightness and battery life are also said to be better on the UX31 although Mobile Tech Review do regard the U300S as a good Ultrabook all-round with a solid build, full size HDMI and a good Centrino WiFi card.
The choice is yours but if you need to wait for another opinion and even a live review and Q&A session, stay tuned here because we are close to securing the UX31, U300s and the Z830 for detailed testing at Ultrabooknews.
– aff.)
