ASUS W3V (W3H00V, US Model) Review

Revision: 2.0
Date: 05/26/05
by: sygyzy (davidREMOVE@sygyzy.com)

Please report any errors.

Purchasing Criteria:

I was looking for a notebook in the thin and light category. The last notebook I owned was a Toshiba that I just absolutely loved. It was probably in the 6lb range so not the lightest thing. I have always been impressed with Toshiba's quality. I have also heard great things about IBM notebooks. So with that information, I set off to find my next notebook from my two favorite vendors. I ended up looking very closely at the Toshiba Tecra M3. I had to eliminate IBM simply based on the fact that I knew people with employee ID numbers were getting the notebooks at 30% off and I was not about to spend more money than I had to. I couldn't find anyone to provide me with a IBM EPP so Toshiba quickly became the favorite.

The M3 had everything I wanted. At this time, Toshiba was running a 10% off promotion which brought down the price, even with upgrades. As I did more research, the ASUS name kept popping up. Then I noticed the W3V. It seemed like the "next big thing". The ASUS notebook forums were lit up with excitement. Naturally, I had to find out more. After I got the specs, I went to the Toshiba site to configure an identical M3. Surprisingly, I was able to do just that. The difference?

M3 - 4:3 screen, better GPU, well established and great quality
W3V - Widescreen, worse GPU, newcomer in the notebook arena, excellent history with motherboards

Concerns:

My primary concerns were with the heat and quality of the unit. ASUS knows all about making great motherboards and they manufactured Apple Powerbooks at one time, but that doesn't mean they have the notebook industry all figured out. This is their first try at it. Like their motherboards, they aimed high from the start. At $1900, the W3V is not a budget notebook at all. It definitely is asking for a lot of faith for that kind of money.

There was a lot of talk of the heat issue in the forums. Most customers played it off and excused it. Most found ways around it such as undervolting. I am fairly forgiving when it comes to products, but I couldn't help but think that many of these users were dismissing the problems because of the fear of buyer's remorse or just the horrible feeling we all get when we realized we made a $2000 mistake. How could ASUS, a company that should be an expert on heat issues, allow a product like the W3V to be released with heat issues?

Purchasing:

To help me make my decision, I posted in some forums and also emailed ProPortable since they were so highly praised. I received quick responses which I was very impressed with. ProPortable definitely seems more personal, than most companies. This works for and against them, I think. Needless to say, I was more pleased than not and decided to place an order with them. They were expecting a shipment a week after I ordered but instead, they got it that Monday, which means I had it in my hands 2 days later. That gave me the rest of the week plus the weekend to play with the notebook. I really was excited about this.

Performance:

Everything is nice and speedy (except DVD playback, see below). If one wanted to add some extra ram, I imagine it would be very easy to do so. Just unscrew a small panel on the bottom and pop in the ram and reboot. Simple as that. From what I have read, a hard drive upgrade is as simple.

Warranty:

I have not tested out their warranty but it's nice to know that I have a bonus year (2 global, 1 North American) for purchasing in a certain time frame. I don't like paying extra for warranty but I'll take as much included as they'll give me. You never know when you might need it. This is a huge plus for ASUS, in my book.

Weight and Balance:

I was pretty excited about this "thin and light" category I had just learned about. I thought 4-6lbs, 1 inch thick, would be just perfect. I am a little disappointed. First of all, ASUS USA and the US vendors continue to post the weight of the machine using the smaller battery (that does not even come with the US designation) and I believe the traveler's tray too. How unrealistic. I don't care if all the other manufacturers fib their numbers. You shouldn't fib about yours. In case anyone is interested, the machine weighs 5 lbs, 10oz or 5.625 lbs. If you hand the notebook to a friend, they will be hard pressed to say "boy, this is so light!" In fact, learning previously that you spend two thousand dollars on the machine and not wanting to be rude, they'll nod their heads and say "not too shabby."

The balance on the machine is poor. They decided to go with a thick tube/stick battery that is attached in the back. That's great. Innovative, looks pretty, awesome. But guess what happens when you have a battery that weighs a ton, in the back axis of the machine? It is very unbalanced. While this normally won't affect you if you place the machine on a hard surface, it will affect you if you use the machine in the way it's name implies - LAPTOP. You actually have to be careful how you move your body while you are using it in order to assure that it does not fall off your lap. The battery acts as a pivot point, just waiting to flip the machine away from you, crashing into the floor below. Give me the old school wide and thin batteries any day.

Hinge:

Everyone is praising the no latch feature. The W3V uses magnets to keep the lid down. To open it, you have to grab a little lip on the lid, then slide your finger inside the opening, making sure you don't go too far or you'll touch the screen. Then you have to hold the base down firmly with one hand as you pull up the lid with the other. Why did they get rid of the latch? As if it was ugly or something. I don't hate the magnets but I certainly don't like them either. Also, contrary to popular believe, the reason you have to hold down the base is not because the magnets are so powerful. It's because the hinging is very very tight. I consider this a pro since I have to adjust viewing angles frequently. I also consider it a con when trying to open my laptop. I am getting more and more used to it, though, so that's a plus. It's not as much as a worry/nuisance as before.

Battery:

Like I mentioned, I don't like how it is designed but it seems to work fine. I have never run stress tests. Luckily, I have not been in a situation where I was forced to be without an AC adapter for long periods of time. On High Performance, my battery meter is claiming just over 3.5 hours with 99% remaining. I don't feel like testing it to see how accurate it is.

802.11 a/b/g & Bluetooth:

I have not been able to test Bluetooth since I don't have any devices. I use 802.11b with WEP daily and it works just great. It also picks up plenty of AP's around my complex as well as over 100 on the way down between LA and SD. I don't know what this indicates since I don't have a standard for testing sensitivity. It works great as far as I am concerned.

Screen:

I like the screen. I think it's very sharp. I like that they didn't give choices for resolutions. I like that they just found what works and provided it. Since most of my buying is sight unseen, I am always worried when choosing resolutions if the text would be too small and hard to read or if the graphics won't be sharp enough. ASUS took the guess work out of it for me.

While I do see the benefits of the "Color Shine" screen, I don't think it's the greatest thing ever. It's funny, when Sony came out with the idea for their LCD's, everyone had to have it. But why? It's not an advancement in screen technology. People just want the latest thing. If this was not a "Color Shine" screen, I would not have cared. My roommate has a Sony VAIO laptop with the fancy screen and he told me that sometimes he wished he didn't have it. The glare is really annoying. I am sitting in a train right now and I can see all the overhead lights as well as the silhouette of my head on the screen. There is a very limited vertical viewing angle too. You have to be careful to adjust the angle of the screen so that you can maximize sharpness and minimize glare. I was watching a DVD and though everything was washed out until I adjusted the angle of the screen (and thus my viewing angle) and I realized that it really improved everything.

In short, the quality is great, the glare and limited vertical viewing angle are not. You have to be very careful with how you position the screen

DVD Playback:

Performance - Surprisingly it's choppy at times. I am not sure why this is since both the DVD drive, processor, and graphics card are very capable of performing well. If hardware decoding by the x600 was an issue, the powerful mobile P4 should have compensated with software decoding. I am not sure why it stutters occasionally even with AC power and all power saving, CPU throttling features off.

Quality is not what I am used to, especially when playing full screen. It's still noticeable when playing at 100% too so it's not an upscaling issue. Some scenes are noticeably dithered and grainy.

Screenshots (taken with Power DVD's built-in capture. Thumbnails in JPG for size, full size in BMP for uncompressed representation) -

Italian Job -

Gone in 60 Seconds -

Audio:

I never looked at this closely until this past weekend when I was on a 3 hour train ride and wanted to watch a movie. I packed along a set of portable earbuds (Sennheiser MX500's). I mention that they are portable because they are designed specifically for portable devices and thus they are easily driven (32 Ohms). Even at full volume, I could barely make out the dialog in the movies. With standard ambient noise of the train, I could hear that something was being outputted but could only pick up on a few words per sentence. The best I could get with DVD audio is by using Power DVD's noisy environment setting. That made it acceptable.

Players used - Power DVD, Zoom Player Pro, TheatreTek, Windows Media

MP3 Audio - Worked a lot better. MP3's are much louder. However, even if you "crank it" to the max volume, it's not as loud as you might want it to be. It's probably 80% of what I want it to be. Sometimes you want to rock out when your favorite track comes up. Good luck doing that with this machine. You'll be listening to Metallica at the same level as Frank Sinatra, whether you like it or not.

Speakers - Nonexistent bass. Very tinny. Ironically, to make the sound usable, you have to max out the volume. If you max out the volume, it sounds like you are overdriving the speakers which causes them to be tinny. Also, the speakers are placed facing you, in the front of the notebook. Now picture that for a second. Sound has to come out and up to your ears, right? One problem, your wrists, arms, and chest are blocking the waves. Unbelievable.

Benchmarks - We can see quickly that the Noise level is about 15 decibels less than a soundcard such as the Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live! 5.1. Overall the results were just average (good). The two next steps are Very Good and Excellent.

RealTek HD 16/44

RightMark Audio Analyzer test

Testing chain: External loopback (line-out - line-in)
Sampling mode: 16-bit, 44 kHz

Summary

General performance: Good

Frequency response

Noise level

Dynamic range

THD + Noise (at -3 dB FS)

Intermodulation distortion

Stereo crosstalk

IMD (swept tones)

Results of other sound cards for comparison

Heat:

Anyone who tells you this thing does not get hot must have a high tolerance for pain. The only way ASUS is getting away with this has to do with how we interact and use notebooks. How many of you type for long periods of time (10+ minutes) without every removing your hands from the keyboard? Personally, I often get up to get something to drink, or use my mouse to switch between windows. This is the cooling off period and the only reason why hands are not burned by the keyboard. The biggest mistake ASUS made was placing the scorching hot hard drive directly underneath the right palm rest, in an enclosed and non-ventilated compartment. THANKS ASUS! Nobody seems to have an explanation as to why this is but there are some humorous ones from the fanboys such as "If they did it, it must be a good idea." Yeah, if Ford built cars with exploding gas tanks, that must be a good idea too! Talk about blind faith and utter devotion.

Another area that everyone misses, is how hot the actual keyboard gets. It gets much hotter than the palm rest. Over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in fact. Also, since the palm rest is plastic, you cannot feel the heat's effects as easily. However, the pretty aluminum outline of the touchpad conducts heat very well. What's hotter?

Update - I will say that I am becoming more tolerant of the heat problem and mostly am dealing with it by taking breaks from the typing.

Temperatures (exterior taken with a laser thermometer, interior measured with C) -

Left Palm Rest, Right Palm Rest, Right Keyboard, Hard Drive, Local Temp

Startup - 28.5, 29.5, 29.5, 26.0, 33.0

Surfing the web, CPU < 2% - 29.5, 33.0, 36.0, 38.0, 46.0

10 minutes of DVD watching, CPU < 12% - 30.0, 33.0, 39.0, 42.0, 50.0

A few hours of web surfing, downloading, some DVD, CPU varied - 33.5, 34.5, 41.5, 46.0, 52.0

To give you an idea of how hot that is in Fahrenheit, the upper temperatures reached 96-103F.

Drivers:

ASUS provided a driver CD which made a new OS install painless. I updated what I could, particularly the latest Realtek HD audio drivers from the RealTek site as well as Omega ATI x600 drivers. The sound driver didn't seem to do anything to help with the awful audio but the Omega drivers seemed to help with my DVD picture quality. Placebo effect possibly?

Extras:

Case - I thought it was nice of ASUS to provide a case. I am currently using it since I don't know if I want to invest in another one at this time. I was able to fit my notebook, 2 DVD's, a book, AC adapter, wireless mouse, iPod, and headphones on my trip. It was a very tight fit but it did work.

Logitech Wireless Optical Mouse - I use this frequently. My only complaint is the dongle. I wish it were bluetooth so I didn't have something sticking out of the side of the notebook.

Ports:

Three USB ports are good, as are the video connections and SD card reader (nice touch). A mini firewire port plus only once PCMCIA card slot are bad.

Keys And Placement -

I like the extra side buttons for quick launch and on/off WLAN and BT. I especially like the quick disabling of the touchpad. I hate the touchpad being on when I am typing. I like the nice blue LED's for status indicators and I like that you can see then with the lid closed.

I do not like the Fn key being where the CTRL key should be. There are some other keys that were moved around but I got used to them really quick.

Overall Rating: Considering there is a no return policy, at least not one without a restocking fee, I think that the pros outweigh the cons on this laptop. This laptop really does have all the features I was looking for. It is unfortunate that ASUS decided to cut corners with their onboard audio as well as heat ventilation design. I am not sure what their QA department was thinking. Everything else seems executed well and despite my VERY scrutinizing eye, I think overall, it is a industry leading notebook. After some thought, I think the Fujitsu P7000 series should have been another consideration before purchasing. It seems very similar to this notebook. If I had to rate this notebook, I'd give it a 7.0 out of 10.

Images: