Asus UX21E ZenBook

The ASUS UX21E ZenBook range is a line of ultrabooks designed for the modern multimedia worker that comes in a variety of form factors. As many other ultrabooks, it tries to emulate the MacBook Air in more areas than just thinness. How close does it get?

What we like best

The ASUS UX21E ZenBook range is a line of ultrabooks designed for the modern multimedia worker that comes in a variety of form factors. As many other ultrabooks, it tries to emulate the MacBook Air in more areas than just thinness. How close does it get?

What we like best
The UX21E ZenBook is the smaller version of the UX31, the latter being a 13 inch laptop and, at 1.8mm at the rear, ever so slightly than its 11 inch brother (which measures 1.7mm at its tickest point). SSD is in use in all of them, however, and the most high-end model of the UX21E options sports 256Gb as well as an Intel Core i7-2677 processor.

The polished aluminium finish on the lid makes the ZenBook look incredibly cool and smart, and thankfully there is no lack of grip so you’re unlikely to let it slip out of your hand. Despite being on the shiny side (some might even call it flashy), the pattern is well-equipped to resist fingerprints and minor scratches.

The base starts out relatively solid at the back, but gets gradually slimmer towards the front (creating a wedge-like shape for maximum ‘weight loss’).

There are two USB ports included with the ASUS UX21E ZenBook: a USB 2.0 on the left and a USB 3.0 (not available with the MacBook Air) port on the right. Apart from that, there’s a mini VGA and a micro HDMI port (everything has to be tiny with the ZenBook, it seems), and an audio jack. When playing music on this laptop, the sound emanating from the in-built speakers was powerful and well-rounded.

A core feature of any ultrabook should be that it boots up almost instantly from sleep mode, and the ASUS UX21E does that admirably well.

What we like least

The keyboard looks lovely, but offered unsatisfying feedback and feeling clunky beneath our fingers. There is also no backlight, which is increasingly becoming par for the course.

The screen (1366 x 768) is a tad too reflective and doesn’t display colours sharply enough to be totally convincing – its brightness, however, is impeccable. There is also a fair amount of hissing once you get into heavier multitasking involving different software applications and browser tabs.