ASUS U33Jc-A1 Bamboo series review

Pandas, East Asia, wood. Nope, \” laptop\” hasn\’t ever been on the list of words we typically go together with \” bamboo,\” but ASUS sure has us willing to tack it on with the introduction of its U Bamboo Series. The company\’s newest 13-inch U33Jc is covered in one of the vital durable and recyclable materials on this planet, and its internals are made up of equally strong parts. Sure, the laptop looks incredibly traditional, but the $999 machine actually packs an amazing amount of recent technology, including a fresh Core i3 processor, NVIDIA Optimus enabled graphics, USB 3.0 and Intel\’s wireless display technology. It\’s truly one of the crucial impressive laptops we\’ve heard about inside the previous couple of months, but a couple of gripes hold it back from being the killer laptop it may be. Intrigued? Bamboozled? Hit the break for our full review.

Feel and look

The U33Jc won\’t entice fans of glossy plastics or aluminum, but those who like the look of dark wood and chrome accents will find the laptop to be rather stunning. Actually, there\’s something concerning the smoky brown U33Jc that reminds u . s . high end piece of furniture, and that\’s not necessarily a foul thing. While the graceful feeling dark wood only covers the lid and the palmrest, it kind of feels to provide the full chassis a higher feel than other ASUS systems we\’ve reviewed.

However, while the rig has a very striking aesthetic, there\’s no denying that we want it were slimmer and lighter. The 1.2-inch thick and 3.7-pound chassis is plenty like the ASUS U30Jc on the subject of size, but doesn\’t have an optical drive. Seriously, we actually searched the system a couple of times for a drive – we just expected it can have one with its thicker base. We can admit, the complete system is incredibly a chunker compared to the Toshiba Portege R705, which we recently fell pretty hard for. The sides of the U33Jc are full of two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 socket, an HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, microphone and headphone jack. A five-in-one card reader lives on the precise side.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen

Like we said before, the U33Jc actually appears like one of many more solid laptops we\’ve reviewed, save for its plastic chiclet keyboard. The matte keys just don\’t blend well with the remaining of the brushed aluminum deck, and when compared to anything of the machine, they simply feel cheap. Don\’t get us wrong — the keys are comfortable and didn\’t require any adjustment on our part, though they do make a special \’clicky\’ sound. It\’s also the sort of keyboard you\’d expect to have a backlight option, but there\’s no inner glow hiding underneath the panel.

Conversely, the touchpad gets premium treatment, and ASUS has used a different in-mold decoration process together with a new integrated circuit with proper sensor capabilities to cover it in bamboo to check anything of the palmrest. Sliding a finger over the sleek wood to navigate the desktop was a rather enjoyable experience, and the stunning-feeling texture of the pad makes up for the only mouse button. Oddly, it doesn\’t support multitouch gestures, but the correct side did function as a scroll strip.

The U33Jc\’s 13.3-inch, 1,366 x 768-resolution display is bright, and streaming a 720p clip of Salt looked crisp. The display itself isn\’t overly glossy, but the shiny bezel surrounding it makes the glossiness a piece more pronounced. It\’s no surprise that we were not thrilled with the viewing angles – tilting the screen back made Angelina Jolie\’s eyes blend in with anything else of her face. No less than horizontal viewing angles were better. Like the Eee PC 1015PE and 1018P, the U33Jc has a latch for covering the 2-megapixel webcam – hey, after hearing about those kids inside the Lower Merion school district we\’d feel free to look all laptops with this small, helpful privacy feature. The speaker strip along the tip of the keyboard produced decently loud and entire sound when watching some clips and listening to Pandora.

Performance, graphics and battery life

Internally, the U33Jc is lots like the U30Jc, but rather than a 2.26GHz Intel Core i3-350M, it has a faster 2.4GHz Core i3-370M CPU. The benchmarks clearly show the development, but in our everyday use we couldn\’t really tell the variation between the U33Jc and probably the most other Core i3-powered laptops we\’ve reviewed within the previous few weeks. The laptop definitely kept up with our day-to-day routine, including simultaneously running Firefox with over 10 tabs open, Microsoft Office, Skype, Trillian, Adobe Reader and TweetDeck. Our review unit came configured with 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk drive. People who will probably want to swap out the RAM or harddisk shouldn\’t have a problem doing so with the latch on the bottom of the chassis.

The Core i3 processor and integrated graphics is okay for basic HD playback, but the U33Jc\’s NVIDIA GeForce 310M GPU with 1GB of VRAM gives the system some real graphics muscle. As a result of NVIDIA\’s Optimus technology, the GPU automatically kicked in after we fired up Batman: Arkham Asylum, and within minutes we were throwing punches at 28fps. Similarly, after we queued up a 1080p clip, the 310M card automatically turned on. While many of the graphics switching is totally automatic, NVIDIA\’s control panel does allow for manually turning on and stale the GPU. NVIDIA\’s newest Verde driver, which displays the status of the GPU, didn\’t come preloaded — we\’re told it’ll be compatible with the U33Jc throughout the next month.

We happen to like Optimus loads because it alleviates the will to must contemplate turning on and rancid the GPU, but we also love it for it\’s battery life benefits. The 310M card remained powered down once we ran our standard definition video rundown test, and in turn the U33Jc\’s 84Wh eight-cell battery lasted for 5 hours and 10 minutes with brightness set to 65 percent. That\’s an hour longer than the U30Jc and Toshiba\’s Portege R705, but not quite provided that ASUS\’ predicted eight hours. With the GPU on it ran a loop of HD videos for 3.5 hours. Still, both of those numbers are on the extraordinary end — once we used the laptop to jot down this review, hearken to music and intermittently watch some YouTube clips, we didn\’t must plug in for roughly six hours. That\’s some decent runtime for this category.

Wireless Display Technology performance

NVIDIA said it was possible, and the U33Jc is a testament that a laptop with a discrete GPU is additionally coupled with Intel\’s WiDi or Wireless Display Technology. However, the GPU should be switched off for the wireless display feature to function, so there was no NVIDIA graphics power when streaming video from the U33Jc to our 40-inch HDTV. Also, don\’t forget that you just\’ve got to have a $99 Netgear Push2TV box to get the entire WiDi thing going. If you still can\’t stream full 1080p video, the technology is pretty awesome, and we enjoyed watching an episode of Mad Men on the massive screen in preference to on the 13.3-inch screen. There\’s still a couple of three second delay, so it\’s just unlikely to cut it for gaming or real productivity.

Software

We are able to\’t put this any opposite direction: it sucks that after you boot the U33Jc for the first time you\’re greeted by a desktop that looks as if that. So many ASUS utilities and other miscellaneous software is preloaded on the U33Jc that we don\’t know where to start out. Some of it — like the shortcut to eBay\’s website — is completely useless and may be deleted ASAP, however other things like Kindle for PC and Times Reader may save some the step of having to download the apps at a later date. You can too boot ASUS\’s ExpressGate Cloud instant-on OS by hitting the button above the keyboard. Like we found on the hot Eee PCs, the hot interface is attractive, yet seems slower than the previous version.

Wrap-up

The U33Jc might possibly be on the bamboo list now, nevertheless it\’s a lot more than a bamboo laptop. The wood certainly makes you’re feeling like you\’re buying a distinct device, but the draw of the machine for most can be its superior blend of graphics, performance and battery life. We still must knock the U33Jc for its lack of an optical drive, the cheap feeling keyboard quality, and it\’s thicker chassis — in the event you\’re available in the market for an extremely light 13-inch machine we’ve got to recommend Toshiba\’s $899 Portege R705 — however, for $999 the ASUS U33Jc is a incredibly strong choice, similar to the cloth that covers it.

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This post is tagged: ASUS, bamboo, series, UJcA