Think of it as the best of both worlds. ASUS’ UL80Vt, the latest member of the company UL Series, matches Intel’s budget- and endurance-minded Ultra-Low Voltage processor with a powerful Nvidia graphics chip, giving this $849 14-inch thin-and-light notebook strong performance at a reasonable price. More importantly, ASUS also incorporated integrated graphics—and the software that tells the system when to switch—so that this notebook can last a whole workday away from an outlet. While it’s held back slightly by a mushy keyboard and limited viewing angles, the UL80Vt-A1 is an attractive choice.
Design
The UL80Vt is all black, with an attractive brushed metal lid. Inside, the tastefully-appointed deck and screen bezel are made of glossy black plastic, while the bottom is simply matte plastic. This uniformity of color and design gives the system a sleek yet understated look, but tends to pick up fingerprints.
At 4.8 pounds and 13.5 x 9.6 x 1.1 inches, the UL80Vt is not the thinnest and lightest 14-inch notebook on the block: the Dell Studio 14z is only 0.8 inches thick and 4.4 pounds, and the HP Pavilion dm3 is only 4.2 pounds and 1.0 inches thick. Unlike the UL80Vt, however, these other two systems lack an optical drive. The 4.6-pound, inch-thick Dell Inspiron 14z also has an optical drive, but its design is more plain.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The UL80Vt’s island style keyboard is spacious, has its keys in all the proper positions, and doesn’t flex at all. However, the keys had a somewhat mushy feel, and were louder than we prefer. On the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor test, where we usually score 80 words per minute with a 1 to 2 percent error rate, we got a paltry 70 words per minute and 4 percent error rate on our first attempt. When we took the test a second time and were more deliberate about our typing, we managed 75 words per minute with a 1 percent error rate, but the experience just wasn’t as pleasant as with other systems.
With a dotted surface that sits flush with and blends into the wrist rest, the UL80Vt’s touchpad certainly looks futuristic. Navigating around the desktop was pretty smooth. The single mouse button, which can click left or right, was easy enough to use, though we always prefer two distinct buttons.
Ports and Webcam
The UL80Vt has all the ports you’d expect from a modern consumer notebook, including VGA out, audio in/out, HDMI, Ethernet, and three USB connections. An 8-in-1 memory card reader is included for getting pictures or video off of your camera.
The 0.3-megapixel webcam provided smooth but low-quality video, and poor low-light performance. When making a Skype call from within our office, images were dark and blocky, though motion was smooth.
Display and Sound
The 14.0-inch, 1366 x 768 glossy display provided bright, sharp images in our testing. While watching a DVD of Dark City and a 720p video stream of Fringe from Fox.com, playback was smooth, and colors were true with minimal noise and no pixelation. However, viewing angles leave something to be desired. At 45 degrees off center horizontally, color clarity is good enough when looking at the desktop, but when watching video, colors were washed out. We would not recommend watching a movie on this with friends unless you output to an external display.
Sound quality from the front-mounted speakers was quite good and loud, both when watching videos and listening to music. While streaming jazz and heavy metal tunes from Napster, we were able to hear all the instruments without tinniness or distortion.
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