ASUS ZenBook UX305: A Tremendously Powerful Value

I like value. More than anything. It is the single largest motivator in my purchase decisions. From toilet paper to a car, I cannot rest easy unless I know I’ve found the best value; that’s why I always choose the 64 pack of toilet paper. Granted, I can’t always afford the best value but that’s ok; it’s more about reassurance in that case. So when I’ve been reading about the new laptops, I’ve yet to be impressed by the value. Apple makes some premium laptops but you can find similar performance for much less and that’s where ASUS hopes to strike with the ASUS ZenBook UX305. It’s powerful and an amazing value for $700 but how good is it?

Looks

ASUS has made leaps and bounds with their design and quality over the past few years and the ZenBook UX305 is no exception. It’s a matte aluminum finish that has become pretty standard for ultrabooks these days and overall, the ZenBook UX305 is fairly nondescript. No shocking design choices or craziness here; safe, like a MacBook Pro.

It’s pretty thin and pretty light; no sacrifices have been made to normal laptop functionality for thinness but it’s definitely not a brick either. The end result is a comfortably solid laptop, perfect for daily use and transport. Then there’s the high resolution screen at 1920×1080 which is surprising at this pricepoint; no more suffering through the respectable but drab 1366×768 resolution that is so common to sub $1000 laptops.

What It Does

$700 for a sweet screen so the rest has to be pretty sub standard, right? Not quite. The ZenBook UX305 packs 8GB of RAM, 256 of solid state storage, 9 to 10 hours of battery life, plenty of USB ports, great keyboard, huge trackpad, it sounds like there’s no catch here! The only sacrifice seems to be the processor which isn’t the fastest but certainly provides enough power to handle the typical computer activities. It’s more expensive competitors are no faster and therein lies the value.

If you’re considering the newest MacBook or even the newest Dell XPS 13, you need to check out the ZenBook UX305 as well. Understandably, the MacBook and XPS 13 are both more striking and Apple has the premium brand name but this ZenBook UX305 is worthy of being in the running for your next laptop, especially for $300 less. And, if you’ll notice from the specs, it starts with better internals than the base configurations of its competitors. Sounds like a simple choice to me.