Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a fantastic laptop. I've been using a MacBook Air for a while and when it fell to the ground and the screen was shattered, I felt paying $450 for a new screen was a ripoff. After lots of researching, I settled for this UX305, buying the 8GB RAM, Core i5 and 256GB SSD version. My comparison will be directly to my experience with the MacBook Air. 1) Performance: if you buy the Core i5 version (cost me $750 from Amazon, just $50 more than the anemic Core M version) you get a 5200U processor, which is very similar to what you get on a 2015 MacBook Air. This is the Broadwell architecture from 2015, which in itself is little more than a 14nm reduction of the 2014 Haswell architecture, which was 20nm. When the fabrication process of the CPU is reduced (20 to 14 nanometers), you automatically get power benefits, giving you the option of achieving better battery life with the same performance as last year, or more performance at the same battery life as the previous year. Over the past few weeks that I've owned the UX305, I regularly have Word, Excel, Acrobat Pro and Edge/Chrome open with ~10 tabs active. This doesn't fully load the 8GB RAM and the performance remains fluid. I even tried playing 4K videos on YouTube and they played flawlessly, no stutter. So, performance, for office work - and light gaming, think Trine 2 on high settings and 720p resolution - is flawless. 2) Weight: the MacBook Air is 2.97 pounds, whereas the UX305 is 2.6 pounds. If you find the Air portable, the UX305 is even more so. I didn't think I'd notice those .3 pounds, but it actually makes a big, big difference. I "forget" my UX305 is in my work bag, whereas I was very conscious that the Air was in it. 3) Design: pretty much a MacBook Air ripoff. The frame of the laptop is actually a bit thinner and narrower than the Air, so you get a similar experience on an overall smaller (by a hair) machine. The aluminum build feels great and is sturdy - no flex that I notice, but I'm not bending it on purpose as those tests make no sense. The keyboard doesn't feel as excellent in quality as the Air, but then again, the UX305 is literally half the price of the equivalent Air. Still, I'm typing on it right now, and it's been perfectly fine for the past few weeks. There is enough key travel to be comfortable and keys are well spaced. The only drawback is the lack of keyboard backlight, but if you don't type in dark places, this is a non-issue. (I've heard people complain about the power button position on top of the backspace key: guess what, it's literally the same as the Air, yet nobody ever complained about that in the Apple machine. That's bias for you. It was never a problem for Apple, yet somehow it "is a problem" in the Asus for some reviewers. News flash: it wasn't a problem in the Air, and it's not a problem in the Asus. It's literally the same.) The screen is insane. A 13.3" 1080p IPS matte panel - compare that to the Air's pathetic 900p TFT display. The matte panel is welcome as I have yet to see a single reflection on the screen: it is pristinely clear. Windows 10 defaults to a 150% scaling which I think makes everything look like fisher price toys. I toned it back down to %125 and things look perfect, super sharp too. Color calibration is a bit cool - makes the screen seem a bit brighter - and after calibrating with my Spyder5Express - which I wholeheartedly recommend - it looks even better. A bit dimmer than factory default, for sure, but still bright enough for using outside under sunlight. The audio quality is better than I expected. I had read plenty reviews that said the audio sucks and it's quite tinny. Maybe that's a problem with the Core M version, but on this i5 honestly it sounds fine. If anything, it's not tinny at all, it has a decent "body" or "volume", it reminds me of the Surface Pro 3, so I wouldn't call it bad at all. Of course, don't expect amazing bass, you have to be realistic here, but it's perfectly fine sound quality. I would say though, the MacBook Air definitely had better sound. Not insanely better, but it felt as better quality reproduction (not sure how to explain it). Then again, remember: the UX305 costs half what the Air does. 4) Battery - I've used it for 2 working days straight (not constantly on) on a battery charge. On a more regular workday, it lasts through the day, usually around 9 hours. That's pretty much all I need. The Air gives you easily 3-4h more battery life on equivalent workloads, but the UX305 gets me through the day comfortably and that's all I need. So, in conclusion, this UX305 is in essence a faster, lighter, more powerful version of the i5 MacBook Air, but it is Windows based, made by Asus and it'll cost you half the price. If you want such a machine for office work and light gaming/browsing/video viewing, go for it. It's excellent.