It's been over four months since Asus first showed off its Ultrabook back at Computex, but the company has finally launched the UX21 and UX31 under the slightly odd Zenbook name. Presumably it has something to do with the low noise levels of Ultrabooks, but we're not sure it's the most memorable name Asus could've gone for.
There's little doubt that Asus is pinning a lot on its Ultrabooks as the company had a launch event in New York with its chairman Jonney Shih on location. It's rare of Asus to have major product launches outside of Taiwan and although we know there's a launch event in Taiwan later today, it's seemingly a fairly small event compared to the New York launch. Anyhow, Asus will offer five different SKUs in total, two for the UX21 and three for the UX31.
Starting with the UX21 common features include an 11.6-inch display with 1366x768 resolution, 4GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory (non-upgradable), a 128GB SATA 6Gbps SSD, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, a 0.3Megapixel webcam, one USB 2.0 port, one USB 3.0 port, a micro HDMI port, a custom "mini" VGA port, a single audio jack for a headset and a 35Whr battery that's said to be good for just over 5h of usage or seven days standby. The Only difference we spotted for the UX21 series is the CPU which comes in a choice of a Core i5-2467M which is clocked at 1.6GHz and can turbo to 2.3GHz, or a Core i7-2677M with a stock clock of 1.8GHz or a turbo clock or 2.9GHz. Although not mentioned in the press release, Asus is also listing a Core i3-2367M model on its website and this is a 1.4GHz CPU without turbo.
The UX31 is slightly different and although the basic features are the same as the UX21, here we're of course looking at a larger 13.3-inch screen which we're glad to see offers a resolution of 1600x900 pixels. The only additional feature here is an SD card reader, although the UX31 also has a larger 50Whr battery which according to Asus should last for over 7h or give you 10 days of standby power. Two models are kitted out with a Core i5-2557M CPU which starts at 1.7GHz but which will turbo to 2.7GHz, so slightly beefier CPU performance here compared to the UX21. The more basic model with have the same 128GB SSD while the middle model gets boosted to 256GB. Finally the top of the range model has the same Core i7-2677M as the UX21, but combined with the 256GB SSD option.
In the US pricing start at US$999 for the base UX21 model with the base UX31 coming it at US$1,099. The higher-end UX21 comes in at US$1,199, with the UX31 with a 256GB SSD will set you back US$1,349 and finally the top of the range UX31 will cost US$1,499. It's pretty clear that Asus has priced its Zenbooks to be competitively priced against Apple's MacBook Air products with the 13.3-inch models coming it at slightly less and the 11.6-inch models coming in at the same price points.
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