ASUS UL50VT-A1 Thin and Light 15.6-Inch Black Laptop – 11.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium)

With a profile measuring a little less than 1 inch you will feast your eyes upon ASUS UL50VT A1 Notebook as you make your way through the day. It easily endures abrasions and scratches while protecting its beautiful exterior. It has a 15-inch HD LED backlight 16:9 display that allows users to balance between immaculate graphic performance and battery conservation

The thin and light ASUS UL50Vt is a harmonious blend of form and function. Powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo ultra-low voltage processor, it boasts an impressive 11-hour battery life for all-day computing. It also sports user-centric features such as a multi-gesture touchpad and provides an impressive multimedia entertainment experience with Altec Lansing speakers and an NVidia G210M graphics engine (users can turn the graphics card off if longer battery life is needed). All of these features and more are shrouded in a robust brushed aluminum lid that not only looks magnificent, but also helps in maintaining the notebook’s stylish exterior day after day. ASUS notebooks come with ASUS’ 360 service program that includes a 2 year global warranty, one month zero bright dot guaranty, free two-way shipping and twenty-four hour tech support seven days a week. Plus it comes with a FREE One Year Accidental Damage Warranty protecting your notebook from drops, fire, spills and surges.

While battery life is really amazing (I myself kept it running for about 9 hours) it is not as good as they clamed. Additionally, Sound and graphic quality is out of this world. Out of 3 other Assus laptos that I have got my hands on recently, ASUS UL50VT A1 is by far the best one for the price.

A few words about this laptop.

Review Date: December 4, 2009

Reviewer: Michael McCray,

I have been playing around with this laptop for about a week now. I dont know what people are doing to their keyboards. I type very fast using this notebook and do not see the complaint about it flexing. Now I am not new to computers or notebooks. I have believed the hype and bought an Alienware a few years back. It was probably beautiful on paper and reality it was something else. This time around though. I was looking for two things. Portability and good graphics. I found this laptop with switchable or hybrid graphics. It is quite impressive to say the least. I enjoy the portability of it. First time I took it out of the house. I had to check the bag to make sure it was in it. It is that light. If you turn off the wireless radio when using it. You can get over 10 hours of battery life and with the wireless radio on. You average about 7-8. The heat situation in laptops is something else people talk about. I don't think this even generates heat. I have yet to feel any type of discomfort due to the heat issues. You can not say that about the previous laptop. I probably could have cooked an egg on the shell. I really dont mind the glossy shiny coating. It stands out and says to people walking by "Hey Look at me!" If you want a dull leather wrappings that crack with age. Then go for it. But i prefer the gloss. It serves as a reminder to wipe the laptop down and keep it clean. The speed is great. Windows 7 is great. Its very responsive and you can hit that power button and be literally working on your computer in less than 30 seconds. Its that fast. On the warranty, You can apply for it online. You dont have to send that card in. You can register and go about your merry way. On the graphics on it. I was running high settings in Dalaran on a heavily populated Warcraft server with zero lag. Not even a bit. That is something that i thought was impossible. Being this is the first generation in a new direction in laptops. I look forward to seeing what ASUS can do with it. I know Nvidia is planning more for Hybrid Graphics and we as laptop users can finally get the best of both worlds. So in two years or more. I am going to look forward into seeing what asus has to offer. They earned a new customer and that loyalty is not misplaced. So take the chance on this laptop. You will not reget it. (Update) Smooth Gameplay when playing Modern Warfare 2 and still no heat issues.

Best bang for the buck in the industry...really.

Review Date: December 6, 2009

Reviewer: A. Walker, Virginia

I did a fair amount of research on machines in this category...for the money, ASUS is the clear winner. This is one sleek machine! The battery life is great, it feels like it's built to last and the performance (overclocked cpu with the VT's) is great for this class of machine (thin/light/long battery life). The only negatives are tolerable: 1. It could stand to have a better(1.3mp) webcam. 2) The display does have somewhat limited viewing angles, but then again how many viewing angles does one person need?? I was initially concerned about these two drawbacks before I purchased the machine but now that I have it...it's really of no concern any longer, I'm very pleased with this machine. Did I mention that this a damned good looking piece of hardware! LOL! Another note worth mentioning, ASUS recently beat "everyone" in laptop reliability ratings, including Apple and Sony...and it wasn't even close! You can lay your money down for this machine and not be disappointed.

New Owner Loves 12 hour battery life

Review Date: December 14, 2009

Reviewer: Nick A. Shertzer, Bloomington, IN

So, maybe you don't get 12 hours? But at least that's a ballpark figure being thrown around... Especially when you consider the smart power management Asus has thrown in this peppy, thin, cool to the multi-touch, 4GB DDR3, 16:9 LED, laptop. The intel core 2 duo + nvidia G210M is a potent combonation. The system claims EXPRESS GATE boots in 8 secs, and it really is 20 secs to a Hulu video. Windows 7 Premium took my picture instead of a password after an impressive 1:05 and was streaming video in another 12. I easily overclocked the 1.3Ghz duo by 5% using the super customizable Asus bios. I want to tweak the embedded linux, or maybe just run ubuntu on that 500GB hard drive (it came pre-partitioned with two 250GB partitions). There are two POWER buttons. One controls windows power options; stepping down the processor. It has 4 power modes, that could frankly use some tuning. Too bad I can do a better job customising, but Windows 7 isn't saving my desktop prefrences right now. Turning off the discrete grapics also turns off Aero. Then this HUGE 15" becomes a netbook, seemingly gaining unplugged longevity by closing the lid. Standby resumes in an impressive sub 5 secs. Maybe I'm the only one who remembers when computers were slow. I haven't had this computer plugged in all day! The touch pad seems a bit off at first, but then you realize that it has to be offset to the left to keep your palms out of the way. This allows for a full keypad to the right and a plethora of FN keys. And did I mention the multi touch trackpad? It does three fingers. Now I'm considering the 2 yr warranty and 1 year accidental damage that is included?! Best machine for the OPTIONS! [EDIT] I have loaded Ubuntu 9 (thus triple booting the laptop). You can enable all CompizFusion desktop effects, including the desktop cube with no jitter (very smooth animations)! Very fast, very impressive. Also, unexpectedly, Ubuntu picked up on the multi-touch trackpad. I haven't played around with it too much to figure out how to change the two finger tap to be right click (it is set to do some desktop effect right now), but knowing it is possible is awesome. Also, I only plug in this laptop at night, while I am sleeping. I have been using it all day at work (I am an IT systems administrator) and even watched a couple full length movies while working and still never had to plug it in. WOW! Asus has it loaded up with the "Power4Gear Hybrid" program that lets you set your power options (High Performance, Entertainment, Quiet Office, & Battery Saving). The built in defaults are fine for most people, but again the options are what sets this baby apart. You can define the Maximum and Minimum processor state, toggle Turbo mode, adjust display brightness, change sleep / hibernate options, enable disable devices (camera & ODD), and base it all on the plugged in state (thus giving you eight 8! power modes). [...]

Unbelievable value

Review Date: December 3, 2009

Reviewer: Jimmy S. Ghostine,

Great product, well designed, very ergonomic, well thought out. The battery life is not a hoax (I thought it would be). I haven't gone to 12 hours yet, but have gotten to 10 hours with about 22% battery life left. I'm very familiar with ASUS components from multiple desktop PCs I've built over the last 15 years, and have always been impressed with their quality, features and performance. This laptop, a new foray in finished products for ASUS is a success. The discrete and integrated video cards transition involves a 1-time blinking of the monitor, but it's not annoying, especially when you realize the battery savings you're making when switching to the Intel card. When you wish it you have an ultra fast Nvidia G210 at your fingertips. I believe the addition of the discrete Nvidia in addition to the integrated Intel graphics card, is well worth the 50 or so dollar difference of the UL50V vs the UL50A. The ultra low voltage CPU is overclockable and you have a noticeable improvement in performance when doing graphics and processing intensive applications such as photoshop or video editing. It's very satisfying in standard mode as well, but the overclocking ability is unique to ASUS from my prior research. My other laptop is an HP Pavillion DV 9200t. It's a monster size-wise compared to this laptop, without any noticeable performance advantage despite a 2GHz dual core 2 CPU. The fact this had DD3 memory vs the HP's DDR2 may be part of the reason. I endorse this ASUS product without reservation.

Designed to last. Does what it was meant to do.

Review Date: December 3, 2009

Reviewer: L. Vasilevskiy, Brooklyn

I decided to pen this comment to correct the previous 3-star review. It is petty to give this magnificent piece of tech a low rating simply because of a defective built-in microphone. So it is. Buy a USB mic for all that is holy! That is not a centerpiece of this computer. What it really was designed for is battery life. I've been doing a lot of research trying to decide on my laptop choice with longevity in mind as I am going back to medical school and intend to stretch the battery for the entire 8-hour day of classes. My research has shown that there are a lot of portables and ultraportables out there with far superior specs in terms of processor speed for the money. However, none beat the ASUS on two fronts: the battery saving features which are truly seminal and the warranty policy included in the price of the computer. In terms of the warranty, it is the absolute best on the market. This computer was designed specifically to be ultraportable in terms of battery life. My experience shows that on low-medium to low energy setting (entertainment/energy-saving modes) it lasts anywhere between 6-9 hours. If you turn off the Turbo feature which overclocks your processor to 1.7 from 1.2 GHz, and surrender some of the screen brightness, the included 8-cell battery will last even longer. I shudder to think how long it will run on a 12-cell battery. The built-in video card switch is an amazing and unique feature which allows you to double the laptop as an entertainment center. Obviously the video card is very power-intensive and the battery won't last beyond the 2 hour mark, but how terrific is it that you will have that option! The battery for this model from what I've seen is only $45 USD. Even with the charge going down by 1/3 every year, replacing the battery won't be an issue as it was for my Sony VAIO whose battery was priced at $200 USD. Hardly comparable. THe bottom line is to evaluate any product you have to look to the designer's intent. This product was designed for long battery life and also to double as a competitive product for power-draining graphics applications like gaming and video giving the user the ultimate power to choose one over the other whenever and wherever. It has succeeded fabulously at it. Kudos to the ASUS design team.