Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

If you want the “best” Windows laptop right now, it’s hard to argue with stuff like Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 or HP’s Spectre x360. But a lot of the time, people don’t want the “best” laptop so much as they want the best laptop they can get for a certain amount of money.

In the last couple of years, a few of Asus’ midrange Zenbooks have done a nice job striking a balance between price and features. The $700-ish Zenbook UX305 laptops in particular were easy to recommend, though the Zenbook Flip model that debuted at the same price had a few too many flaws for our liking.

Now we’re back with yet another $700 Zenbook with yet another unmemorable model number, the UX330UA. But what you get for the price is a bit better than the old UX305 design. Despite a handful of shortcomings, it’s still one of the best laptops for the price.

Look and feel

Specs at a glance: Asus Zenbook UX330UA Screen 1920×1080 at 13.3" (166 PPI) OS Windows 10 x64 CPU 2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5-7200U (Turbo up to 3.1GHz) RAM 8GB 1866MHz DDR3 (non-upgradeable) GPU Intel HD 620 (integrated) HDD 256GB SATA III solid-state drive Networking 867Mbps 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1 Ports 2x USB 3.0, 1x 5Gbps USB-C, micro HDMI, SD card reader, headphones Size 12.7" × 8.7" × 0.53" (322.6 mm × 221 mm × 13.5 mm) Weight 2.64 lbs (1.2 kg) Battery 57Whr Warranty 2 year Starting price $699.00 Price as reviewed $699.00 Other perks Webcam

The Zenbook UX330UA’s design is classic ZenBook—a straightforward clamshell design made in the MacBook Air’s mold. It’s mostly aluminum (matte on the bottom and base, brushed on the lid) accented with a few plastic bits. It’s not especially impressive next to smaller laptops with slimmer bezels and smaller footprints, but at least it looks nice.

The keyboard is a typical chiclet design with nice travel (comparable to the MacBook Air’s or to Dell’s XPS laptops) and good key layout and spacing. Keys on the left side of the keyboard are a bit squished compared to their counterparts on the right side, but I have no major complaints. It also adds a backlight, an unnecessary but nice-to-have frill that didn’t make it into older Zenbooks.

I do have some gripes about the trackpad, and they’re not too different from my complaints about the Zenbook Flip’s trackpad. It’s a Microsoft Precision Touchpad, so finger tracking is accurate and all of Windows’ multitouch gestures are fully supported, but it has very little room to move, and clicking it feels mushy and unsatisfying. The Flip compounded this by being so flexible that you could actually prevent the trackpad from clicking if you were also pushing on the bottom of the laptop with your lap or leg. The UX330 has a bit of flex to it, but it’s firm enough that this isn’t a problem.

The Zenbook also includes a trackpad-mounted fingerprint sensor. It’s compatible with Windows Hello, and I'd rather have biometric authentication than not (as many of you have pointed out, it’s not a foolproof form of security, and law enforcement can compel you to unlock your devices with your fingerprints, but that’s counterbalanced by making it less cumbersome to use better, longer passwords). The only problem is that the sensor is on the small side, so I often ran into problems getting it to recognize my finger because I wasn’t giving it the exact right part of my fingerprint it wanted. It works fine, it’s just not as reliable as the ones in the Dell XPSes I just reviewed.

The laptop’s screen is a matte non-touch 1080p IPS panel with nice, even lighting and solid colors, contrast, and viewing angles. If you want a touchscreen, that’s not an option, but if you’re just looking for a laptop, the matte screen looks nice and is great for outdoor use.

The laptop's slightly thicker body (relative to the old UX305) also solves one of my main gripes with that design. When you opened up a UX305, the bottom edge of its lid would rest on your table or desk. Hard plastic nubs on the bottom of the lid helped keep the metal from getting damaged, but they made the laptop less stable. The UX330 has a more typical hinge, and all four of its rubber feet are on the ground at all times. The laptop's speakers are also on the bottom, allowing them to bounce sound off of hard surfaces (but potentially muffling them if you're using it in bed, on a couch, or in your lap). Sound is fine but unexceptional—bass is hard to pick up and trebles are a little tinny.

Finally, let’s talk port selection. It’s not bad. On the left side, you get a USB 3.0 port, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD reader. On the right side, you get a power jack, another USB 3.0 port, a USB-C port, and a micro HDMI port.

The bad thing about that USB-C port is that it's the least capable kind of USB-C port—it only does data, and we weren't able to charge the laptop with it or drive an external DisplayPort monitor. That means no support for 4K monitors at 60Hz, and no charging your laptop and phone with the same charger if both use USB-C. The decision to use micro HDMI for display output instead of HDMI or DisplayPort over USB-C is especially mystifying, since most people are probably going to need a dongle or a special cable to use this tiny and relatively obscure HDMI port in the first place.

Software

Asus sent us the Microsoft Signature Edition of the Zenbook, which we always like to see. These laptops come with software loadouts directly from Microsoft that cut down on the extraneous games, trial software, DVD burning programs, and extra time-limited anti-virus packages that consumer PCs so often come with.

An added benefit is that the laptops rely on Windows 10’s built-in restoration tools, which means there’s no multi-gigabyte recovery partition there to eat up your space (there's a 500MB recovery partition, but that's still way smaller than what you see on most laptops). It’s not too hard to reclaim this space on other laptops, but it’s also harder to walk a novice user through. Best just not to take up the space in the first place if you don’t need to.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham