ASUS ZenBook UX430UA Ultrabook Review

1. Introduction2. ASUS ZenBook UX430UA3. Testing Methodology4. Testing: CPU and Memory5. Testing: PC Mark 86. Testing: Graphics7. Testing: SSD and USB Interfaces8. Testing: Thermal Dynamics and Power Consumption9. Testing: Battery10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

Maxon Cinebench R15

To test the i7-7500U processor, we first ran the CPU test from Maxon's Cinebench R15. This is a great way of assessing general processor abilities as there are loads of comparison results available, although here we focus on the specific systems we chose as direct competitors.

Although the Dell, HP and ASUS ZenBook UX430UA all have the same CPU, the Dell XPS 13 is a little ahead in this test, although the UX430UA isn't far behind, and the HP not much further behind that. The ASUS ZenBook UX390UA, with its lesser Intel Core i5 7200U, lags noticeably behind the others.

SiSoft Sandra Arithmetic

For the second test for the CPU, we ran SiSoft Sandra’s arithmetic test – a synthetic benchmark.

The ASUS ZenBook UX430UA does very well here, beating the Dell XPS 13 in both Dhrystone and Whetstone portions. It's way ahead of the UX390UA, with its less potent CPU, and strangely the HP Envy x360 15 also falls even further behind.

Sandra Memory Bandwidth

To test the memory bandwidth of the 8GB, 2133MHz DDR4 RAM that comes with the ZenBook, we ran SiSoft Sandra’s memory bandwidth benchmark.

The UX430UA doesn't do too badly for memory bandwidth, but surprisingly is slightly behind the Dell XPS 13, which has slower DDR3 memory. The HP Envy x360 15 is very slow here, and the surprise winner is the UX390UA, which has DDR3 running at the same nominal clock speed as the UX430UA's DDR4.

But these are synthetic benchmarks, and it's the performance in the real world that counts, so let's turn to some more application-orientated tests next.

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