I tried some netbooks for a while but they were simply too small and limited. Dishing out some mega bucks could have helped me along, but I was trying to stay under $600. I then came across the UL20A. I've always been an Asus fan and most people seemed to like the laptop, so I figured I'd give it a shot.
The first thing I noticed when I got it out was the quality. While the Acer did feel very sturdy, this raises the bar. The metal top is a nice touch, but the plastics in general are very ridged and solid. The top/palm area is smooth and not quite as solid as the lower half, but still feels great with very clean edges.
As I started working on it, I was rather impressed by the keyboard. I never was a huge fan of the "chiclet" style keyboard, but this feels very nice. Keys are very easy to depress but have a decent depth and give a nice amount of feedback. It's by far one of the nicest keyboards I've used on a laptop. The touchpad is nice too. Some people complained about it, but I rather like it. Initially the surface felt sticky, but after using it for a bit, it was very smooth worked very well for me. Now the buttons are a bit stiff, but I typically "tap-click" so that's not a huge deal.
The screen is OK. At first glance it's quite nice, and works well indoors. However, it is very glossy (I prefer no gloss personally) and there's a fair amount of light bleeding around the edges. Under most circumstances though, it does looks quite nice, and the 1366x768 make for very sharp images. It also makes for some tiny images on such a small screen.
Speakers are nothing to write home about. They sound OK and do get quite loud without much distortion, but most HPs I've worked with had MUCH better sound systems on their laptops. Even my old Dell Inspiron 1420 sounds better. Another drawback is the bottom-mounted speakers. At least for me, I normally use this in my lap, thus the sound isn't so great. To really come alive, it needs to be on a desk or some hard surface.
Performance and heat are good. Honestly I was hoping for a bit better performance out of it. On normal/high-performance, it can handle most any HD video or flash material you throw at it. However, I tend to run my computers on power-saver to help with heat and battery life. My Dell Inspiron 1420 (T5550) could manage HD videos on youtube on Powersaver, but this one struggles. I was really hoping for them to be more equal, but perhaps that's a bit much for a ULV CPU... Heat is managed quite well. The fan is running pretty much all the time, but it's near silent. You can feel a hot breeze coming from the vents, but it's not bad at all.
Oh, and Asus makes it very easy for us to upgrade to 4GB of RAM, installing only a single 2GB stick!
All in all I'm pleased with it. There are some flaws keeping it from being a perfect laptop, but given the goods, they do outweigh the bads.Get more detail about ASUS UL20A-A1 Thin and Light 12.1-Inch Silver Laptop - 7.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium).
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