Love-Hate Relationship with My Asus Zenbook UX32VD

As some of you may have known, my Pinky Pink Dellnosaur died one me last Friday and I was whining about it in my previous post. I brought it to a trustworthy computer repair shop last Sunday and got it diagnosed. It spoilt due to a short circuit and it could be repaired for $150.

$150 is not very expensive at all but my main concern would be that I had to leave the laptop at the shop for repair till the next day. After the Edison Chen photo scandal that took the Hong Kong and Asia entertainment industry by storm in early 2008, many had begun to be very wary of sending in their computers for repair. Not like I have any censored photos to be stolen. I'm just generally cautious of information and identity theft. You never know how much a stranger could gather about you just by looking at your computer. Moreover in the era where electronic gadgets become obsolete in a speed like how my neighbour's dog barks, it was high time to change a new laptop.

I extracted the HDD from dead Pinky Pink Dellnosaur and decided not to buy a new laptop that very same day in haste without any research. The next few days, I researched, read reviews and made mental notes of some laptops meeting my requirements and finally decided I was ready to buy a new laptop.

After recommendations from the sales assistant at Harvey Norman and rounds of shortlisting, I settled for the Asus Zenbook UX32VD.





I was really happy with my Asus Zenbook. I love the thinness and lightness of it. I love how it isn't pink and I would still consider it beautiful. I love how the screen isn't reflective which is much better for the eyes and how it isn't a magnet to dust.

Just when I thought I had survived very well without laptop for a week and that I finally own a laptop I love, the problem of navigating through Windows 8 crept in insidiously. I hate Windows 8. It really needs lots of time getting used to. I spent the entire night and the wee hours of the morning trying to navigate my way though Windows 8 and downloading all the basic software in it. I mentally cursed when I could not find my Microsoft disc and I currently cannot open all Microsoft documents. I eventually fell asleep while letting the files from my extracted HDD copy over to the Asus.

Horrors and horrors. When I decided to work on my photo editing and blogging today, I was shocked at the yellowish tint on the screen.

The colour of my blog look really strange. The pink header looks orangey, my Instagram photos on the previous post looks overly edited to an orangey greyish cinematic feel and the entire white background of my blog looks like it has a layer of warm yellowish tint.

I was shocked!

I started scrolling through my posts to look at all the photos. They simply looked like I had extremely bad photo editing skills. I also trawled my Facebook page as well as all the photos in my folders. The unedited photos looked better than the edited ones.

Before you dismiss it as my bad photo editing skills, I must make a disclaimer. I even went to all my favourite photography blogs and their photos look like they have a layer of yellow cinematic tinge. Some photos also suffered the same fate of looking overly edited. In fact, for those friends on my Facebook who often upload raw photos that aren't really attractive, their photos all looked more vibrant and warm than those friends (photographers included) whose photos simply looked overly yellow on my Zenbook.

I like warm colours and I like my outdoor pictures to have warm sunset tones but even for somebody who likes warm tones, whatever I see on my Zenbook screen is really unacceptable!

I googled about the yellowish tint on Asus Zenbook and was surprised that I'm not the only one with this problem. Apparently, there are many people both locally and overseas who complained about the overly warm tones too. I also read suggestions on calibrating the red and green colour tones and that Asus had a Splendid Utility that supposedly makes pictures/videos look more "vibrant" and all we ranters had to do was to correct it to "normal" instead of "vivid". That helped a little though I'm still put off by the slight yellow tone. I had to change it to "cold" instead of "normal"  for everything to look more normal and this should not be the case at all.

So what if you are given a 3.5 to 4 star ratings on many review sites?

So what if you are a beautiful shade of grey with a lightweight aluminium body?

So what if you are thin and light?

So what if your audio is by Bang & Olufsen ICEpower?

So what is Asus is ranked #1 and #2 in the various computer market?

So what if many of my techie geek friends gave Asus the thumbs up?

The screen is much too yellow for my liking, it screws my vision and that sux big time!

1-star 1-star 1-star simply for the yellow tint.

I just sent a feedback to Asus and I'm eager to see their reply.

I'm very miffed that the sun is already setting and I've not started on my photos at all. I reckon I would be grossly misled by the screen's depiction of hues that it would not be really wise to edit my photos at this time.

Oh well, I guess I could pack my room.





Edited to add on 10 Dec 2013.

Dear Valued Customer,
Thank you for contacting ASUS Service Care.
My name is Stephen and it's my pleasure to help you with your problem.
We apologize for the delayed response due to the weekend.

According to your description, it seems your VGA or display monitor have some problem.
(Sorry, here we not receive your attach picture)

Firstly please reinstall VGA driver as a troubleshooting for a try.
nVidia Graphics Driver Version V9.18.13.2683
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/DriversForWin8.1/VGA/VGA_nVidia_Win81_64_VER918132683.zip

At last, if the problem still exist, that may be hardware related issue.

For such hardware related issue. It need let service center engineer help you check and test deal with it.
You can contact with them to know the detail process and information.
Sorry for the inconvenience. Thank you for understanding!

ASUS Service Center - Singapore No.8 Burn Road, #11-16 TRIVEX Singapore 369977 +65 64157917
http://support.asus.com.cn/ServiceCenter/List.aspx?SLanguage=en&r=1&c=16&a=241&p=3

You may also give us a call by this link:
http://support.asus.com/Hotlines.aspx?SLanguage=en

Thank you for your support Asus product. Wish you have a good day.
Best regards
Stephen
ASUS service center


I've already tried the above method and it is SIGH... Still the same. I guess I could probably try to live with the permanent yellow hue or make a trip down to the service centre. I'm just afraid that all their laptop screens are the same and that it would be a wasted trip down.





Edited to add on 11 Dec 2013.

Thank you all of you for your comments. Rather than to reply on the comment thread, I would update here instead.

I have decided to accept the laptop's major shortcoming, bear and live with it.

I called the Asus hotline today and after listening to some corny Asus theme song (yeah, they have a song) for a good 10 minutes, my case was handled by a very patient and polite customer support staff. Well, I was patient too. I had to relate the whole story to him since the email Case ID and the call Case ID are 2 separate matters.

He taught me steps to carry out on my Zenbook to test if it was a hardware problem. Also, he perfectly understood my concern about the yellow tinge (aka warm tones) being a SPECIAL FEATURE of most Asus laptops and that bringing down my laptop to the service centre would not be of any help even if I discover that it is a hardware problem.

"Since there are soooooooo many people who complain about the yellow tinge or should I say, the overly warm tone, why isn't Asus doing anything to the screen display? Why is Asus continuing to have the warm tones for their screens? Shouldn't you all take these feedback and do something to future laptops?"

I uttered the above without pausing to take a breath,

"As an Asus employee, I can't say why isn't any action being taken but as a person offering you customer service, YAH... I don't understand why too."

I was actually amused by his reply.

After work, I went back to my family home for dinner and it turned out that my 2nd sis and my eldest sis's bf are also using the exact same laptop as me with no problems with their screens at all. Or so, I thought it was no problem...

My eldest sis's bf hadn't even noticed the slight yellow tinge on his screen and saw all white portions as plain white instead of yellowish white until I pointed it out and asked him to compare. It was then that he realised that his laptop indeed has a slight yellowish tinge too and he spent quite some after that trying to figure out what was wrong.

He is quite a techie geek and I would trust whatever techie advice he dispenses. He told me that Asus is really good and other than this screen problem, I would not be facing much problem from this brand. Should I do an exchange with Harvey Norman for the other undisclosed shortlisted brand of laptop, I would face a whole new set of problem like the laptop not functioning well after a year or totally blowing out after the warranty period

In general, the colour of the screen really boils down to perspective. While acknowledging that my photos indeed look very "jaundiced" on the Asus screen than anywhere else, he said that he was fine with that colour he saw on his Asus screen. My 2nd sis was also fine with her laptop screen and that the warm tones aren't bothering her too much.

After having his laptop to compare, I could safely announce that my decision to stick to this laptop is a prudent one as it does seem that warm tones are exactly the SPECIAL FEATURE of Asus and there would be no point in servicing it or asking to replace with a new set.

I would live with this by setting to the cold tone under Splendid Utility and calibrating the red and green colour bar to normalise the screen as much as possible. It an irony that I've to "denormalize" my laptop in order to normalize it.

I'm typing the above portion with my eyes half closed and I hope I hadn't made enough glaring mistakes in my writing.