Fanless laptop: ZenBook UX305

I was looking for a fanless laptop (no fans).

Fanless has some advantages: - No noise, and you don’t have to blow dust out of it every other day. - No fans means much less dust.

I wanted something thin, so I started looking.

First, the new MacBook (yes, I seriously considered it), but technically everything goes through a single USB‑C port (the only port). Not practical.

For a simple USB stick you need an adapter… and the entry model was around 1449€ with 256 GB storage. So… nope.

Then I looked at the Samsung ATIV Book 9 (2015):

4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, Intel Core M 0.9 GHz. With fanless you can’t clock too high. Nice, but still around $1200.

And then I found this:

The ASUS ZenBook UX305: 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD, Intel Core M 0.8 GHz — 629€.

No need to explain: I ordered it.

Unboxing: all aluminum, very thin and light. - 3× USB - headset/mic jack - micro HDMI - SD card reader - power connector - built‑in mic and webcam - Bluetooth 4.0

Booting it up: Windows 8.1… I really can’t stand the Modern UI tiles.

2 hours disabling UEFI and secure boot…

Formatting for Fedora 21 Workstation…

Once installed, the ZenBook delivered: at ~30% brightness it announced ~10 hours battery life.

The screen quality is excellent to my taste. It’s a matte panel — great for work.

Two small speakers sit under the machine; not very loud, but good quality (better than loud and ugly).

A few negatives: - Noisy keyboard (even more noticeable with no fan noise) - Touchpad isn’t great (you get used to it…) - Weaker Wi‑Fi reception (antenna probably isn’t in the screen) - Fingerprints everywhere - RAM is soldered to the motherboard… not cool - Gets warm underneath (normal with no fans)

One more annoying detail: to cool the laptop, ASUS designed the hinge so the screen lifts the bottom — but it can scratch the chassis.

Still, despite these flaws, I’m very happy with it so far!