Asus Zenbook UX305 Ultrabook Review: Core M Powered

In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a popular scenario that many end users work with on a day-to-day basis to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. LAME is an open-source MP3 audio encoder that is used widely in a multitude of third party applications.

Lame MT Benchmark Audio Transcoding on the CPU

For this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file (a mile-long Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME MT application, in both single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below, listed in seconds. Shorter times equate to better performance.

Here again we see that the Asus UX305 reports a score that’s most comparable to the Dell XPS 12. Overall performance is strong in this test, though the UX305 isn’t topping the chart.

Cinebench R11.5 3D Rending On The CPU And Integrated GPU

Cinebench R15 is a 3D rendering performance test based on Cinema 4D from Maxon. Cinema 4D is a 3D rendering and animation suite used by animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and many others. It's very demanding of processor resources and is an excellent gauge of computational throughput. This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral "No Keyframes" animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The rate at which each test system was able to render the entire scene is represented in the graph below.

With regards to CPU performance, the UX305 with its Intel Core M 5Y10 processor is outscored by all other processors in this test. In the OpenGL component of this test, the UX305 earns a score that’s above a few other systems but still in the lower third of our comparison chart.