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Asus ZenBook 3 review: A wrestler in a waif’s body

The thinnest notebook we’ve reviewed also happens to be one of the most powerful

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The Asus ZenBook 3 pushes the limites of how an ultra-portable laptop can perform.
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To many users, portability is everything--it is a characteristic endemic to every smartphone and laptop design today. While most of these products simply suffice with a ‘bare minimum’ in what portability implies, there are devices built to push this limit to such an extent that it leaves you marveling at how much smaller, lighter, and thinner today’s products can really get.

I recently got my hands on one such product--the Asus ZenBook 3 notebook. After lifting open its shipping box, it is hard not to just take this device out and show it to everyone. To say that it is impossibly thin wouldn’t really do it justice--at a hair under 12mm, the laptop borders on blade-like. Opening it drives home the point further, with the screen and the keyboard virtually halving this already minuscule statistic. And being svelte apparently doesn’t imply this device is dainty--the body is apparently constructed using an aerospace-grade aluminium alloy that makes it a lot tougher than it appears. Even the 12.5-inch Full HD screen is covered with Gorilla Glass 4 for added strength against the odd bump and drop.

Under its (slim) hood

Form factor notwithstanding, it’s the specs that really make it interesting--despite being ultra-portable, this laptop packs the kind of horsepower that could make your desktop video editing machine blush: at its heart is a 7th Generation (Kaby Lake) Intel Core i7-7500U processor running at 2.7GHz, 8GB of LPDDR3 RAM, a Toshiba M.2 512GB SATA3 Flash drive, and Intel HD graphics 620. Suffice to say that if you fancied editing a 4K video you shot on your DSLR while you killed time at the airport lounge, this laptop would only barely break a sweat. Even the details in these high-end specs make a difference--the processor is one of the new 15 Watt variants that make for longer battery life even while delivering best-of-class performance, the RAM clocks in at 2133MHz which is the fastest available, even the flash drive is up to 4x the speed of regular SSD drives. And all of this weighs in at under a kilogram.

Getting stuff done

Running Windows 10 Home, the entire user experience is expectedly a breeze. With its fast solid state storage, and speedy processor and memory, application launches are near-instant, and the response while using them feels tangibly enthusiastic. The one thing I did miss though was touchscreen capability--its display is conventional non-touch, albeit sharp and vivid. Although touchscreen would have been perfect, given its naturally thin form factor.

I used this laptop over regular professional and personal scenarios, including the regular loadout of productivity tasks such as day-long Web research and writing with about 20 browser tabs open at any given time, intermittent bouts of Photoshop image processing, watching a variety of video formats and the like. The laptop delivered a premium experience all around, especially with its quad-speaker Harman Kardon setup that made for punchier sound that one would expect from a system so slim. The keyboard is backlit with controllable intensity, making it easy to use even in dark environments, and there is also a fingerprint sensor integrated into the top right corner of the generously large touchpad making system sign-ins a breeze.

On the battery front, I was pleasantly surprised to find it delivering in the region of 9 to 10 hours of use on a single charge--quite the feat given its dimensions and extreme portability. The system is apparently constructed using a multi-cell system that distributes the Lithium Polymer cells across the available volume within the base of the unit, as opposed to it being in a single contiguous block as with most other laptops.

The tradeoffs

The one glaring area the laptop does fall short in is its paucity of ports -- it has a sum total of two--a 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB 3.1 Type-C port. The USB port doubles up for charging and for communication with other devices which means only one of these can be done at a time. There are two optionally available docks--a Mini dock that provides a USB 3.0, USB 3.1 and full sized HDMI port each, and a larger universal dock that additionally provides a VGA port, RJ-45 port, 3.5mm Audio jack, 3.5mm Mic jack, and an SD Card reader. This lack of ports will undoubtedly be a buzzkill if you regularly connect peripherals like a mouse, USB printer etc--clearly this laptop is intended for users who aren’t interested in hooking too many gadgets to it, but instead are constantly on the move connected to WiFi networks.

Quick specs
Asus ZenBook 3
  • Screen: 12.5-inch Full HD (1920x1080,) 72% NTSC color gamut, Gorilla Glass 4
  • Key hardware: 7th Generation (Kaby Lake) Intel Core i7-7500U processor @2.7GHz, 8GB LPDDR3 RAM, Toshiba M.2 512GB SATA3 Flash drive, Intel HD graphics 620
  • OS: Windows 10 Home
  • Thickness: 11.9mm
  • Weight: 910 gms
  • Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.1
  • Battery: 40Whr (approx. 9 hours)
  • Speakers: Harman Kardon quad speakers
  • Color options: Royal Blue, Rose Gold and Quartz Grey
  • Other features: Fast charging (60% capacity in 49 minutes), 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 3.5mm headphone jack, fingerprint sensor, backlit keyboard, aluminium alloy shell

Price: Rs 1,23,990

A couple of other peeves--the power button is at the top right corner--a location generally occupied by the DEL button. Hitting it is inevitable while typing, which can be a bother before getting accustomed to it. Also I’d have liked more play in the keys--they are almost sheer to the keyboard surface, resulting in a less than ideal typing experience.

Wrapup

Apart from the variant reviewed here, the laptop will be available in two other choices--a Core i5 with 8GB RAM/512GB SATA3 SSD (Rs 1,13,990,) and a Core i7 with 16GB RAM/512GB PCIE G3x4 SSD (Rs 1,47,990.) Choices of color include rose gold, quartz grey and royal blue. One of the most obvious comparisons with this ultra-portable is with the new MacBook, which is incidentally a tad larger on all dimensions. It’s a toss up to choose one over the other, but if it is a high-performance portable experience you’re looking for in the Windows world, the ZenBook 3 most certainly delivers. But at a price.

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