The Gentleman Magazine Issue 4 | August/September | Page 84

ASUS ZenBook 3 Review:
Ultra-Portable, Ultra-Light, Ultra Powerful!
By Sebastian Oakley
Ultra-portables have long been desired for their lightweight
portability while traveling or on the go, designed to have a
computer wherever you are and to take your office with you
has kept these lightweight machines selling off the shelves.
However, there has always been a slight problem of them
being a good web browsing and email computer but lacking
the power to really undergo “desktop” tasks.
Until now, ASUS developed the Zenbook 3 with ultra-
portability in mind but also the performance power to really
take your office wherever you go without being limited on the
tasks you can perform. ASUS did this by equipping the Zenbook
3 with an Intel i5 or i7 processor (depending on which variant
you want) into an astonishing ultra-thin 11.9mm profile and
weighing just 910g you really do get the best of lightweight
portability and great performance.
Our test unit was equipped with the Intel i5 processor, 8 GB
RAM and a 512GB SSD, the Intel i7 comes with all the above
except the 8GB RAM which is replaced with 16GB RAM.
Yes 16GB RAM in a laptop that only weighs 910 grams! We
tested our unit in various situations from the normal “every
day” user using word, web browsing and video consumption
to actually processing 100 megapixel images from a Phase One
medium format camera – Something that could never have
been possible before on an ultra-portable, until now with the
ZenBook 3.
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In all our tests we were extremely impressed with the battery
life, ASUS state 9 hours, we were getting 7.5 - 8 hours in all
situations on normal unplugged mode. However, turning
battery saver mode on we were getting the 9 hours of battery
without any noticeable step-down in performance, just a
slightly dimmer display setting.
The display is a 12.5” display with a Full HD 1920 X 1080
resolution and I have to say what a display this is. I have never
seen a Full HD display look this sharp and vibrant on any other
laptop I have used. It delivers rich colours and has excellent
viewing angles, to keep the display lightweight and ultra-slim,
yet tough, ASUS has covered it with 0.4mm of super-strong
Corning® Gorilla® Glass 4, which is twice as thin as standard
cover glass, but giving reassurance that if a drop happened it
would be less likely to crack than other ultra-portables using
less strong cover glass. Also to allow this to be such a light
weight laptop but be strong enough to deal with any scrapes or
bumps in day-to-day use ASUS have used an aerospace-grade
aluminium which is lighter than standard laptop alloy, but 50%
stronger – so it’s designed to be tough!
We would also like to note the superb audio quality from the
Harman Kardon quad-speaker surround sound which delivers
an amazing sound and tone which surpasses any other laptop
speakers we have heard.
, Security in Motion”