Who Is It For?

The Asus ZenBook 3, much like the Apple MacBook it attempts to imitate, is a beautiful yet flawed piece of hardware. For the right consumer, this thin and light laptop will be the perfect machine for work on the go, but some cardinal limitations prevent it from taking the ultraportable market by tempest.

The ZenBook features the nicest pattern I've seen from Asus so far. While Asus has clearly lifted some design elements from its direct competitors, the consequence is a stunning metal unibody in an attractive mix of blue with gilded highlights. This laptop'southward sub-1kg weight assists with portability in a significant way, and its slimness is truly something to behold.

Several trade-offs have been made in the quest for the slimmest laptop possible. The border-to-border keyboard has a spacious layout, just shallow travel distance leads to a and so-and then typing experience. Asus has opted for only one USB-C port, which is a MacBook 'feature' no company should consider imitating.

USB-C is fine on a laptop this thin, simply a single port is unnecessarily restrictive and unforgivable on a laptop of this price. The position of the fingerprint sensor is strange as well, although the inclusion of the sensor itself is a welcomed move.

Unless you're strictly a Mac user, it'due south hard to recommend the MacBook over the ZenBook if yous want a fast and portable organisation.

Performance is where the ZenBook comfortably beats the MacBook cheers to a full-power Kaby Lake processor. The Core i7 model in my review unit wasn't significantly faster than a Skylake equivalent, but it comfortably trounced the Cadre M part found in the MacBook past a significant 45 percent.

Equipped with the i7-7500U, you can as well expect ameliorate operation than the Core i5 HP Spectre, if yous're in the market for a thin-and-light laptop.

The downside to using a 15W processor is ability consumption. The battery in the ZenBook is just forty Wh, around the same size as the bombardment in the MacBook, yet the Core i7 or i5 processor consumes more power than Cadre M. This leads to average though not terrible battery life; I typically got 6 hours of good utilize out of the ZenBook 3, when ideally I'd similar to see at least 8 hours.

While the ZenBook three is not the perfect ultraportable, Asus has priced it aggressively. At $1,099 for the base model with a Core i5-7200U, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD, the ZenBook 3 is a skilful $200 cheaper than the base MacBook and provides superior performance. Unless you're strictly a Mac user, information technology's hard to recommend the MacBook over the ZenBook if you want a fast and portable organisation.

Up against Windows laptops, the base model ZenBook is essentially the aforementioned price as the HP Spectre, and you lot can buy an upgraded Spectre for $1,349 that matches the $1,599 ZenBook's hardware, except for sixteen GB of RAM. Because the Spectre includes a better keyboard and more USB ports, the ZenBook 3 only wins if you want the lighter chassis.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • Asus ZenBook 3 on Amazon
  • Asus ZenBook 3 on Newegg

That's not to say the ZenBook 3 is a bad piece of hardware; in fact I quite like the amount of power that's packed into this design. Information technology's simply not the standout laptop in the ever expanding ultrathin market place.

Pros: Splendid thin and light metal build. Packs all the performance of a full-power 'Kaby Lake' processor. More affordable than the MacBook for amend hardware.

Cons: Only one USB-C port is bad. Average battery life and keyboard.