After hobbling along for a few years on budget 2-in-1 devices, I finally needed to upgrade to an actual device that would have some lasting power. I was between the Zenbook and the Dell XPS 13. In my mind, these are THE two ultrabooks on the market to consider. I went with the Zenbook ultimately because it was slightly cheaper than the Dell(the comparable version of the dell runs around $830) and I've had good experiences with Asus products in the past.
I couldn't be happier with how the ZenBook has been performing. The 13 inch size feels like the sweetspot between being big enough for extended use while still being portable. And it's a matte screen!! Such a huge selling point to me, the matte really allows you to see the quality of the display and helps viewing in extremely bright areas. Colors are vibrant, the back light is powerful and it the screen has some great viewing angles.
The fact that the machine itself is so thin and light adds to the portability too. After lugging around an old Thinkpad for years, the lightweight ZenBook was a welcome improvement. I can't imagine ever getting fatigued having to carry it for any extended period of time, 3 USB ports should suffice for most people's uses and the addition of a mini-HDMI port opens the possibility of throwing your display up on a big screen.
Performance wise the ZenBook has some seriously good horsepower for the price. Even from a hard boot, I'm logged and loaded into Windows in seconds. I can't imagine ever needing more than 8 gigs of ram for my needs. If you're a hardcore gamer, you might balk at 8 gigs. For anyone not trying to get a game like Arkham Knight running maxed out at 4k resolution, the performance will go above and beyond. You should be able to throw pretty much any processor intensive applications at the ZenBook with no problems. Heck, it still can run most modern games, albeit on more modest settings. Full HD video also looks incredible on the Zenbook's screen. It's not the best display in the industry, but it still looks very, very good, and once you have the machine in front of you and aren't comparing it to 100 different competitors, you will be extremely happy with how good the screen is.
The battery-life has been exceptional. I don't have any real world figures to provide because I never could go long enough in the wild to fully run the battery down. The 10 hour spec from Asus seems right(gaming, heavy processor use, backlighting, etc will all impact that number though) . If battery life is a huge selling point for you, I'd suggest looking at the Zenbook version running the Intel M core chip as that is more efficient, the trade-off is that the M chip is slower than the i5, so you need to decide if performance or battery life is more important. For me, I can't imagine being in a position where I'm going to be using my laptop without a power outlet for more than 10 hours.
Ergonomically, the machine is serviceable. The keyboard functions, the trackpad tracks, but there's nothing more to say to it. I never found the keyboard to be crowded and the keys aren't too spongy. Some people are going to be thrown with the off-center trackpad. I did find the trackpad also struggled from time to time to differentiate between right clicks and left clicks, and confused two fingers for scrolling as two fingers pinching to zoom. It's not that much of an annoyance for me as I always use a dedicated mouse, but if you are expecting to navigate solely with the trackpad, prepare for some frustration.
I will say that in the aesthetic department, the Asus does look kinda, old? I mean, yea it's definitely copying the macbook's playbook wholsale, but it still does look like a machine 5 years older than it is. The bezels are huge(especially compared to the XPS 13 which has virtually no bezel). Users will also notice a weird gap between the hinge and the body of the device. At first I thought it was just a weird design choice, and a lot of complaints about the look of the machine are lobbied at this weird gap and the bezel that extents past the hinge. However, after some probing, the gap actually turned out to be an incredibly clever way to allow the machine proper circulation while keeping the form factor as small as possible. There are vents all along the base of the gap where fans vent out hot air when the machine starts to work hard. After discovering this, I was actually glad they chose that option over having it vent out the side like most machines. The typical side-vent area always heats up my thigh if I sit with a laptop directly on my lap. With the Zenbook though, the air is heat is actively being pushed away from both the machine and my body. I've never had to put a pillow between my lap and the Zenbook to block the head. This is the only laptop I've ever owned I can say that for.
A NOTE ON THE WAKE/SLEEP ISSUE: I too ran into the wake/sleep issue with the ZenBook. A lot of digging has led me to believe the issues revolves around Windows 10 not jiving 100% with Solid State Drives. Basically, when you put your machine to sleep, windows is set to shutdown the hard-drive when sleeping. On wake-up, it can struggle to bring an SSDD back online. There is a power option in windows where you can set the OS to NOT power down the hard-drive when going into sleep mode. I've found that still hit or miss. The option I HAVE had 100% success with is switching all of my options to go into hibernation instead of sleep. Yes, in theory this means a longer wake-up, but win10 is so fast to boot, that I haven't noticed any appreciable time difference from waking in hibernation vs sleep mode.
I don't want to mark this issue against Asus, as this is an issue that is showing up across brands, if I were to write a review of Win10, that's where this issue would impact a final score.
| Standing screen display size | 13.3 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1920 x 1080 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1920*1080 Pixels |
| Processor | 2.3 GHz core_i5 |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 256 GB Solid State Drive |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel HD Graphics |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 2 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 10 Hours |
