Sneak peek of the ASUS ZenBook 3

After launching at Computex in Taiwan earlier this year, we’re one of the lucky few (and the only local tech lifestyle magazine) who got to some hands-on time with the ZenBook 3 ahead of the Zenvolution launch ASUS Philippines is hosting tomorrow at Sofitel Philippine Plaza. Said event will be ASUS’ platform to show off its new ZenFone 3 phones and these new laptop and 2-in-1 Transformer devices. But for now we want to turn the spotlight on the ridiculously thin ZenBook 3 and what we thought about with our short afternoon with it.

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Thin is still in

In our line of work being mobile is a necessity and we’re sure that’s also the case for a lot of you. And that’s where the ZenBook 3 becomes a really attractive option. At 11.9mm thin, it’s just 4.2mm thicker than the ZenFone 3. It’s so light, too, at 910 grams. My work laptop immediately felt heavier in my bag with this in my hands.

With its thickness, or rather thinness, it goes steadily up against the new HP Spectre, which is just 10.4mm thin; Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air, which is 14.8mm thin; and the China-only Lenovo Air 13 Pro, which is also at 14.8mm thin.

ASUS promises better keyboard travel than the MacBook with the ZenBook 3 but we’ll have to use it extensively to say. There’s a good feel to the keyboard during our initial use of it.

An eye-catcher

I’m personally a fan of deep blues so being handed the Royal Blue model of the ZenBook 3 piqued my interest further. It has that almost aubergine-like color to it. And yes, I was in love. There are two other colors for the ZenBook 3 that really make it feel like you know a certain tech giant with a fruit for its name is their benchmark: Rose Gold and Quartz Gray. You still see the ZenBook design DNA with tapering edges and the concentric spun-metal finish. I’m not too fond of the gold metallic trim surrounding the laptop’s edge. But the gold backlight and gold letters on the keys do give a great contrast to the ZenBook 3’s look.

Built with aerospace-grade aluminum alloy, you feel the sturdiness of it. The laptop might be thin but it can take some jostling around. Of course, don’t be too rough with it. Laptops aren’t meant to be manhandled too much, especially these ultra-thin ones.

Heavy-hitter

It might be thin and light when it comes to its looks but it’s no lightweight machine. It packs in a 12.5-inch LED-backlit Full HD display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 (not a touch display, though), Microsoft Windows 10 operating system, up to the sixth-generation Intel Core i7 6500U processor, up to 16GB of LPDDR3 2,133MHz RAM, up to 1TB PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSD, and a 40Whrs lithium-polymer battery, which promises up to nine hours of battery life.

We played around with it a bit and saw some speedy responses from the machine. Viewing angles are decent but glare might be an issue outdoors as you see in our head-on shot of its display while outdoors. We weren’t able to put it through the paces yet but we hope to do that soon.

What can be considered an engineering feat is fitting in a 3mm thin cooling system in the ZenBook 3. ASUS made use of a liquid crystal polymer to slim down the fan inside. It also makes use of a multi-cell lithium polymer battery that was placed in any available space on the ZenBook 3 to make sure it doesn’t compromise the battery life for its thinness.

ASUS was also able to pack in a quad speaker system into the ZenBook 3 with two high-power speakers and two five-magnet speakers with SonicMaster Premium technology and Harman/Kardon tuning. We weren’t able to test out audio quality when we saw the ZenBook 3, though.

You get the latest in terms of other key specs: fingerprint reader on the top right of the touchpad, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, and USB 3.1 Type-C. But much like what Apple did with its latest MacBook, don’t expect to get any other port in this thin machine. Aside from the USB Type-C port, the only other port is the combo audio jack. The compromise ASUS made is including a dock for its users to have to get more functionality out of the ZenBook 3. We’re going to get confirmation tomorrow if they’re bundling in the Mini or Universal Dock.

The Mini Dock only comes with a USB 3.1 Type-C port, which also serves a charging port; one USB 3.0 Type-A port; and one full-sized HDMI port. Meanwhile, the Universal Dock has one USB 3.1 Type-C port, two USB 3.0 Type-A port, one full-sized HDMI port, one VGA port, one RJ45 LAN port, a 3.5mm audio jack, a 3.5mm microphone jack, and an SD card reader.

The ASUS ZenBook 3 is a mobile worker’s dream. It looks stylish and packs in a lot of advanced technologies. Yes, there are compromises to be made and some might consider things like just having one port a major dealbreaker. But if you live mostly in the cloud, this might be a very attractive option for you. We’ll find out tomorrow how much ASUS plans to retail the ZenBook 3 for. Check out our Instagram and Twitter for updates from the event floor.

UPDATE:

The ZenBook 3 with an Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB LPDDR3 RAM, and 512GB M.2 SSD retails for P79,995.