Asus ZenBook 13 Preview – Super fast lightweight
Asus traditionally announces a lot of new hardware at the IFA and this year it was another hit. The manufacturer delights mobile gamers with new gaming laptops , but also serves convertible users with new ‘ Flip ‘ laptops, which are equipped with the new Kaby Lake R quadcores, among other things. We also find the same quad-core in the new ZenBook 13, which is also called ‘UX331’. The ZenBook 13 is halfway between the super-thin ZenBook 3 and the thicker ZenBooks UX410 and 430. Is this the high-end laptop you actually want instead of a ZenBook 3? We made a first impression during the fair.
Appearance and connections
Anyone who has seen a ZenBook from Asus before will clearly notice the similarities with previous models. The housing is again made of aluminum and the metal back of the screen is brushed in a circular motif. The gray version of the ZenBook 13 sticks to a bare metal back, but with the dark blue version, Asus has added an extra transparent plastic layer. The back shines and shines as a result.
What looks nicer is a matter of personal taste, but what we like is that Asus has limited the glare to the back of the screen. The front of the systems being demonstrated simply had a matte screen with a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. We prefer that screen because it reflects little light, but Asus can also supply the UX331 with a touchscreen, which is combined with a glossy screen. The touchscreens are available in resolutions of 1920×1080 and 3840×2160 pixels.
Not only the back of the screen, but also the rest of the housing is made of metal. The laptop feels sturdy at first glance, but if you type a bit on the keyboard, you can see the metal around the keys springing along somewhat. Perhaps Asus has made the case a bit thinner to reduce the weight. If that was the intention, at least it succeeded; the ZenBook UX331 weighs only 1.12 kilograms. That low weight is immediately noticeable when you pick up the laptop and although 1.12 kilograms is not a record, it is still impressively low when you consider what Asus has put in it for hardware.
The ZenBook 13 comes with a Core i5-8250U or Core i7-8550U processor. Both CPUs are quad cores with a TDP of 15 watts from the Kaby Lake Refresh series, which Intel recently announced . But that’s not all, because the ZenBook 13 is also equipped with a GeForce MX150 GPU. That hardware must of course also be cooled and there is also a fairly large battery of 50Wh built in. Given that hardware, it’s a nice achievement from Asus to keep the ZenBook 13 so light.
The rest of the hardware consists of eight or sixteen gigabytes of RAM and an SSD, which can be supplied in capacities of 128GB to 1TB. The demo models at the show had a 1TB Samsung PM961 and a 512GB Sandisk SD8SN8U512G. The first is a fast nvme ssd, while the sandisk is a normal ahci ssd. Asus indicates that it will deliver two versions of the 512GB disk; an ahci and an nvme ssd.
The number of connections is not too bad for a high-end ultrabook. There are a USB port on the left and right, while there is also a USB-C and HDMI connection on the left. There is also a card reader, but unfortunately Asus has opted for a micro SD reader, which means that you still have to carry a card reader with you if you use regular SD cards.
Preliminary conclusion
The ZenBook 13 will fall between the introductory prices of the ZenBook 3 (around 1400 euros) and the UX430 (around 1000 euros) in terms of price. So it doesn’t come cheap, but during this short hands-on, the UX331 seems to be an interesting alternative to the ZenBook 3. The ZenBook 3 cannot dissipate its heat properly due to its thin size and has a keyboard with little travel. With the ZenBook 13, Asus has built a somewhat thicker laptop that probably does not have those problems, will cost less and, moreover, thanks to the quad-core processor and separate GPU, is a lot faster than the average ultrabook.en we will put the UX331 through its paces in a full review.