Our View
It's very good product for content creators. Its ScreanPad(secondary screen) is a great feature to have in your laptop.In Favour |
Against |
| ScreanPad(display on trackpad) | RAM is soldered on the board |
| I9 is a beast | GTX 1050ti is not so good |
| Great speakers | Not super bright screen |
| Well built | Slightly mushier keys |
| 4k display | Full-size SD card slot is missing |
| Good keyboard layout |
Every year we're seeing thinner bezels, thinner laptops, better and lighter materials, which are cool but they don't really change the way that we actually work with our laptops. These upgrades are nice but, This is different. Asus built a screan into a touchpad. Asus call it a "ScreenPad".
Design
This laptop is not as well built as Apple MacBook Pro or Dell XPS product but its not bad at all. I like it.
Screen is a 4k panel. It has 83% screen to body ratio. The color gamut is also great, 100% adobe RGB, 100% sRGB. Its a nice looking screen but its not super bright. It bright but not as bright as MacBook Pro.
Keyboard feels a standard keyboard. It has slightly mushier keys but good layout and good keyboard overall.
Port selection is little bit weird. It has a Micro SD. This laptop is obviously geared towards content creators, so it should have a full-size SD. It's not there. It has 2 USB A ports, 2 thunderbold 3 ports and an HDMI out.
This laptop got's an i9 processor which is a beast and GTX 1050ti. So to cool these comonents, this laptop has 3 heat pipes and 2 fanes.
The RAM on this thing is soldered onto the board. I don't like it and never appreciate it. Especially on a device like this, I really wish you could just upgrade it when you want it. It only comes up to 16GB RAM from the factory and you cant upgrade it, so it's not great.
The speakers are really good. Zenbook pro speakers have always one of the better ones in the market.
Description
| Display | 15.6 inches FHD(1,920x1,080 pixel) / UHD (3,840x2,160) |
| Processor | Intel Core i9-8950HK / Core i7-8750H / Core i5-8300H |
| RAM | Up to 16GB DDR4 |
| Hard Drive | 1TB / 512GB PCIe SSD, 512GB / 256GB SATA SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 4 GB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11.ac |
| Item Weight | 1.88kg |
| Product Dimensions | 365mm x 251mm x 18.9mm |
| Battery | 71Wh, rated for 10 hours |
| Ports |
2x USB Type-A,
2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C with Thunderbolt 3,
1x HDMI 1.4,
MicroSD card reader |
| Price | $2,299+ |
ScreenPad
Moreover, you can also run it as a secondary display, Which is also very nice feature to have. So it essentially a smaller, secondary screen that you can use to drag and drop your programs., or window's folders, or whatever you would use your secondary display for.
Apple Mac Books have touch bar at the top but according to me, the utility of that strip is pretty limited and it's highly dependent on the developer, so you need your app developer to create functionality in that strip for you. Its not nearly as functional or practical as something like this ScreenPad.
Conclusion
My initial reaction for this device is that its' really cool but after some usage, the secondary immediate reaction is that, "Is is really that useful?" because your viewing angle on this ScreenPad is'nt ideal.
If you're starring at your screen like you normally would now you have to glance down to look at this secondary display. But after using it for a little long time- it'll feel natural to you. Obviously its not a better option then looking straight if there are two screens in front of you (That would be ideal), but that's never gonna happen on a laptop anytime soon.
After some time of usage, it becomes very useful. If you're loading a Premiere, you can have different palette down there, if you wanna watch videos like Youtube or Twitch, you can pop this window down there and its just in a position where you can kind to keep tabs of whatever's going on a screen, without actually having it take the real estate of your regular screen.
You can run any application that you want to run on this ScreenPad, like if you have a secondary camera footage or if you're running a remote access program, like whatever you want, you can just make it work.
The best part of ScreanPad is that its functionality doesn't get reduced. It feels exactly the same as a regular trackpad, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In fact, if you turn off the screen, it's just look like a normal black trackpad. It's got smooth textured glass with good tracking.
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