ASUS ZenBook 15 (UX534) Review: An Almost Perfect Ultrabook With A Secondary Display

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Tech

Earlier this year, at Computex 2019, ASUS unveiled its latest-gen ZenBooks that were even more compact than their predecessors. Apart from a smaller form factor, the new ZenBooks also get ASUS’s ScreenPad that replaced the traditional trackpad with a touchscreen for additional utility.

The new ZenBooks is packed to the brim with specs, offers a compact design, boasts of the cool ScreenPad tech and also has a striking display with minimal bezels. But do these specs on paper transform into an equally promising experience? Find out in our full review of the ASUS ZenBook 15 (UX534).

Design & Build

The ZenBook 15 is an ultrabook and it looks every part of it. Although nimbly designed, the laptop gives you the confidence to be a little carefree while handling it as it’s been torture-tested to MIL-STD-810G standards. This doesn’t mean that the laptop is impervious to external factors. It’s simply more resistant to extremes of altitude, temperature and humidity, in addition to extensive drop, shock and vibration testing.

The laptop also features ASUS’s ErgoLift hinge that lifts the keyboard up at an angle when the lid is open. This not only gives a better angle to write but it also helps with thermal management. The lid of the laptop is made of aluminium whereas the base of the laptop is made of polycarbonate with a metal-like finish. So although it doesn’t feel as premium as the MacBook to touch, it has an advantage of better heat management. It also passes the one-finger lid opening test, which is a testament to the efforts that have been put during product development.

ASUS has stuck with its signature exuberant colourway of blue and champagne and I’m so glad they did. The keys are labelled in a shade of gold and the top of the keyboard gets a beautiful strip of gold mesh that is a metaphorical silver lining to the laptop’s design.

But unfortunately, the laptop is a fingerprint magnet. It’s so easy to leave your prints on the laptop and ruin the beautiful concentric design that runs on its lid or even the palm-rest area on the base. Adding to the mess is a glaring white sticker to the right of the trackpad that just kills the vibe ASUS tries to set with the colours. Although it might seem like a minor quibble, I don’t understand why ASUS would like to put a hard-to-remove sticker on a laptop that someone would pay a bomb for.

Display & Webcam

ASUS’s NanoEdge display on the ZenBook 15 is probably the closest you’ll come to a bezel-less display on a laptop. But unlike what Dell did with the XPS 13 (pushing the webcam to the bottom), ASUS has made ingenious use of its ErgoLift hinge to hide the thick bottom bezel that won’t be visible to you when the lid is open. Right next to the webcam on top, there’s also a 3D IR sensor that unlocks the laptop even in dark conditions.

The display itself is a FullHD IPS LCD display with a glossy finish. Because of the glossy finish, working on this laptop in a well-lit environment becomes a problem. But the glossy display has excellent viewing angles and colour reproduction is good too. The NanoEdge display really offers a great video-viewing experience.

Again, the only gripe I have with the display is its glossy finish. Couple that with the fact that the display doesn’t get too bright, the laptop struggles a bit in outdoor environments.

Performance & Audio

The review unit we got, was powered by an Intel Core i7-8565U processor, had an NVIDIA GTX 1650 Max-Q GPU, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 3.0 SSD. If the specifications itself aren’t an indication of what the laptop is capable of, let me break it down for you. Chrome? Open a bazillion tabs and it’ll still work just as good. Chrome with Spotify playing in the background? Not a problem. Chrome and Illustrator with Spotify playing in the background? Still not a problem.

To truly test it, I also decided to play FarCry 5 on this wafer and I wasn’t disappointed. The GTX 1650 is a great mid-range GPU that is just about perfect for casual gamers. I didn’t notice any frame drops while playing FarCry 5 and it was a really enjoyable experience. But obviously, the fans whirred up almost immediately and the laptop did get quite hot. Anyway, my point is that the laptop is really powerful and could easily handle graphic intensive tasks like video editing or graphics rendering.

For audio, ASUS has bundled in a dual-speaker setup that is fine-tuned by harmon/kardon. They’re placed at the bottom of the housing towards the user’s side. The positioning of the speaker is not the best and they don’t get as loud the top-facing speakers on the MacBook Pro that are situated on either side of the keyboard. But the laptop has a 3.5mm headphone jack (and Bluetooh 5.0) so you always have an option of plugging in your headphones for a better experience.

Keyboard & Trackpad

The ZenBook now graces ASUS’s ScreenPad 2.0 that replaces the regular trackpad with a 5.65-inch display with a resolution of 2160×1080. Unlike the display, it gets a matte treatment that not only makes it more visible but also avoids fingerprints. Think of the ScreenPad as an implementation that’s similar to what Apple did with Touch Bars, but only more radical.

The ScreenPad can be your second screen and host just about anything that’s visible on your display (doesn’t mean its always practical). You can choose to open a browser or play songs from Spotify without having to disturb the workflow on your display. There are also a bunch of companion ScreenPad apps that fire up when specific applications are opened. For instance, there’s a companion application for Microsoft Word that gives a bunch of editing shortcuts in the ScreenPad itself. ASUS has also opened up the API for developers in a hope to make the ScreenPad more functional in the future.

Doc Xpert Companion App on the ScreenPad for MS Word

Although I’m glad ASUS is pushing boundaries in the laptop industry, the ScreenPad isn’t a feature that should motivate you to get this laptop. It’s definitely more than just a party trick but its applications are still limited. There’s a learning curve associated with it too.

The ZenBook has a full-sized chiclet-type backlit keyboard. And although you might call it nitpicking, instead of the letters and symbols, its the base of the keys that light up. While functionally it doesn’t make a major difference, it takes a toll on the aesthetics. The keys have plenty of travel and I got used to them almost instantaneously.

Battery Life

The ZenBook 15 packs a 71Wh 8-cell Lithium-polymer battery that ASUS claims can last up to 14.9 hours on a single charge. But real-world usage yielded a result that wasn’t close to this number. On a full charge, I could get about 7-9 hours of battery life. My usage mostly involved browsing, writing and listening to music in the background. With more intensive tasks like using photo or video editing, expect lesser than this mark too. But it’s important to note that the battery is also powering the 5.65-inch FullHD ScreenPad that drains additional battery. You can choose to disable the ScreenPad too and improve your battery endurance.

Although there’s a USB Type-C port present on the laptop, it can’t be used to charge the laptop. You’ll still have to tug around ASUS’s proprietary charger around. The 65W charger, although, is pretty quick in charging the laptop.

Connectivity

The ZenBook is fully loaded in terms of port connectivity. It has a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C (display support) port, a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A (up to 10Gbps) port, a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A (up to 5Gbps) port, an HDMI port, and support for a full-sized SD card reader. Apple should take a leaf out of ASUS’s approach of connectivity options on an Ultrabook.

Verdict

The ZenBook 15 is a solidly-built ultrabook that offers great performance, a classic design, and a decent battery. The ScreenPad still seems to be half-baked and I wouldn’t have missed its absence. Nonetheless, some people might find this pretty useful and intuitive. Also, it’s disappointing to know that ASUS didn’t opt for the newer 9th generation Coffe Lake processors for its ZenBook series.

All in all, I found the ASUS ZenBook 15 to be a pretty solid ultrabook and would definitely recommend you to consider this while looking for a new powerful laptop that doesn’t weigh a ton. But if you don’t want to spend as much, you could also check out the ZenBook 14. It has a worse GPU and a smaller battery but offers just about the same experience in an even smaller form factor.

The ZenBook 15 starts from INR 1,19,990. We don’t have the pricing for the top-end unit that we reviewed yet. We’ll update this article with the pricing as and when it’s made available to us.