Amazon.com: ASUS ZenBook 15 Ultra-Slim Laptop 15.6” FHD NanoEdge Bezel, Intel Core i7-10510U, 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIe SSD, GeForce GTX 1650, Innovative ScreenPad 2.0, Windows 10 Pro, UX534FTC-XH77, Royal B

I’ve owned this laptop for about 19 months now, since it came out. I had a choice between this (UX534) and its more expensive brother, the ZenBook Duo UX481, with its big secondary display. I chose this instead because of the price.

The touchscreen trackpad is pretty nice and smooth as a trackpad, but I still always use a mouse. The screen itself has proven to be very useful for me, even though it’s small. I had to disable that stupid “ScreenXpert” software from ASUS. Once I did that, it was now just another display. I can put any program I want on there. I can watch two videos in full screen, one on the main screen, and the other on the trackpad screen. The possibilities are endless.

The trackpad screen is actually bigger in resolution than the main screen, which I found hilarious. 1920×1080 for the main, and 2160×1080 for the trackpad. I do however have to put my face closer to it in order to read any normal sized text, but not that close, just a little bit. But I’m nearsighted anyway. Of course, nothing beats the main screen in terms of reading text for any extended period of time.

There was one annoying thing I couldn’t figure out, and that was the keyboard backlight. If you don’t use the keyboard or mouse after a certain time, the backlight would go off. It used to be that when you resumed using the computer, the backlight would come back on. But after a Windows Update that happened around Christmas 2020, when I would resume using it, the keyboard backlight would not come back on. I have to manually turn it on with the Fn keys, every single time. I don’t know what happened, but something was changed, and nobody knows why. But, anyways, this is just a small inconvenience.

This laptop has two fans. One on the right, and one on the left. Last week, I had a problem with the one on the left. It started vibrating and stopping and vibrating and stopping and then resuming as normal, and then vibrating and stopping. Sounding like a caged lion that hasn’t been fed in a while. Within a couple days the vibrating and stopping was just constant to the point where it wasn’t moving any air at all.

Both fans are needed for the cooling to be at its best. I didn’t have any Torx screw drivers, so I had to order some. In the meanwhile, I figured out a solution to keep the roaring fan quiet. I stuck a wire through the radiator vent. Which seemed like a good temporary solution. Normal CPU temps were around 65C at idle, but with just one fan going, the temps were closer to 85C at idle.

After a few days the Torx screws came in. You need a T4. Turns out the fan had run out of lubricant. It evaporated away. Which is normal. It happens. I was actually thinking of buying a replacement fan, but there doesn’t seem to be any on the market. They’re hard to find. This is all we’ve got.

Lucky for me, all I had to do was open up the laptop, remove the fan, take it apart, then clean up the oily gunk and dust, and put in my own oil in the blade shaft. I used olive oil, which is not professional at all, but it’s all I had. I figure this should last me a month or two before I have to relubricate it again. By then I’ll have an actual lubricant.

But it works. The fan doesn’t vibrate anymore, and it pulls out air just like normal. Nice and smooth. Idle CPU temperatures are back at 65C.

Nothing but good news for the SSD. Over 20TB have been written to it and it’s still going strong.

So, for 19 months, I’ve been using this laptop as pretty much my desk machine. It’s on 24/7/365. It’s plugged in all the time. I rarely have it unplugged and using the battery. Which some would argue isn’t good battery practice. But, this is still the original battery. It has lost about 14% to 15% of its original capacity. Which, I think, is about normal.

With my bluetooth headphones charging, and my external hard drive connected, and with screen brightness at 100%, the battery can give me about 2 hours of life. I’m assuming an hour or two more if I didn’t have all that stuff plugged in.

One thing I must say, the build quality of this laptop is certainly better than any cheap $300 laptop I’ve owned in the past. Even the speakers are far better.

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