Asus ZenBook 3
The Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA is a top-tier ultraportable laptop. Asus makes dozens of more powerful machines, but if there’s one you’d find in a glass case, on a rotating pedestal, this is probably it.
Typical of the ZenBook range, it gets you more spec-per-pound than a lot of rivals. The Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA is also incredibly thin and light, without compromising battery life.
However, in aiming for a new-design MacBook style, Asus has also used rather annoying a rather annoying keyboard and trackpad combo that make it less enjoyable for all-day working than some of Asus’s cheaper ZenBooks.
Apple's tiny MacBook was a revelation when it debuted last year. It was thinner and lighter than most ultraportables on the market, and its refined design brought over some cues from Apple's mobile hardware. So it was only a matter of time before a PC maker took a swing at a similar design. Enter the ASUS ZenBook 3, a minuscule machine that promises to be just as portable as the MacBook while packing in much faster hardware. But while ASUS has proved it can sell powerful machines for far less than the competition, it's less experienced when it comes to delivering truly premium hardware. The ZenBook 3, while attractive on the surface, is a reminder that ASUS still has a lot to learn.
There are other technical marvels at play here. The 12.5-inch screen is surrounded by a thin bezel that pulls your eyes into the screen. The additional benefit of this is a smaller footprint than you might expect from a laptop of this size. It’s the perfect antidote to the Razer Blade Stealth, which had an outrageous bezel surrounding its 12.5-inch panel.
The ZenBook 3 Deluxe takes its design cues from its little brother, the original ZenBook 3, and I have no qualms with that It's one of the most beautiful premium laptops on the market. The aluminum navy-blue lid uses Asus' trademark concentric circles with a golden logo. Along the edge of the lid, you'll find a gold accent.
Lifting the lid reveals the 14-inch, 1080p display and more navy blue. Specifically, the keyboard is blue with gold lettering (and gold-tinted backlighting), while the deck and touchpad are coated in that same beautiful blue. It's subtle enough to be professional, but still attractive enough to turn heads.
Colour performance is good rather than fantastic. It covers 85 percent of the sRGB colour standard, 62 percent of Adobe RGB and 67 percent of DCI P3, the cinema standard.
This is enough to make the UX390UA look punchy and vivid, but we’d like to see it hit 100 per cent sRGB coverage at this price.
If you don’t need full colour coverage for professional purposes, the screen looks good, though. A lot of this is down to the very good contrast ratio of 999:1, which has a big impact on how lively colours appear.
Top brightness is excellent too at 370cd/m. While the UX390UA has a glossy screen rather than a matt one like some of Asus’s cheaper ZenBooks, you’ll be able to use the laptop outdoors. The top layer of the screen is Gorilla Glass 4, so should be pretty safe from scratches unless you really treat particularly roughly.
It’s a glossy screen but unlike many of its rivals, there’s no touch input. Some won’t mourn its loss, but it was always a nice-to-have feature for the occasional prod.
For a low-travel keyboard, the ZenBook 3 Deluxe is surprisingly comfortable. The keys have just 1.3 millimeters of vertical travel, but the 74 grams of actuation required to press them down keep you from bottoming out. On the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I reached 114 words per minute, which is at the high end of my usual range, with an error rate just under my usual 2 percent.
The original Asus Zenbook 3 featured a single Thunderbolt 3 port, which had a certain elegance to it, but was impractical. The Zenbook 3 Deluxe aims to remedy that issue by including not one, but two Thunderbolt 3 / USB Type-C ports, and one standard USB Type-C port.
Okay, that’s still not a lot. However, Asus went one step further and set an example the rest of the industry should follow immediately. The Zenbook 3 Deluxe ships with a set of Thunderbolt 3 dongles to help replace those old ports. In the box, buyers will find a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI dongle, alongside a standard Thunderbolt 3 to USB Type-A dongle.
The system is still $1,700 so they’re not free, they’re just included, but it’s the kind of small gesture that makes you feel good about a purchase. Pick up a MacBook Pro 13 and you’ll be out $10 to $20 per dongle, if you get the cheap ones on Amazon — double that if you go for the Apple-branded options. That can feel like a manufacturer reaching back into your wallet after you just handed them nearly two thousand dollars.
There’s no such issue here. The Asus branded dongles are simple, high quality, and they do an excellent job of bridging the gap between old standards and new ones. Still, if you end up needing other ports, like Ethernet, or DisplayPort, there are plenty of dongles for that.
The Thunderbolt 3 ports themselves are conveniently located, two on the right side, one on the left, so you can charge the Zenbook 3 Deluxe from either side with enough room to plug in a mouse or other accessory.
Something so tiny shouldn't be able to have such powerful speakers, but the ZenBook 3 Deluxe's set of four pack in the sound. When I listened to Yellowcard's "Two Weeks From Twenty," the audio from the speakers instantly filled our midsize conference room with clear vocals, drums and guitars. And although I could make out the bass, it wasn't as powerful as I would have liked. Moving to Movie Mode or Gaming Mode in the ICEpower AudioWizard pumped out a bit more bass, but it put some echoes in the vocals.
The webcam on the ZenBook 3 is one of the poorest examples We’ve seen in quite some time. It has an exceptionally narrow field of view, creates pretty blotchy images and makes even a decently lit room look dark and uninviting.
The microphone is fine and picked up my voice from a reasonable distance, but it delivers a pretty low-fidelity sound and won’t do anybody’s sultry tones justice.
This is ridiculous. In its $1,700 flagship productivity device, Asus included a lowly 480p webcam. For shame. There are budget laptops that offer at least 720p.
The core spec is the best proof of this. Rather than using an ultra-low power chipset, the ZenBook 3 has an Intel Core i7-7500U. It's a dual-core CPU rather than a quad-core desktop-replacer, but is just about the most powerful CPU you could fit into a laptop this slim right now.
It's very fast for normal day-to-day tasks, thanks also to the pep of the 512GB SSD in our review model. It can write data at over 1400MB/s - speedy, right? That said, we expect the lower-end version of the ZenBook 3, which has a Core i5 CPU, will feel similar for light duties.
This i7 version has a higher clock speed, a faster Turbo mode and a smidge more power in its GPU, the Intel HD 620.
You get good productivity power, and we'd happily edit giant photos on this machine (well, after getting annoyed at the lack of SD memory card slot).
But can it play games? Sort of. It has more gaming power than a 12-inch MacBook, and there are loads more games for Windows than Mac OS too, but it's not ideal. New top-tier titles are a bust so we tried Skyrim instead. Without the AC adapter plugged-in, you can comfortably play the game at "low" settings, 1080p resolution. Anything higher is a chug-fest. Plug in the power supply and you can creep up to "medium" settings without ruining the fun. In other words, it can hack PS3-grade games if you fiddle about with the settings, but not PS4-grade ones.
It seems that to get the ZenBook so thin and so light, Asus had to skimp on the battery. It lasted just 6 hours and 52 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which browses the web continuously over Wi-Fi.
The ultraportable average is 8:22, but the competition endured even longer. The MacBook Pro survived for 8:40, and the XPS 13 ran for 9:11 with a touch screen and a crazy 13:49 with a standard 1080p display. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon kept going for an impressive 12:21.
There’s a sacrifice here compared to the longest-lasting slim laptops in this class — the Dell XPS 13 lasts for an excellent 12.5 hours in the same test — but the Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UAwill still get you most of the way through a day’s work.
As noted before, you use the USB-C port to charge the battery, and it’s fairly quick to recharge too. Asus says it will reach 60 percent in 49 minutes.
But the compromises are notable. Having just one port reduces its flexibility and battery life isn’t quite as long as I’d like.
There are alternatives. The 12-inch MacBook is nearly as light and has a higher build quality, but is much less powerful. The HP Spectre is bigger and nearly 200g heavier, but has a better-quality screen and more ports. If ultra-thinness and light weight aren’t must-haves and you want to spend £1,500, one of the high-end Dell XPS 13s will net you similar performance and better battery life, as will one of the base 13-inch MacBook Pro models.
The Core i7 ZenBook 3 might actually be overkill for many people. £400 less nets you the Core i5 version that’ll still feel sprightly in most office tasks and browsing the web, but you’ll lose performance in tasks such as photo and video editing and the SSD will be much slower. Still, I suspect this will actually be the best-value choice for most people and, although I haven’t tested it, battery life could well be slightly better.
Conclusion
The Asus ZenBook 3 is one of the slimmest, lightest, most like-a-MacBook-but-not-a-MacBook Windows laptops you'll find.
Its highlights, other than its extreme portability, are its strong screen and use of proper laptop processors rather ones that seem designed to run off watch batteries.
Parts of the concept are great, but the practical realities of using the laptop day-to-day are less impressive. The trackpad is the worst part, given its irritatingly spongy feel, while the fingerprint scanner isn't that effective. Add the single port limitation and high price considering what the competition offer and there's room for improvement – despite the striking looks and apparent positives.
If you were looking at dropping $1,700 on the ZenBook 3, that's a deal. But if you're going for style points, the ZenBook 3 Deluxe earns top marks. Whether you're at work, the office or home, someone's going to notice your laptop.
A Super-Thin Powerful MacBook Rival
The Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA is a top-tier ultraportable laptop. Asus makes dozens of more powerful machines, but if there’s one you’d find in a glass case, on a rotating pedestal, this is probably it.
Typical of the ZenBook range, it gets you more spec-per-pound than a lot of rivals. The Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA is also incredibly thin and light, without compromising battery life.
However, in aiming for a new-design MacBook style, Asus has also used rather annoying a rather annoying keyboard and trackpad combo that make it less enjoyable for all-day working than some of Asus’s cheaper ZenBooks.
Apple's tiny MacBook was a revelation when it debuted last year. It was thinner and lighter than most ultraportables on the market, and its refined design brought over some cues from Apple's mobile hardware. So it was only a matter of time before a PC maker took a swing at a similar design. Enter the ASUS ZenBook 3, a minuscule machine that promises to be just as portable as the MacBook while packing in much faster hardware. But while ASUS has proved it can sell powerful machines for far less than the competition, it's less experienced when it comes to delivering truly premium hardware. The ZenBook 3, while attractive on the surface, is a reminder that ASUS still has a lot to learn.
Asus ZenBook 3 Design
The ZenBook 3 is stunning. Weighing just 910g and just 12mm thick, this isn’t just portable; this is 12-inch MacBook territory. It’s better than the slightly larger HP Spectre 13 as well, with less of that over-the-top high-end styling and a greater focus on subtlety.
Asus couldn’t help but inject just a little, ahem, ‘class’ into the ZenBook 3, with this blue model getting gold highlights around its edges and gold-tinted keyboard backlighting. It won’t be for everyone, but the additions are subtle enough to feel stylish rather than ostentatious – something the HP Spectre didn’t quite manage.
The ZenBook 3 is stunning. Weighing just 910g and just 12mm thick, this isn’t just portable; this is 12-inch MacBook territory. It’s better than the slightly larger HP Spectre 13 as well, with less of that over-the-top high-end styling and a greater focus on subtlety.
Asus couldn’t help but inject just a little, ahem, ‘class’ into the ZenBook 3, with this blue model getting gold highlights around its edges and gold-tinted keyboard backlighting. It won’t be for everyone, but the additions are subtle enough to feel stylish rather than ostentatious – something the HP Spectre didn’t quite manage.
The ZenBook 3 Deluxe takes its design cues from its little brother, the original ZenBook 3, and I have no qualms with that It's one of the most beautiful premium laptops on the market. The aluminum navy-blue lid uses Asus' trademark concentric circles with a golden logo. Along the edge of the lid, you'll find a gold accent.
Asus ZenBook 3 Display
You might expect the highest-spec screen of any Asus ZenBook in the UX390UA, but it’s actually relatively conservative. There’s no touchscreen and resolution is only full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels). Get close to the screen and you can see some pixellation.
Colour performance is good rather than fantastic. It covers 85 percent of the sRGB colour standard, 62 percent of Adobe RGB and 67 percent of DCI P3, the cinema standard.
This is enough to make the UX390UA look punchy and vivid, but we’d like to see it hit 100 per cent sRGB coverage at this price.
Top brightness is excellent too at 370cd/m. While the UX390UA has a glossy screen rather than a matt one like some of Asus’s cheaper ZenBooks, you’ll be able to use the laptop outdoors. The top layer of the screen is Gorilla Glass 4, so should be pretty safe from scratches unless you really treat particularly roughly.
It’s a glossy screen but unlike many of its rivals, there’s no touch input. Some won’t mourn its loss, but it was always a nice-to-have feature for the occasional prod.
Asus ZenBook 3 Keyboard, Fingerprint Scanner and Trackpad
What you get in exchange is a little fingerprint scanner built into the trackpad. This is used by a Windows 10 feature called Hello, letting you login with a finger rather than a password. It's a neat idea, but we've already been spoiled by the many fantastic smartphone finger scanners, and this one just isn't as fast or reliable.
The good news is that, when it works, it works very well. Using Windows 10’s excellent Hello security platform, you simply touch your finger to the scanner and you’ll be at the desktop in a fraction of a second.
It's a noticeable difference from the original ZenBook 3, which had just 0.8 millimeters of travel and isn't as comfortable.
The 4.1 x 2.8-inch trackpad is spacious and, more importantly, accurate. Every gesture I tried, including swiping three fingers down to reveal the desktop and tapping four fingers to show the Action Center, worked flawlessly. The one real issue I have with the touchpad is that Asus chose to put the fingerprint reader in the top-right-hand corner. While I love being able to log in with a Windows Hello fingerprint reader, I hate that it makes a small part of the touchpad unusable for actually moving the pointer.
It's a noticeable difference from the original ZenBook 3, which had just 0.8 millimeters of travel and isn't as comfortable.
The 4.1 x 2.8-inch trackpad is spacious and, more importantly, accurate. Every gesture I tried, including swiping three fingers down to reveal the desktop and tapping four fingers to show the Action Center, worked flawlessly. The one real issue I have with the touchpad is that Asus chose to put the fingerprint reader in the top-right-hand corner. While I love being able to log in with a Windows Hello fingerprint reader, I hate that it makes a small part of the touchpad unusable for actually moving the pointer.
Asus ZenBook 3 Ports
The original Asus Zenbook 3 featured a single Thunderbolt 3 port, which had a certain elegance to it, but was impractical. The Zenbook 3 Deluxe aims to remedy that issue by including not one, but two Thunderbolt 3 / USB Type-C ports, and one standard USB Type-C port.
Okay, that’s still not a lot. However, Asus went one step further and set an example the rest of the industry should follow immediately. The Zenbook 3 Deluxe ships with a set of Thunderbolt 3 dongles to help replace those old ports. In the box, buyers will find a Thunderbolt 3 to HDMI dongle, alongside a standard Thunderbolt 3 to USB Type-A dongle.
The system is still $1,700 so they’re not free, they’re just included, but it’s the kind of small gesture that makes you feel good about a purchase. Pick up a MacBook Pro 13 and you’ll be out $10 to $20 per dongle, if you get the cheap ones on Amazon — double that if you go for the Apple-branded options. That can feel like a manufacturer reaching back into your wallet after you just handed them nearly two thousand dollars.
There’s no such issue here. The Asus branded dongles are simple, high quality, and they do an excellent job of bridging the gap between old standards and new ones. Still, if you end up needing other ports, like Ethernet, or DisplayPort, there are plenty of dongles for that.
The Thunderbolt 3 ports themselves are conveniently located, two on the right side, one on the left, so you can charge the Zenbook 3 Deluxe from either side with enough room to plug in a mouse or other accessory.
Asus ZenBook 3 Speakers
Something so tiny shouldn't be able to have such powerful speakers, but the ZenBook 3 Deluxe's set of four pack in the sound. When I listened to Yellowcard's "Two Weeks From Twenty," the audio from the speakers instantly filled our midsize conference room with clear vocals, drums and guitars. And although I could make out the bass, it wasn't as powerful as I would have liked. Moving to Movie Mode or Gaming Mode in the ICEpower AudioWizard pumped out a bit more bass, but it put some echoes in the vocals.
Asus ZenBook 3 Webcam
The webcam on the ZenBook 3 is one of the poorest examples We’ve seen in quite some time. It has an exceptionally narrow field of view, creates pretty blotchy images and makes even a decently lit room look dark and uninviting.
The microphone is fine and picked up my voice from a reasonable distance, but it delivers a pretty low-fidelity sound and won’t do anybody’s sultry tones justice.
Asus ZenBook 3 Performance
The core spec is the best proof of this. Rather than using an ultra-low power chipset, the ZenBook 3 has an Intel Core i7-7500U. It's a dual-core CPU rather than a quad-core desktop-replacer, but is just about the most powerful CPU you could fit into a laptop this slim right now.
It's very fast for normal day-to-day tasks, thanks also to the pep of the 512GB SSD in our review model. It can write data at over 1400MB/s - speedy, right? That said, we expect the lower-end version of the ZenBook 3, which has a Core i5 CPU, will feel similar for light duties.
This i7 version has a higher clock speed, a faster Turbo mode and a smidge more power in its GPU, the Intel HD 620.
You get good productivity power, and we'd happily edit giant photos on this machine (well, after getting annoyed at the lack of SD memory card slot).
But can it play games? Sort of. It has more gaming power than a 12-inch MacBook, and there are loads more games for Windows than Mac OS too, but it's not ideal. New top-tier titles are a bust so we tried Skyrim instead. Without the AC adapter plugged-in, you can comfortably play the game at "low" settings, 1080p resolution. Anything higher is a chug-fest. Plug in the power supply and you can creep up to "medium" settings without ruining the fun. In other words, it can hack PS3-grade games if you fiddle about with the settings, but not PS4-grade ones.
Put under pressure for a few minutes, the ZenBook 3 starts giving out an obvious whir as the fans ramp up to deal with the heat, but it's a fairly innocuous noise – not as pervasive as the Lenovo Yoga Book 910. That's the worry with ultra-slim laptops: using fans with tiny diameters can mean they sound like a swarm of wasps.
Asus ZenBook 3 Battery
It seems that to get the ZenBook so thin and so light, Asus had to skimp on the battery. It lasted just 6 hours and 52 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which browses the web continuously over Wi-Fi.
The ultraportable average is 8:22, but the competition endured even longer. The MacBook Pro survived for 8:40, and the XPS 13 ran for 9:11 with a touch screen and a crazy 13:49 with a standard 1080p display. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon kept going for an impressive 12:21.
As noted before, you use the USB-C port to charge the battery, and it’s fairly quick to recharge too. Asus says it will reach 60 percent in 49 minutes.
Should you buy One?
The ZenBook 3 made a lot of promises and it delivers on many of them. Its performance is seriously incredible for such a thin and light laptop, and its gorgeous design and decent speakers make a real case for themselves.But the compromises are notable. Having just one port reduces its flexibility and battery life isn’t quite as long as I’d like.
There are alternatives. The 12-inch MacBook is nearly as light and has a higher build quality, but is much less powerful. The HP Spectre is bigger and nearly 200g heavier, but has a better-quality screen and more ports. If ultra-thinness and light weight aren’t must-haves and you want to spend £1,500, one of the high-end Dell XPS 13s will net you similar performance and better battery life, as will one of the base 13-inch MacBook Pro models.
The Core i7 ZenBook 3 might actually be overkill for many people. £400 less nets you the Core i5 version that’ll still feel sprightly in most office tasks and browsing the web, but you’ll lose performance in tasks such as photo and video editing and the SSD will be much slower. Still, I suspect this will actually be the best-value choice for most people and, although I haven’t tested it, battery life could well be slightly better.
Conclusion
The Asus ZenBook 3 is one of the slimmest, lightest, most like-a-MacBook-but-not-a-MacBook Windows laptops you'll find.
Its highlights, other than its extreme portability, are its strong screen and use of proper laptop processors rather ones that seem designed to run off watch batteries.
Parts of the concept are great, but the practical realities of using the laptop day-to-day are less impressive. The trackpad is the worst part, given its irritatingly spongy feel, while the fingerprint scanner isn't that effective. Add the single port limitation and high price considering what the competition offer and there's room for improvement – despite the striking looks and apparent positives.
If you were looking at dropping $1,700 on the ZenBook 3, that's a deal. But if you're going for style points, the ZenBook 3 Deluxe earns top marks. Whether you're at work, the office or home, someone's going to notice your laptop.
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