The Asus ZenBook 13 Ultra-Slim features a striking balance between price, size, and power thanks to the 10th Gen Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce MX250, and Windows 10 Pro. Its heavy-build features offer ease to your mind and wallet. On the inside, the configuration comes at a lower price as compared to Dell and Apple. A wide port selection, a touchpad that can be turned into a full-color touch screen, and Asus’s ScreenPad; all set in a small laptop.
Moreover, under Intel’s new Evo initiative, Intel chips enhance their performance and offer longer battery life. Plus, you also get an incredibly slim, beautiful, lightweight, and durable chassis. However, its glossy body bears fingerprints’ stains, and it isn’t easy to keep clean of fingerprints. Moreover, the keyboard it comes with does not deliver the best typing experience. Simply putting, the model at a glance is hard to ignore owing to impressive performance and good battery life if you are looking for a travel-friendly laptop for business and school.
The following section will throw light on its design, performance, specification, and pros and cons.
Design:
As far as the design of our model is concerned, the most noticeable characteristic is its size. The very size makes it smaller than the Acer Swift 5 as well as the Apple MacBook Air. Though some models like the Dell XPS 13 have smaller sizes, the mode we are reviewing is still very portable.
• Chassis:
As has already been said, this powerful machine has a slim, lightweight, and portable chassis. Unfortunately, the glossy lid is impossible to keep clean from fingerprints. Except for a reflective gold Asus logo in the center, the laptop’s whole body is either in a silver finish or navy blue color. Opening the lid exposes the decorated interior, for the screen and the larger-than-usual touchpad pulling attention. Though, some additional Asus branding is added by a gold stripe along the top of the keyboard.
• Display:
The display, which is a 13.3-inch FHD LED display, veers off the dimmer side if compared with its ultraportable rivals. In low light, viewing horizontal angles is generous, but viewing vertical angles is drastically reduced in normal light conditions. Even with this a little dim screen, it does not prevent following the action is something is watched on it. However, it lacks far behind its competitors like the Dell XPS 13, the Acer Swift 5, and the MacBook Air in color and brightness. Moreover, on the color gamut, it excels the Acer Swift 3 but is not enough to cop up with the MacBook Air and the Envy 13. Unfortunately, this powerful laptop is not as bright as it would have been.
• Keyboard:
It comes with a full-size chiclet keyboard, which is convenient and comfortable. Also, The keyboard also features brightness keys, the dedicated media, and a built-in toggle to switch the space below it between ScreenPad modes and standard touchpad. A noticeable travel distance gives a comfortable feel and robust feedback on each press.
• Touchpad:
Due to Asus Screenpad technology, the 5.7*2-inch touchpad is a color LED screen. That means it lets you run numerous simple apps, from controlling music to adding easy-access toolbars to your favorite productivity apps. In addition to this, the Spotify app makes you control music entirely on the touchpad, letting the screen space free for actual work. These productivity apps seem more tedious than useful and helpful. Moreover, it can be turned into an LED screen with a max resolution of 2160*1080 that lets you play YouTube videos on the Screenpad without disturbing the main screen.
On the other hand, its touchpad is as active and responsive as any other touchpad, if it is used traditionally. Except that, the extra space helps you move the cursor quickly. But sometimes, it seems gimmicky.
• Port Selection:
We find a wide range of port selection in our model. On the left side, it offers a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, an HDMI port, and the power adapter connection. While on the right side, it is the house of a USB 2.0 connection, a 3.5mm combination microphone and headphone jack, and a microSD card reader.
Specifications:
Although the design, including display, keyboard, touchpad, and port selection, has been discussed in the above section, a summary of further specifications and technical detail is as follows:
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Performance:
Since the Asus ZenBook 13, Ultra-Slim is armed with a 10th Gen Intel Core i7, NVIDIA GeForce GPU, 16 GB RAM, and 512 GB of SSD. It impresses with its impressive performance. This power is enough to use it for multipurpose without any noticeable delay. However, it disappointingly could not beat the Dell XPS 13 and the Acer Swift 13 on the Geekbench 5.0 since the latter two run the older and weaker Intel Core i7-1065G7. Still, our model did surpass the Apple MacBook Air.
Our review model performs well in the Handbrake video-editing test, slightly lagging behind the Acer Swift and beating the MacBook Air with a considerable margin. If we talk about file transfer tests, this business-friendly laptop tops its class. Due to its discrete NVIDIA GeForce GPU, it has an advantage over its competitors. This student friendly laptop possesses enough power to deal with day-to-day computing tasks without the sweat.
• Battery life:
Battery life is one of the most vital areas of this laptop. For example, its battery lasted for almost 14 hours on the Laptop Mag Battery Test. That timing is much better than the average shown by the premium laptops. Our model leaves behind the Envy in its battery life and the Swift 3 and the MacBook Air.