[PC-LAPTOP][TECH] Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA Review & Specs

Review

It’s been a while since Asus actually released completely new ultraportables. Their Skylake models to date were actually upgrades of Broadwell and even Haswell chassis, but that’s going to change in the second part of 2016 with the newly announced Zenbook 3 and the Transformer 3 series.

The Zenbook 3 is a thin and light clamshell ultraportable with a 12.5-inch screen and Intel Skylake Kabylake Core i5 and i7 hardware inside. It weighs around 910 grams and is a competitor for the Apple Macbook, Samsung ATIV Book and the HP Spectre 13, some of the sleekest and lightest laptops available these days.

It was initially unveiled at Computex 2016,alongside the Transformer 3 series which we covered in another post, and will be available in stores later this year, starting at $999.

Design and Features

       The ZenBook 3 $1,099.00 at Amazon is available in two colors: a traditional grayish silver, and an avant-garde blue with gold accents (as on our review unit). The aluminum body feels just as sturdy as those on thicker laptops like the Editors' Choice ultraportable Dell XPS 13 Touch$1,449.99 at Dell, and is more substantial than on some competitors like the LG gram-14Z950.

Display

When I watched trailers for Rogue One and Doctor Strange, fine details like the freckles on Felicity Jones' face or the sparks in a magic ring really stood out, even more than they do on most 1080p monitors. Colors like the yellow in a magician's cloak, the green lights on a wall in the rebel's battle room and the orange on an X-wing pilot's uniform seemed true to life, though not overly rich.

The increased detail is due to Asus' True2Life technology, which is designed to increase the sharpness and contrast of videos, while reducing motion blur. After I disabled True2Life, using the bundled Asus Splendid software, the same trailers just weren't as sharp. The same utility also allowed me to control the color temperature, switching among Normal, Eye Care, Vivid and Manual modes. Hitting Vivid made colors, especially greens and reds, just a little bit more lively. Using Eye Care mode eliminated a lot of the blue light coming out of the screen. 

According to our colorimeter, the ZenBook 3's display can reproduce a very strong 111 percent of the sRGB color gamut. That's comfortably ahead of the 96 percent ultraportable notebook category and the quite-respectable 93.6 percent rate of the Dell XPS 13 (with 1080p screen). TheRazer Blade Stealth's QHD screen hit 115 percent, while the MacBook (107 percent) and HP Spectre (100 percent) were close behind.

Asus' laptop is also very color-accurate, registering a Delta-E score of 1.08 (0 is perfect), which is better than the category average (2.1) and about on par with the MacBook (1) and the Razer Blade Stealth (0.97). The XPS 13 (0.76) is a bit more accurate.

The ZenBook 3's panel is fairly bright, hitting 309 nits on our light meter, which is just above the 301-nit category average and the score of the Dell XPS 13 with 1080p screen (302 nits). However, competitors such as the MacBook (327 nits), HP Spectre (359 nits) and Razor Blade Stealth (319 nits) were a bit more luminous. While colors remained, the screen's glossy surface made the picture fade a bit at viewing angles wider than 60 degrees to the left or right.

Specs

CPU	Intel Core i7-7500U
Operating System
RAM	16GB
RAM Upgradable to	16GB
Hard Drive Size	512GB
Hard Drive Speed
Hard Drive Type	PCIe SSD
Secondary Hard Drive Size
Secondary Hard Drive Speed
Secondary Hard Drive Type
Display Size	12.5
Native Resolution	1920x1080
Optical Drive
Optical Drive Speed
Graphics Card	Intel HD Graphics 620
Video Memory
Wi-Fi	802.11 b/g/n/ac
Wi-Fi Model	Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 4.0
Mobile Broadband
Touchpad Size	4.1 x 2.4
Ports (excluding USB)	Thunderbolt 3
USB Ports	2
Card Slots	SD memory reader
Warranty/Support	one year standard warranty
Size	11.65 x 7.3 x 0.47 inches
Weight	2 pounds
Company Website	www.asus.com

Performance

The ZenBook 3 is the first system we've tested equipped with a processor from Intel's 7th Generation Core ("Kaby Lake") family: a Core i7-7500U with integrated Intel HD Graphics 620. This combo leads to a class-leading score of 3,228 on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional test, which measures a PC's prowess with day-to-day tasks like document editing, Web browsing, and video conferencing. It also helps the ZenBook 3 outperform systems like the Apple MacBook, Dell XPS 13 Touch, and HP Spectre 13 at the Handbrake (2:13) and CineBench (332) tests, while remaining competitive, though a few seconds behind the average time among the high-end ultraportables at the Adobe Photoshop test (4:48) 3D performance is passable, which is to say that you'll probably be able to play Minecraft and probably even Diablo III at low quality settings, but don't expect to boot up Grand Theft Auto V or the new Doom. The Core i7 version of the Dell XPS 13 Touch (Gold Edition) $1,749.99 at Dell was the best 3D performer in the ultraportable category, though you shouldn't play Doom on that, either.

Battery Life

Battery life, on the other hand, is spectacular. The ZenBook 3 was able to last 12 hours, 7 minutes, on our rundown test. Our test measures video playback, which is one of the major targets of optimization in the latest Core processors. The system outlasted the MacBook Pro (11:10) and 12-inch MacBook (11:37), our former champs. That's surprising for such a compact system. Like the MacBook, the ZenBook 3 uses a group of separate flat battery packs shaped to fit inside the contours of the laptop case. These give the system the stamina to outlast other Windows laptops like the XPS 13 Touch (9:02), HP Spectre 13 (8:36), and the Razer Blade Stealth (6:25).

With the ZenBook 3, Asus has shrunk the Core i7 laptop to amazingly slender proportions—only the HP Spectre 13 is thinner. Though the ZenBook 3 costs a few hundred dollars more than the Spectre, it bests it on every spec and performance measure, except for port selection. It's certainly faster and more comfortable to type on than the Apple MacBook, and it lasts longer on a battery charge, though the MacBook has a higher-resolution screen. The Dell XPS 13 Touch is a different animal, as it has a closer price, a much higher-resolution touch screen, and better connectivity (two USB 3.0 ports, a USB-C port with Thunderbolt, and an SD card reader), but a lower-performing processor, less storage, and less memory. The Gold edition of the XPS 13 Touch carries a $150 price premium over the ZenBook 3, but the former's Core i7 processor and integrated graphics are the only improvements over the silver model. The ZenBook 3 meets or exceeds our expectations for premium ultraportables: speed, endurance, thinness, light weight, advanced technology, a beautiful screen, comfortable typing, visual presence/aesthetics, and build quality. That's plenty of reason to award the ZenBook 3 our latest Editors' Choice for premium ultraportable laptops.

Price

Now, one final aspect to mention here is the pricing policy. From the little we know right now, the Zenbook 3 UX390 is scheduled for the second part of 2016 (Q3 2016) and will be available in three configurations:

·        Core i5-6200U processor, 4 GB of DDR3 1866 MHz RAM, 256 GB M.2 SATA SSD – $999;

·        Core i7-6500U processor, 16 GB of DDR3 2133 MHz RAM, 512 GB M.2 NVMe SSD – $1499;

·        Core i7-6500U processor, 16 GB of DDR3 2133 MHz RAM, 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD – $1999.

The entry level configuration is fairly affordable, considering how sleek this laptop actually is, at $999. However, it only gets 4 GB of RAM, which is non-upgradable.