Asus’ latest ZenBook Flip S is all about the screen

 OLED panels — which made a name for themselves in excessive-give up TVs but are growing extra famous in laptops as nicely — can deliver a beautiful photo as compared to IPS liquid crystal display displays. But all the ones pixels suck up a heck of plenty of battery, and businesses occasionally slap them on laptops that could’t completely fill their electricity wishes. That’s especially true in skinny-and-mild thirteen-inch machines, which might be operating with actually restrained area for a battery. And it’s how you end up with releases like the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, a splendid OLED tool that could’t make it five hours on one price.

The ZenBook flip (that you need to have the ability to shop for sometime this month) isn’t pretty that terrible. It has a larger battery than the Galaxy and lasts simply long sufficient that lifestyles span isn’t a disqualifying thing. In the long run, although, you’re nonetheless compromising on battery lifestyles for this screen nice — OLED laptops of this length are unusual for a motive.

So, first of all the display: it’s a stunner. There’s no glare, notwithstanding its sleek texture, so work in vibrant settings isn’t a hassle. Pics have been colourful, blacks had been deep, and colours were vivid — it makes MacBook pro monitors look reasonably-priced. In testing, the ZenBook included one hundred percent of the sRGB gamut and a hundred percentage of the Adobe RGB gamut, and it reached 452 nits at most brightness. That’s brighter than the OLED Spectre x360 and greater accurate than a number of the satisfactory author-centered OLED laptops like the Gigabyte Aero 15.

OUR review OFASUS ZENBOOK flip S (2020)

VERGE rating

8OUT OF 10

Properly STUFF

Fine design and build

Stunning 4K OLED display

Truely appropriate audio system

LED numpad built into the touchpad

Horrific STUFF

Not-remarkable battery existence

No headphone jack

CPU doesn’t attain its capacity

It isn’t hard to find 4K OLED displays in large laptops — it’s the display exceptional blended with a compact convertible build that make the ZenBook turn S such an bold device. It’s simply 2.Sixty five pounds (1.2kg) and 0.Fifty five inches (13.9mm) thick. Design-clever, it’s a international away from the remaining foremost ZenBook flip release, the UX370 (this model is the UX371) — Asus has delivered the line into the modern-day generation with sharper corners, smaller bezels (3.9mm on the sides), a robust construct, and clean top rate end. You may now not even be aware the copper accents or the modest keyboard backlighting until you’re seeking out them, however they round out a completely quality professional look.

One element to word is that the lid is a fingerprint magnet. Many models acquire a smudge right here and there, however this aspect was protected in fingerprints about eight hours once I first opened it. Fingerprints are smooth enough to put off, but it turned into a bummer to peer on such a pleasing-looking device nonetheless.

The Asus Zenbook flip S half of open from the left side.

The chassis and lid are fabricated from aluminum alloy.

Like different ZenBooks, this one has a fold-under hinge that may lift the keyboard deck barely off your table. In contrast to some hinges with this design, this one could be very moderate — I didn’t experience it digging into my legs while using the tool on my lap. Asus says the hinge is “durability tested” for over 20,000 open / close cycles, and it feels strong sufficient.

Shape transitions weren’t constantly seamless, though. The ZenBook on occasion tried to exchange to tablet mode whilst i used to be tilting it barely to the facet (inside the pc position). Once I’d tilt it back upright, my home windows wouldn’t all snap back to the same positions I’d had them in before.

Every now and then, the display additionally didn’t switch out of pill mode after I swiveled it from the pill to the laptop role, and i’d need to redo the transition. That is an difficulty you’ll every so often have with home windows 2-in-1s — it’s no longer unique to the turn — however it could be a headache however.

Somewhere else, Asus has brought an area-to-facet keyboard and squeezed an extra column of keys onto the proper aspect that consists of home, web page Up, web page Down, and end. (HP’s Spectres and Envys have a comparable row). The keyboard is an absolute highlight for me — it is comfy and quiet with a ton of journey, and i make substantially fewer errors typing on it than I commonly do. That stated, i've very small fingers, and parents with larger palms from time to time discover this kind of layout a bit cramped.

The Asus Zenbook flip S closed from the proper facet.

Every Thunderbolt four helps up to 40Gbps facts bandwidth.

Like other contemporary ZenBooks, the turn S comes with Asus’ NumberPad 2.Zero. When you faucet a tiny icon in the top proper corner of the touchpad, an LED touch-primarily based numpad pops up. (Swiping down from the pinnacle left nook additionally brings up the calculator app, which is handy.) The numpad works sincerely nicely, and you may also use the touchpad to navigate and click on round while it’s up — the ZenBook never mistook my swipes for range inputs or vice versa. It’s worth noting that the touchpad isn’t quite as comfy of a vicinity for facts entry paintings because the right facet of the keyboard, however it’s nonetheless the nearest aspect you’ll get to a numpad on a laptop of this size.

The port selection is high-quality, besides that there’s no headphone jack. Asus says it eliminated that within the call of thinness, and the flip does deliver with a dongle. But lots of the ZenBook’s competitors (together with the OLED Spectre x360, which is handiest a tiny bit thicker) had been able to squeeze one in. It’s also missing a microSD slot, which the Spectre also has. Other than that, there’s an HDMI port,  Thunderbolt four USB-C ports, and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 type-A. The laptop also supports wi-fi 6 and Bluetooth five.Zero — no LTE.

So all in all, a pleasant show in a pleasing form issue. What’s the capture? It’s battery lifestyles. The ZenBook turn S comes with a 67Wh battery, that's big for a 13-incher — and i’m no longer positive it'd be usable with a far smaller tank. With my regular office workflow and brightness round two hundred nits, I were given simply five hours and 15 minutes. Certain, you’ll likely get a better result in case you set the display to 1080p — however in case you’re going to be doing that often, shop your money and get a 1080p display.

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