Hey how's it going, Dave 2D here, this is the Asus Zenbook S and it's got this interesting feature;
this hinge that lifts the keyboard and it gives it this, what I would consider to be one of the most comfortable keyboards I've used in a laptop recently.
So this device is standard Zenbook quality. It's aluminum all around with this chamfered edge that's bronze or copper depending on how you look at it.
I'd say it's more of a copper but that's just me and it's very well-built, it is a Zenbook flagship,
these are always well-made.
Now this hinge is what makes this laptop special. They're calling "ErgoLift"
and it's not the first time we've ever seen a device do this, like the whole idea of when you open the device it lifts
up, like we've seen other devices do it. We've seen other Asus devices do it. We've seen (Dell) XPS devices do it
It's certainly not new, but these guys do it better than anyone else that I've seen. The idea is to lift up the keyboard
So there's a bit of a tilt,
so it's a more comfortable typing position as well as opening up the bottom
so it's not touching the surface of whatever you're typing on, and the tilt is just right. It's an awesome keyboard experience;
it's a great layout, clean, white backlighting.
The arrow keys are in the proper spot and each keystroke has this nice feel to it on these chiclet (island-style) keys
My only knock on it, is that the Page Up and Page Down stuff?
There's no dedicated buttons for them,
and if you want to use the hotkeys for them up top, they're in a weird spot,
you have to take your fingers off the cursor and push them in the function keys
But still despite that odd Page Up Page Down positioning
It's an awesome
keyboard and it's seriously one of the best keyboards
I've used. If I had to type for a long period of time for like an essay or development or any kind of like
extensive keyboard use, this would probably be my top pick.
The trackpad is also quite good, it's Windows Precision, good tracking and button mechanics. The fingerprint sensor's in the top right corner.
It's not my favorite spot, but overall good trackpad.
The port selection is somewhat limited. There's one USB-C on one side
and then the other side has two Thunderbolt 3's and
one audio jack that's built into the screen component and that's basically it for ports.
The speakers are, well, they actually sound really good, just the speakers themselves, but they're positioned in...
not a great position.
So when you have it just kind of like in a regular laptop position
that ErgoLift makes this almost like an echo chamber underneath the laptop and you can hear the sound just bouncing around
and distorting a little bit. If you just have the speaker's pointing straight up top,
they sound really clean but you're never going to use them like this. And in the regular laptop position, they don't sound as good.
The screen that I have in this model is a 4K panel
It looks really sharp, almost to the point of being too sharp
like I've never really needed a 4K panel on a 13-inch device, but that's what this one has. It's bright, it's color accurate,
it looks good. There is a 1080p option available
which I think is a better choice for most people, but if you're a photo editor or something, they do have the 4k screen and
the webcam's up top in a normal position.
Okay, let's talk about performance. This device can be equipped with some very powerful hardware. We can get the (Intel) 8th gen
4 core CPU and 16 gigs of RAM, you can deck it out pretty heavily and for short bursts, that 8th gen CPU is really good.
But thermally it's not a strong performer and it casts a bit of shade on this whole device for me. Now depending on what you're
using this for, this may or may not affect you
but for me, someone that looked at this as a potential video editing machine, it needs better thermals. At stock settings,
it will power and thermal throttle pretty quickly,
the fans are really quiet, which is easy on the ears, but it just limits what this product can do.
So on XTU (Intel Extreme Tuning Utility), I played around a little bit, cranked up some stuff and it can run boost for longer
but it can't maintain it. I really wish they'd just gone with a more aggressive thermal solution.
I feel like the fans could have been louder,
I feel like the fans could've been bigger or maybe throw in two fans,
The thing is, this thing is so quiet that like, it just- I get what they're going for, right?
It's a business laptop and you, like those people want really quiet devices and they even have like this Quiet Mode
which makes it run essentially silent but throttles even harder
I just wish there was a way to crank up the fans and avoid any kind of thermal limitations
but there isn't and it also says something about the ErgoLift, so
The idea of this ErgoLift was obviously primarily for a more comfortable keyboard experience
but it would have been nice if there was some kind of airflow through that gap
but there isn't, it does raise that hot surface away from your lap
so if you're typing on the keyboard on your lap, it's a little bit more comfortable, but there is no airflow.
Okay inside, we're looking at a battery. that's 50 watt hours.
Not a huge battery, but we're getting around six and a half, seven hours of battery life, which is pretty respectable.
The Wi-Fi card is built on board
(You) can't remove it, same with the RAM, can't remove that, you got to configure it at purchase
The NVMe (SSD) is removable, and the one they're using is fast. They're the PM961 drives from Samsung.
So the Zenbook S is a device, in that premium, Ultrabook market. Obviously, it's not going to be a cheap device;
It starts at eleven hundred dollars ($1100), goes up to like fourteen, fifteen hundred dollars ($1400-$1500)
It's competing with stuff like the (Dell) XPS 13 the Razer Blade Stealth, the LG Gram.
They're all expensive devices and I would consider this one, kind of reasonably priced, considering the hardware that you're getting.
If you're looking for something that's
like, productivity based. If you want a good keyboard and you're using it for school or work or photo editing,
this is a good pickup, this makes sense.
But if you want something that's a little heavier, like video editing or if you want to play games with an external GPU
I would look at something else. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video, Thumbs if you liked it, Subs if you loved it,
See you guys next time. (subtitles by p3rs0nn)