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Hey, how's it going, Dave2D here!
So this is the 2018 ZenBook Pro,
and this is a device that gets updated pretty regularly by Asus,
like every year there's some kind of iterative change to this thing,
but this year in 2018, they brought something that was... well, I think this is
the first true innovative, laptop technology that I've seen in quite a while
So every year we're seeing like things like thinner bezels, better materials lighter materials, thinner laptops, which are cool and everything,
but they don't really change the way that we actually work with our laptops, right?
They're nice upgrades and stuff like that, but THIS, is different
This is a screen that's built into the touchpad,
so you can run it as a screen-pad-thing where you're running basically Asus apps and an Asus interface,
so you can pull it down and you'll see stuff like your calendar, a number pad,
so this keyboard doesnt actually have number pad, but you can use the number pad feature on the bottom thing,
a calculator, and you have your Spotify music player & you have other apps that Asus can develop and put onto this screen pad interface.
Now you can also run as a secondary display, which is actually pretty cool,
so it essentially is a smaller, secondary screen that you can just kind of use to drag-and-drop your programs,
or your Windows folders, or whatever you would use your secondary display for.
Now, Mac (like the Apple Mac books),
they have that touch bar at the top and I said this in my original review,
but the utility of that strip, like the actual functionality of that strip, is pretty limited,
and it's highly dependent on the developer, so you need Adobe or whatever app you're using,
you need those developers to create functionality in that strip for the user,
which is cool, but it's not nearly as functional, or even practical
as something like this screen pad.
So I've only been using this device for a couple of days, and my initial reaction was,
"Wow! That's really cool, like, you know, what can I do with it?"
but then like, the secondary immediate reaction was that,
"Is it really that useful because like your viewing angle on this thing isn't ideal, right?"
like if you're staring at your screen, like you normally would now you have to glance down to look at this secondary screen,
but after using for a little bit, it just- it feels natural.
Not that it's like, a better option than looking straight if there are two screens in front of you (That would be ideal),
but I mean, that's never gonna happen on a laptop anytime soon.
This starts to feel useful after even a couple hours of using it.
If you're loading a premiere you can have like different palettes down there,
If you want to watch videos like Twitch or YouTube, you can pop that window down there,
and it's just in a position where you can kind of keep tabs of whatever's going on on the screen,
without actually having it take the real estate of your regular screen.
It's nice, and you can run whatever application you want in this,
so if you have like a security camera footage or if you're running a remote access program,
like whatever you want, you can just make it work, and that's the thing,
like when I first saw this thing, your brain just goes right to that thing,
like there's just something that you can imagine, something that you can think of, that has utility in this setup.
With that MacBook Pro, it was more like you had to imagine it. You kind of had to think about, you know,
"How could I use this, if the developer did it right?"
This- it's immediate it kind of- it makes sense when you stare at it. So, how's the rest of this device?
It's... well, it's a Zen book. It's built pretty well.
It's not as well built as a good Dell XPS product or a MacBook Pro, but I like it.
The color, it's like this blue. They also have different colors, I imagine,
but the one I'm looking at is this kind of navy blue with copper trim,
and it also has your standard Zen book texture to the metal.
Now, the screen is a 4k panel, 83% screen to body ratio. The color gamut is great,
100% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB. This is supposed to be color calibrated at the factory with Pantone certification.
it's a nice looking screen, it's not super bright though.
It's bright, but it doesn't achieve the same kind of peak brightness as a MacBook Pro
and I keep bringing them up as an example because I mean, this is a very, very good product for content creators
and you can see the similarities in terms of like, product category. So the keyboard feels kind of standard like your Zen Book Pro keyboard,
slightly mushier keys than I would want, but good layout and good keyboard overall.
The port selection is... a little bit weird. So they have Micro SD...
I really wish on a device like this, especially because it's obviously geared towards content creators, that they would include a full-size SD. It's not there.
It's got two USB A's, two Thunderbolt 3's, and an HDMI out.
So to get into the inside, it's like your standard ZenBook thing: Flip it over, remove a bunch of screws.
This one I've removed in advance, seemed to pop it off, here we go.
Okay, so, first thing I noticed was that there's only two heat pipes, and because it's running some pretty powerful hardware,
I was hoping there would be more. Turns out there's a third heat pipe that runs underneath the motherboard,
so on the backside of it, that'll help cool this down. The i9 is a beast,
it's running a GTX 1050ti and the components in here are cooled by two fans that are supposedly upgraded from the previous generation,
so they're supposed to have like, thermoformed plastic and just have better airflow and stuff.
I haven't be able to test it out thoroughly because this is an engineering unit.
I haven't been able to run proper benchmarks, but the preliminary results are good. This thing's not throttling,
but the temperatures are a little warm. Hopefully it does get better before it goes into retail. Again, this is just an engineering sample.
So... the RAM is soldered onto the board. I really don't like that.
On a device like this, I wish you could just kind of upgrade it when you want it.
It only comes out up to 16GB of ram from the factory and it's just baked right onto the board,
so that's not the best thing. The SSD and the Wi-Fi card can be replaced. So the battery's down here,
I haven't really done battery tests on this because, it's just,
there's probably ton of software that's gonna go into the retail version that's not on here yet.
The speakers they're good, and they've always been good.
Zenbook pro speakers have always been one of the better ones on the market,
and... yeah, I feel like this is gonna change the way that some people use their laptops. I love that little screen.
It's useful for a lot of people, it's obviously not for everyone,
but the best part is that the functionality of the touchpad or the trackpad itself- doesn't get reduced,
like it feels exactly the same as a regular trackpad- you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
In fact, if you turn off the screen, it just looks like a black trackpad.
It's got that smooth textured glass with good tracking.
The trackpad is sunken in a little bit more than your average trackpad, but you don't notice that when you're using it.
I don't know, it's really cool to me. What do you guys think? Like do you think you could make use of it?
Obviously you could watch like movies and stuff on this,
but aside from that, like do you guys think you would use something like this if you had access to it on your trackpad?
Like do you find it gimmicky? Do you find legit? I don't know.
Now, in terms of battery life, I don't know how this affects it. Again, I'll have to test this in the future,
but yeah. Kind of like an early look at what I could consider one of the more innovative pieces of tech
I've seen in laptops for this year.
Ok, hope you guys enjoyed this video, thumbs if you liked it, subs you loved it, see you guys next time!
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