ASUS had a few other new laptops on show at CES 2019 outside of their gaming lineup, including
the new powerful StudioBook S, ultraportable ZenBook S13 and new VivoBook 15, let’s find
out what these new models have to offer.
Let’s start with the ASUS StudioBook S, a new workstation laptop announced at CES
2019 being marketed as an ultra portable powerful machine for creatives. It’s got a dark grey
and black design, with a grooved texture on the lid.
You can get it with either a regular i7-8750H CPU, or if you need a bit more power it’s
also available with a Xeon CPU. It’s got Nvidia Quadro P3200 graphics and supports
up to 64GB of ECC memory, so yeah we’re definitely not looking at gaming machines
here.
The 17 inch screen has a 1920 by 1200 resolution, so a 16:10 aspect ratio which is more commonly
found in this sort of machine. It’s still got nice 5.3mm thin bezels giving it a 84%
screen to body ratio, along with an impressive 97% DCI-P3 coverage.
ASUS also had the internals of the StudioBook S on display and the cooling didn’t look
too bad, 6 heatpipes, two fans and four exhausts. ASUS say that it’s less than 35 decibels
with the fans at max speed, so it would be interesting to see what temperatures we get
under heavy load as that’s fairly quiet. We can also see there are two M.2 slots on
the motherboard, both are Nvme gen 3 x4 allowing up to 4TB of storage in RAID 0 or 1.
Despite these specs it’s still fairly thin at just 1.84cm, making it one of the thinnest
laptops with Quadro graphics, and it weighs in at around 2.4kg.
For the I/O on the left there’s a kensington lock, power input for the 180 watt brick to
charge the 3 cell 57wh battery, USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 support, HDMI 2.0
output, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port, 3.5mm audio combo jack, and UHS-II SD card reader.
The right is pretty empty by design, with just two USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports. The majority
of people are right handed, so while using a mouse you’ll be much less likely to have
cables getting in the way, sorry lefties.
Nothing really going on around the back, just some air exhausts.
The keyboard has white backlighting and it seemed alright to type with in my brief test.
It’s got some privacy shortcut buttons to let you lock the machine incase Windows key
and L is two too many, or disable the camera or microphone.
The speakers are up the back under the screen, and there’s a fingerprint scanner over on
the left. The touchpad has a button allowing you to convert it over to a numpad, but if
you drag your finger around as if still using the touchpad you can still use the mouse rather
than it being just touch pad only.
There were also a few ZenBooks on display, of most interest I thought was the ZenBook
S13. The 13.9” 1080p screen on this one just looks amazing, it’s got a 400 nit brightness
and 100% sRGB color gamut. It’s got 2.5mm thin bezels on all sides, even down the bottom
which is usually not the case. This gives it a massive 97% screen to body ratio, in
order to achieve this there’s actually a bump in the center up the top so that the
720p camera can still fit. This wasn’t bad, in fact it actually made opening the lid a
little easier as it was just a little larger than the usual lip that’s already there
for you to get your finger under.
The ZenBook S13 is available with up to Nvidia MX150 graphics and Intel Whiskey Lake i7-8565U
CPU, so the same specs that the recent Razer Blade Stealth I reviewed had. The CPU is actually
quite powerful for a U series chip based on my own testing, and the Nvidia MX150 graphics
are only really acceptable for light gaming with less demanding games, but most likely
will be of more use to those using it for design work or other tasks that can benefit
from GPU acceleration.
It can also take up to 16GB of memory and a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD, so fairly decent specs
for something in such a thin and light form factor, it’s just 1.29cm thin and weighs
around 1.1kg. It’s made out of a solid CNC milled piece of aluminium, and they actually
had the different stages on display which was pretty cool to see, it gives you an idea
of how it’s made from a solid block of metal.
In terms of I/O the ZenBook S13 has a 3.5mm audio jack and is just able to fit a USB 3.1
Gen 2 Type-A port on the right, while the left has two USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C ports which
support fast charging for the 3 cell 50wh battery and also offers display connectivity,
and finally a micro USB slot. With the lid open it pushes the laptop up off the flat
surface by 4 degrees, giving some subtle keyboard elevation but also improving cooling as more
air can now get to the fan underneath.
The new VivoBook 15 X512 was also on display, available in a few different colours, they
had red and blue here. I’ve tested an older Vivobook but didn’t get to the model before
this one, but they’re generally a pretty good series in terms of value for those that
don’t need high end specs. This one here has the i7-8565U CPU again but up to Nvidia
MX130 graphics, 16GB of memory, up to 256GB M.2 SSD and 2TB 2.5” hard drive with a 15.6
inch 1080p screen.
For I/O on the left we’ve got two USB Type-A ports and status LEDs, while the right has
a micro USB slot, 3.5mm audio output, USB Type-C port, no thunderbolt support though,
HDMI 2.0 output, USB Type-A port and the power input. Like the ZenBook the bottom of the
screen rises the laptop up a bit to help improve cooling by increasing airflow.
Otherwise the X512 just has a 2 cell 37 watt hour battery, so it seems more like a general
purpose laptop which would be fine for most people that don’t need powerful hardware.
This is my 13th and final video on the laptops and PC hardware I saw at CES 2019 in Las Vegas,
so let me know what you thought and if you’d be interested in these sorts of videos at
future events, as well as any suggestions or other things you’d like me to talk about,
but for now we’ll be getting back into some regularly scheduled videos, so if you’re
new here get subscribed for those.