Gadgetory

hey how's it going guys this is Dave - Dee and this is a review of the Asus Zenbook 3 now I feel like this laptop is kind of in a class of its own it's similar in size to something like the 12-inch MacBook but it's got a much more powerful processor than the MacBook does and then if you take something that has a similar processor like the Razer Blade stealth these n book 3 is just so much more compact in comparison it's similar but quite different from both of these but throughout this video I'm going to be referencing the MacBook just because it has the most similarities in terms of ergonomics and design to the Zenbook 3 now it starts at $1,100 for the base model but the unit have here is $1600 spec wise you're getting a lot more power under the hood than the MacBook so it has a full aluminum build with that brushed radial pattern up top it's got three colors this dark blue a silver and a pink they all have this gold trim I don't mind the trim actually like it and personally I also like the blue but I think there's a lot of people that would want something more subtle like a black or a great and there isn't that option but dbrand has skins that you can use to give us a more stealthier look the bottom panel comes off easily but when you're in there the only thing you can upgrade is the drive the 512 gig stock drive in this model is a PCIe stick from Toshiba and has great performance the battery down here is 40 watt hours now Asus claims up to nine hours I was getting just short of six hours with normal use screen at 215 it's it supports fast charging so you can juice it up to 60% battery life in 50 minutes in terms of the build quality it feels very rigid the screen is rock-solid the chassis is also very good the hinge is great one-hand openal and it doesn't flop open or close I think Asus nailed the build it's still not as good as a 12-inch MacBook I still like this is like the gold standard of build quality but the Zenbook 3 is pretty darn close it's very limited on ports it has an audio jack on one side and a USB 3.1 type-c on the other side there's no Thunderbolt 3 support but the good news is that Asus includes an adapter the display is a 12.5 inch 1080p panel covered in Gorilla Glass 4 it's glossy but it's not a touchscreen it measures in with really good color accuracy and con but it could be a little brighter compared to the 12-inch MacBook yes this is a lower resolution screen but at regular viewing distances you can't really tell the difference that easily it is a better screen on the MacBook but not by that much now the webcam on this thing is pretty terrible it's just as bad as a potato on the MacBook I don't why they did this the keyboard is backlit and typing feels okay it has 0.8 millimeters of travel so it's not as tactile as I'd like it but it's spacious and for the most part I think it's a decent keyboard and most people will get used to it quickly the spacebar feels a little spongy than the rest of the keys but it's not a big deal the trackpad is pretty good it has a smooth glass surface even though it feels a little plasticky tracking is smooth and pretty accurate the buttons however don't feel great it feels kind of dainty and there's not much travel when you click so it's not a very satisfying action there's a fingerprint sensor up here and it works with Windows hello so you can log into Windows using just your fingerprint pretty quickly the Zenbook three has four speakers there's two up here and then there's two on the bottom they have Harman Kardon branding and they sound better than expected now I think the king of Ultrabook speakers is the 12-inch MacBook if you've seen my review of it or you've heard it in real life it just sounds so much better than you think it would considering how small the laptop is the Zenbook doesn't sound as good it's not as clean and this distortion at higher volumes but they're still really solid this unit here is running on i7 KB Lake 6700 U and three big benefits of Kb Lake over skylake first it's more energy efficient second it's got Hardware encoding and decoding of certain video codecs and the third thing it's got a slightly faster clock speed and in terms of lightweight gaming the HD 620 will let you play stuff like csgo at low settings with good frame rates but even moderately demanding games run pretty poorly so overwatch will run at around 45 frames per second at the lowest possible settings and resolution it only has a single fan and fan noise isn't loud but it's audible when it comes on and it's on pretty regularly even when you're doing light tasks under load the fan noise is also relatively quiet for a core i7 but because it only has one fan it gets pretty hot on the inside and because of those high temperatures there is significant CPU throttling the average user won't care about this at all they won't even notice it like if you just do regular tasks on your laptop you literally won't notice it but if you want to render videos or play heavy games this isn't the machine for you but that's the problem of having an i5 or an i7 in something this thin it's hard to cool it properly unless you throttle down the CPU okay so with the Zenbook three you're getting excellent build quality this is one of the best made asus devices i've used to date the 1080p display is not a touchscreen but it's color accurate and it looks pretty nice the backlit keyboard is comfortable to use for its size the trackpad has a fingerprint sensor and has great tracking but the clicks feel shallow the speaker system is surprisingly good for the size of the laptop inside the cable a core i7 and the integrated graphics have good energy efficiency but there is noticeable throttling when you push it hard the 16 gigs of ram is soldered on but the solid-state drive is upgradable and then there's a 40 watt hour battery that will last you around six hours of battery life as for who this laptop is for you want to make sure that you're buying it for the right reasons because this is not a cheap device if you're university student or you want to use it for work and you want some of the thin enlightens just a Productivity Beast this is a really good option it's well it is what it is but if you're looking for something that you can just run the CPU full-tilt all the time like you want to play games on it for whatever reason no this is not that device get someone that's a little more appropriate but if you're looking for well a Productivity machine this is a good one thumbs if you like this video subs if you loved it it's been nice I'll see you guys next time you