Gadgetory

hey how's it going Dave 2d here so Asus makes the Zenbook line they have big ones they have small ones and this is their latest thin and light ultra book it's the s 13 and what makes this device special is the very thin bezels so this device has what I think are the thinnest bezels on an ultrabook like this and they've done it to fit a relatively large screen on a smaller chassis so this is a thirteen point nine inch screen on a chassis that would traditionally only hold a 13-inch screen so it's a bigger screen for a smaller footprint and in doing so they've been forced to make this notch or hump thing at the top of the screen now for most people they're gonna look at this notch or hump and it looks weird right this is not how normal laptops are built so when I first saw this thing in pictures at CES I was like that's weird right I don't if I love this design but having used this for a little while I don't find it that offensive like when you have it closed it serves as a little grip or some kind of tab to lift the screen and it works but it's weird because there's a protrusion on the device and it's just most devices like most laptops don't have protrusions like this but I appreciate what they're trying to do now the reason why they have this protrusion is because they had to house the camera at the top of the screen and they've done it in a way that looks reasonably nice but it is strange to have a protrusion at the top of a laptop screen now the display itself is quite nice it's a 1080p screen color accurate very bright 400 nits it's brighter than a lot of other 1080p screens I've used in the Ultrabook market and because of the hinge it almost hides the bottom bezel completely and gives you a very clean looking visual the port selection is okay there's two you specie one used to be a the you species do not support Thunderbolt 3 which is a bit of a shame there's microSD and a headphone jack there's one thing that I like about the Zenbook which other older Zen books don't have it's the fact that they include a USB C charger all the olders and books have used their barrel plugs which I honestly hate for 2018 and 2019 they finally switched over to a regular use PC like Universal charging and that's pretty nice ok keyboard trackpad it lifts the back of the device they call it ergo left like when you lift it up it's got this tilt some people hate this some people really like it personally I find it enjoyable the tilt it's very slight I know a lot of people like hey you know when you have tilted keyboards it's super and it gives you carpal tunnel it's such a slight tilt it's probably like two three degrees it's very slight and I think for most people they will enjoy it but it's something that you should probably try in a store if you can before you kind of commit to this keyboard but the actual typing experience is good good layout nice and spacious the keystrokes are a little bit softer like the mechanism that they're using to bounce the key back up could be a little bit stiffer but I think most people get used to this really easily now the trackpad has windows precision drivers it's a nice trackpad but they have this option where you can get a illuminated keypad on the trackpad now it looks really cool in pictures and videos but having used it on other devices that they make it's not as useful as you might think so the reason why you would want a number pad in the first place is for speed of numerical inputs right you'd think that by pressing the numbers it'd be easier than using the numbers at the top of the keyboard and in theory it would be the problem is that there's no tactile feedback when you press the numbers on the trackpad and there's a bit of input lag when you press it so it's cool in theory but in its current state at least the last version that I tried it's pretty mediocre it's really cool looking but like I said in the previous video don't purchase this device just for that numerical light-up pad okay performance the CPU on this thing is the 8th gen whiskey lick it turbos a little bit faster than the previous generation but it's still an 8th gen CPU and it's still a 4 core CPU the GPU in here is an MX 150 now this particular unit I believe is running a 25 watt version it clocks pretty fast and the 3dmark scores are in line with a 25 watt version but this is an engineering sample so I'm not sure how the retail units will play out but despite the MX 150 with a pretty powerful CPU there is a relatively large problem on this device and it's the thermals so this device has two fans and when it's idle it's pretty much silent which is great but even when it's running benchmarks it's still very quiet and it shouldn't be because the processor in here both the CPU and the GPU are capable of pushing out a lot of performance and a lot of heat the thing is I ran some fan control on this so I ran some manual fan control software and the fans can get quite loud and when they do thermals are great the problem is in its current state there's no way to control those fans through a ceases software suite they actually don't have any kind of manual fan control and I get it it's a Zen book it's not like a gaming device but it's capable of pushing a decent frame rates in games but because of the thermal situation this is put in it can't now I'm not sure if Asus is doing this because they don't want it to be too loud for the user or they'd want it too complicated to have the users switch between fan profiles and stuff but there are a lot of users I don't know if some of you guys are like you would use something like this you want the device that has an MX 150 and a quad-core CPU that can play games little bit on the side but this is so gimped because of the fans inside there you're also seeing a replaceable nvme but the RAM and the Wi-Fi card are built on board it's a 50 watt hour battery got a little bit less than seven hours of battery life with the screen at 215 it and this is an engineering sample I feel like that the retail version will probably tweak that a little bit better but in its current state a little bit less than seven hours speakers are good they're not amazingly positioned there on the bottom and because of the Ergo lift there's this like chamber of emptiness underneath that this sound kind of reverb a little bit it's reasonably loud but it's not super clean audio now a device like this if you're interested in buying one the pricing I'm not sure yet I'm imagining it's gonna be like around a thousand bucks for bass like that's always the rare of those n bucks the 13 in 14 inches and books kind of start if you're interested in buying this you're probably looking at stuff like the XPS 13 or the Razer Blade stealth and those are all great devices the advantage here is without a doubt the aesthetic like that super thin bezel is something that's quite unique to this but it's hard to recommend one of these over another they're all really good this hump I think most people just kind of get used to it I don't think that this is like it may look strange at first but once you own it I think most people like it looks fine the device on the whole great hardware I just wish there was some kind of software for fan control so that for users who really want that extra kick out of their system that they could get it but in its current form you can't okay hope you guys enjoyed this video thumbs if you liked it subs if you love to see you guys next time you