The ASUS ZenBook 3 Review: A Convincing Case for Quad Core Thin & Light Laptops
by Brett Howse on November 22, 2017 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- Asus
- Zenbook
- Core 8th Gen
- Kaby Lake Refresh
Display Analysis
ASUS has gone fairly conservative with the display options for the ZenBook 3, as the only display choice as a 1920x1080 14-inch panel. It’s not low resolution by any means, with a 157 pixel-per-inch density, but compared to the UHD offerings, it seems like it is. Still, in a 14-inch laptop, it’s a reasonable resolution, and will hopefully pay dividends when we get to battery life. It’s still great to see a 14-inch panel in a laptop of this size, and the slim bezels help out here.
ASUS has targeted 100% of the sRGB gamut, and we’ll see how they did shortly. By not going with a wider gamut display, they don’t need to deal with the shortcomings of Windows in terms of color management.
The display features a Corning Gorilla Glass 5 cover, which should help prevent damage, but there’s no touch available. There’s also no support for a pen. It would be nice to see a touch option, even if not everyone would use it, but for traditional laptop functions, you can get by with the Precision touchpad.
To test display accuracy and performance, we use SpectraCal’s CalMAN suite, along with an X-Rite i1DisplayPro colorimeter for brightness and contrast measurements, and an X-Rite i1Pro2 spectrophotometer for color accuracy.
Brightness and Contrast
The ZenBook 3 doesn’t offer a very bright display, and would struggle to be used outdoors or in bright sunlight. It does offer great contrast though, coming in near the top of the list in that department. On the bright side, it can get fairly dim, with a minimum brightness of just 13 nits.
Grayscale
Testing the grayscale demonstrates some immediate issues with the display. The gamma is far from the ideal 2.2, and the blue levels creep up with brighter whites, while the reds drop off, resulting in a very cool display. The overall average dE isn’t terrible, but ASUS has never calibrated their laptop displays, and clearly they haven't started with the ZenBook 3.
Gamut
Coming from the grayscale results, it’s not a surprise to see that the blue levels are oversaturated on this display, with the 100% blue values well outside the sRGB range.
Saturation
Our saturation sweeps show that all of the primaries are not quite where they should be, which drag the secondary colors out as well. The overall error level isn’t massive, but on a high cost device, there’s not a great reason to see the lack of any work done on color accuracy.
Gretag Macbeth
The Gretag Macbeth test covers a wide range of colors, and can show errors with colors such as flesh tones, even if the primary and secondary colors are not too bad, and that’s the case here. The overall error level average isn’t terrible, but on a premium device you should expect better.
This image shows the relative color error levels that you’d see on this device, with the displayed color on the top, and the correct color on the bottom. Your own display may impact these results though if it isn’t accurate, which is why this is only a relative difference.
Display Conclusion
ASUS has never been a company that has done any sort of color calibration on their displays, and that is clearly the case here again. On a low-cost device, you can overlook this, but some of the competition at this level does do individual calibration on their devices. If you’re after a notebook just for office tasks, these color errors will only be an annoyance, but if you’re after something to edit video or photography, you should likely look elsewhere.
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mkaibear - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
Er, the Envy x360 is nearly twice the size and twice the weight of this Zenbook. You're not exactly comparing apples with apples there.Thin and light is always expensive.
IGTrading - Thursday, November 23, 2017 - link
Perfectly true.We don't actually need it to be that small.
What I'd prefer is to have a thin 17-incher with 2 M2 SSDs and a HDD, FHD touchscreen and a flippable display (to go into tablet mode)
The fact that the ENVY is 15" helps with our productivity.
mkaibear - Thursday, November 23, 2017 - link
*you* don't need it to be that small, that's fine. Buy a different one!My mum, for example, *does* need a thin and light laptop because of her osteoarthritis, so this would be infinitely better for her than the Envy.
(although she's going for a Mac anyway *rollseyes*)
Anyway, my point is that there are use cases for thin and light, even if it doesn't fit with what you'd want to do.
peevee - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
Yes, slightly thicker with a bigger battery and replaceable everything would be nice.Is battery on this one user-replaceable? If not, it is a 2-year device, and as such is too expensive.
HStewart - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
Ethernet port can be handle by Thunderbolt 3 - of course requiring a dongle or docking station / hubUpgradeable RAM in light notebooks in side of the times in keeping things small. it best to go for max ram as you can get at the time.
poohbear - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
do you really need more than 8gb in a laptop for an ultrabook? I have 16gb on my desktop and it never goes beyond 8gb without gaming. I don't game on ultrabooks, they're purely for work.0iron - Thursday, November 23, 2017 - link
Do you use Chrome with more than 20 tabs? With multiple Excel files, Outlook & occasional Firefox running 8GB RAM will reach its limit easily.anactoraaron - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
I'd rather buy a surface book 2 at this price. Yes it would be a tradeoff with no tb3, but I would gain a 1050 and more battery.kepstin - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
I'm just gonna say, this quote: "On the bright side, it can get fairly dim," is the funniest thing I've read all day.Ryan Smith - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
We aim to please.