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
Battery Life
Battery life is something that everyone needs, but is also one of the hardest aspects of a laptop to measure since everyone has different tasks they want to perform. To get consistent results, all devices are set to 200 nits of brightness prior to the test being run. All devices are tested with Edge as the browser.
We have three tests that we are utilizing in our test suite right now. The 2013 Light test is our older web browser test, which is the lightest test, and it opens four web pages per minute. It’s reached a point where it's a bit too light for most devices, but it’s also the one with the most backlog of results to compare against, so it’s nice to test it still. The 2016 Web test is a much more demanding web test, which is the same one we use on our mobile devices. Finally, we test video playback from a local h.264 video file.
The ASUS Zenbook is equipped with just a 46 Wh battery, which is about the same size as the Surface Pro, and on the small size for an Ultrabook. A new XPS 13, for example, is a relatively massive 60 Wh, so expectations are tempered going into our testing.
2013 Light Results
On our 2013 test, the ZenBook 3 did very well. 11.25 hours of battery life out of just 46 Wh is well above expectations. It can’t quite match the FHD version of the Dell XPS 13 we tested (this is the original Broadwell version – Dell will be sending us the latest gen one soon for a more up-to-date result), but it’s still a great result for having a below average capacity battery in an Ultrabook.
2016 Web Results
The more demanding web browsing test does knock some time off the result, but the ZenBook 3 is the longest lasting device we’ve tested with this version of the benchmark. It’s a very impressive result.
Normalized Results
By removing the battery capacity from the equation, we can see how efficient each device is. Here the lower resolution display helps out a lot, but overall, ASUS has done a great job on power management. The ZenBook 3 is one of the most efficient laptops we’ve seen.
Movie Playback
Movie playback is not quite as impressive as the Surface Pro, but still quite strong.
Charge Time
The other side of the mobility equation is charge time. ASUS ships the ZenBook 3 with a 65-Watt USB-C AC Adapter. The wattage of this charger is quite a bit higher than most other Ultrabooks, where 40-Watts or so is much more common. Also, ASUS has added upstream charging to all three of the USB-C ports on the notebook, so you can charge it on whichever one is the most convenient. Not all companies do this, so ASUS needs to be commended here.
The ZenBook 3 charges from dead to full in just a hair over two hours, which is one of the quickest we’ve seen. Looking at the charge graph, it hits 50% charge in just 43 minutes, so the larger charger does help on the quick fill-up.
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tipoo - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
Any idea when these ULV quads will be combined with Iris Plus, which is presumably what Apple would be waiting on?KPOM - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
Unfortunately there may not be sufficient space in the 15W wrapper to permit better integrated graphics. New MacBook Pros aren’t likely to come out until next spring, anyway.poohbear - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
I'm still loving my 4xxx gen Zenbook, aside from having to replace the keyboard, it's been kicking around for nearly 4 years now with no probs. Solid line of laptops and very sleek. Will definitely look @ the 9xxx Zenbook for my next upgrade! Really want to see what 10nm brings to the table!cyborgu - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
Do the Thunderbolt 3 ports provide 2 PCIe lanes or 4? I was very disappointed to find out that my XPS 13 only has 2 lanes available for an external GPU.serendip - Wednesday, November 22, 2017 - link
17 fps on a Cherry Trail Atom which is exactly what I got too, on a Teclast X98. I was wondering why QuickSync was so slow on an Atom when it's just the Atom that's slow.I'm surprised about the Zenbook's overall efficiency though. It's comparable to a Core M device while having double the performance. I wonder how much of this is down to the CPU, given the screen is a large hi-res unit and the battery is rather small.
speculatrix - Saturday, November 25, 2017 - link
Can you boot Linux at all, and if so, are all devices recognized?Thanks
MatthiasP - Sunday, November 26, 2017 - link
Asus made an almost perfect thin and light laptop and then put a dark and glossy display in. WOW.Qiou87 - Monday, November 27, 2017 - link
I've had the chance to work with a UX390 and now on a XPS13 (with 8th gen i5). Both are impressive machines. I do appreciate the long battery life of the XPS13, I get well over a day of work out of the battery, closer to two, and the more versatile connectivity (USB-A is still king today and for the next couple years at least). It's also nice to be able to forget your power supply and not care.One thing that would put me off this UX490 but is not mentioned in this review: this seems to be a non-mate display. Quite baffling since this is no touch screen. Try using one of those on the train, or a plane sitting next to the window, especially with the low maximum brightness. Mate displays are just more usable, I feel, if you don't use touch. With a mate display you can lower the screen brightness and get that much more battery life...
Manch - Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - link
I didnt like the glosdy screen on my ASUS ux501 so Iut a matte screen protector on it. Works greatManch - Tuesday, December 5, 2017 - link
I put