ASUS Unveils Zenfone 2 Deluxe & Zenfone 2 Laser

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It’s rather a quiet week for ASUS because they introduced most of their Zenfones that already has a pretty strong lineup. The ASUS Zenfone 2 Deluxe is a buff up version of the Zenfone 2 from earlier this year while the Zenfone 2 laser is a version of the 5-inch model that will come with a better camera performance. Apparently, the Zenfone 2 Deluxe stands out with its curious “premium-crafted polygonal design” that looks like Oppo R1X, but it features 500+ triangles joined together for a “crystal miracle.”

Other than that, the Zenfone 2 Deluxe is still a dual-SIM phone with 5.5-inch with a 1080p screen (Gorilla Glass 3 on top) and is powered by the same Intel Atom chipsets of Z3560 and Z3580. However, this time both feature 4GB RAM which previously the older model had paired the Z3560 with 3GB RAM. The company also add another improvement on its base storage which has 64 GB and 128 GB variants then you are still able to add another 128 GB with a microSD card. Unfortunately, the device camera will remain the same but for video capture might be jack up to 1080p.

The ASUS Zenfone 2 Laser in the other hand, it features a 5-inch with a 720p screen (Gorilla Glass 3 on top) that is more compact than its 5.5-inch siblings. But, the device unlike the predecessor that is using Intel Atom processors because the device is powered by
Qualcomm
Snapdragon
410

with 2 GB of RAM and 8 GB or 16 GB of storage but still able to expandable. Now the camera has 13 MP which upgrade from 8 MP, and it’s able to extend up to 52 MP with Super Resolution mode. The name appears to show us there will be laser autofocus on the main camera which has a f/2.0 aperture while the 5MP that been upgrade from 2 MP and it has a wide-angle 85-degree lens with f/2.0 aperture. ASUS claim the laser autofocus system promises focus locks in 0.3s and works even for macros.

The price and availability for these devices will unveil soon when we get the latest news from ASUS, stay tuned for further updates.

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ASUS unveils ZenPad 3 8.0 with a 2K display and Snapdragon 650 processor

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Even though ASUS announced a new range of smartphones and notebooks in Computex this year, the company still isn’t giving up on tablets just yet as it has introduced the ZenPad 3 8.0, unlike its predecessor the ZenPad 3 comes with a very much improved hardware configuration, it is powered by a Snapdragon 650 Hexa-Core SoC clocked at 1.8GHz and comes in 2GB/4GB RAM or 16GB/32GB built-in memory configurations, otherwise the ZenPad 3 8.0 has a 7.9-inch IPS LED QXGA (2048×1536) display with ASUS Tru2Life+ display technology, an 8-megapixel main and 2-megapixel front camera, dual stereo DTS HD speakers, a 4650mAh battery that delivers up to 11 hours of usage, a USB Type-C port, and 4G LTE support.

This is technically the first ASUS tablet that comes with a 4:3 aspect ratio display, it measures 7.57mm thin and weighs 320g, which is considerably lightweight for a 7.9-inch tablet. Other than that, it features an adonized finish frame and a leather patterned back that feels more premium than the last generation ZenPad. The ZenPad 3 8.0 will come preloaded with ZenUI 3.0 based on Android 6.0, ASUS is set to make the local announcement of its ZenFone 3 soon so let’s hope the company could spill some news on when this great tablet will reach our shores.

SOURCE:
ASUS

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ASUS updates selected ZenFone 3 models to Android Oreo

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ASUS has a good track record of updating their smartphones to the latest Android version. If you are still rocking a ZenFone 3 Laser (ZC551KL), ZenFone 3 Deluxe (ZS550KL) or ZenFone 3 Zoom, get ready to hit that “Check for Update” button as your phone is about to receive an upgrade to Android Oreo, though ZenUI 5 won’t come together with the update, you should notice performance improvements after the update all, this should also be the final OS upgrade exercise to the ZenFone 3 series as they have been around for two years.

As for the standard ZenFone 3 (ZE552KL) and ZenFone 3 Ultra, ASUS hasn’t announce plans for Android Oreo but we believe it should be in the works, since these devices are still more than capable to run the OS. The update exercise will begin this week onwards starting with the ZenFone 3 Deluxe, while the ZenFone 3 Laser and ZenFone 3 Zoom will only be updated by the end of March. The Android Oreo update will delivered via OTA, hence there isn’t any complicated flashing procedures required, but you might want to back up your files to avoid any unfortunate incidents.

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ASUS upgrades TUF Gaming FX504 Gaming Laptop with GTX 1060 and 120Hz display

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It wasn’t too long when ASUS introduced the mid-range TUF Gaming FX504 gaming laptop to the Malaysian market, and here in COMPUTEX 2018, the company has given this machine a value and performance boost with a GTX 1060 and a wide color gamut 120Hz display, this allow gamers to run demanding AAA titles and enjoy smooth refresh rates on MOBA titles, the laptop continues to be powered by the 6-Core Intel Core i7-8750H processor, which offers improved performance and better power efficiency over its predecessor.

The TUF Gaming FX504 is the successor to the widely popular FX503, it is the first gaming laptop from ASUS to be marketed out of the ROG family, and rebranded under the TUF Gaming brand to signify the reliability and toughness of the product. To meet the company’s TUF standards, the TUF Gaming FX504’s keyboard has been tested rigorously to withstand up to 50 million keystrokes, and it features a patented Anti-Dust cooling feature that keeps dust out of its internals for a consistent system performance.

No local availability has been announced yet, but we are sure ASUS would definitely be introducing this higher spec FX504 in a very near timeline. At this point of time, the TUF Gaming FX504 is available with either a Coffee Lake Core i5 or Core i7 processor, a GTX 1050 or GTX 1050Ti GPU.

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ASUS Vivobook 13 Slate OLED 2-in-1 laptop launched: Priced from about RM2,484

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ASUS has just launched the Vivobook 13 Slate OLED – a Microsoft Surface-like 2-in-1 laptop.

It’s big selling point is that it comes with a detachable full-size keyboard and ASUS Pen 2.0 stylus support; the former has a 1.4mm key travel and magnetically attaches to the device. The latter is Microsoft Pen Protocol 2.0-compliant and offers a 266 Hz sampling rate.

This also means that the laptop is touchscreen – you get a 13.3-inch FHD OLED panel that pushes a 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, plus Dolby Vision support. It’s PANTONE Validated, and is True Black 500-certified.

Under the hood is a Quad Core Intel Pentium Silver N6000 CPU, up to 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of internal storage by way of a PCIe SSD.

For ports, you get a microSD card reader, two USB-C ports (with PowerDelivery support), and an audio jack. There’s a 5MP front camera for video conferences, and a 13MP read camera for taking photos.

Powering all of this is a 50 Wh battery, plus there’s support for 67W of charging.

The laptop is priced from $599, whoever there’s no word on its
local

pricing and availability yet. We’ll be sure to keep you updated when more information arrives.

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ASUS VivoBook 14 (A413) Review: A budget laptop for the masses

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It’s been a while since we’ve had a budget laptop roll through our doors – the last time we had something of the sort was the
HONOR
MagicBook
 14
 that was launched a few months ago; I thoroughly enjoyed that
especially
 since it costs only RM2,299.

The new ASUS VivoBook 14, aims to replicate that but it does more damage to the wallet with an RM2,899 price tag, it’s hard to recommend.

Design

That’s not to say it doesn’t get anything right – in fact, it doesn’t do a lot wrong. Take the design for example – it’s got a rather sleek build with an all-plastic finish that surprisingly feels good. Mine came with the Cobalt Blue cover finish which was refreshing to see and use, considering how long I’ve been stuck with an all-silver Dell for the longest time.

Its
 impressive aesthetics are also practical as ASUS claims the VivoBook 14 to be the smallest 14-inch notebook in the world – I can’t confirm that with aplomb but I can tell that it feels light in the backpack – it weighs just 1.4KGs but it doesn’t feel like anything at all; toss in the charging adapter and then you might feel a tug on shoulders but not enough to feel burdensome.

Lift up the cover and you’ll be greeted with a good-looking keyboard as well – it’s backlit in white and the enter key is accented with lime-green borders that add a little bit of flair to the otherwise beige chassis. While we’re here, let’s talk about its keyboard – like any good chiclet keyboard, it’s got a good mix of tactile and mushiness that helps you type accurately while staying dead silent. It’s also got an easy-to-use trackpad that houses a fingerprint scanner that works as advertised.

It’s not all roses however as I absolutely detest ASUS’ decision to put the home key on the right side of the board, next to the backspace; I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve eliminated entire rows of text when I end up hitting the home key and backspace at the same time. it introduces paranoia into a task that’s second nature like pressing the backspace key.

Display

Another pain point for me with this laptop is its 14-inch TN panel – although it pushes a 1080p resolution, the
colours
 are washed out and viewing angles are horrid; to be fair, I am used to the vibrant IPS panel of my Dell
Inspirion
 13 which costs almost double the
VivoBook
 14.

Still, this laptop is mostly geared towards college kids who’ll likely be binging Netflix for a large portion of their downtime – and I think the display just isn’t up to par.

Audio

But what is good are the bottom-firing speakers that are Harman Kardon-certified. Audio rings out clearly with crisp highs and a full bass; the speakers also don’t crackle at high volumes, which is great.

I/O Ports

For connectivity, you get
Wi-Fi
 6 support, but it doesn’t have an ethernet port. What you do have is 1x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C, 2x USB 2.0, 1x HDMI 1.4, and 1x MicroSD card reader. There’s also a headphone jack too.

Specs & Performance

Moving to its internals, it’s got a capable Intel Core i5-10210U CPU clocked at 1.6GHz, and an NVIDIA GeForce MX330 GPU with 2GB of VRAM. Unfortunately, the 4GB of DDR4 2,666MHz soldered RAM struggles to keep up with the kind of multi-tasking a writer such as myself demands. It’s not capable of
loading
 in multiple tabs fast enough and there’s no room to upgrade your memory either, which is the worst part.

It has a 512GB Intel 660p PCIe SSD that scores around 1,659Mb/s and 969Mb/s sequential read and write sequential speeds which is
unsurprising
.

When it comes to gaming, it handles DOTA 2 at 1080p medium graphics at around 50 FPS when there’s action. For a smoother experience, you’ll want to dip the resolution down to 1600×900 which should give you a smoother experience.

The next game on the list is
Genshin
 Impact because it’s all the rage and free to play – but unfortunately, the laptop struggles to run the game at a steady FPS at 1080p, low graphics. The game fluctuates between 30 FPS and 50 FPS, and is generally unpleasant for a fast-paced title such as
Genshin
 (during combat I mean). You’ll need to once again bump the resolution down to 1600×900, but you won’t get exclusive
full screen
 to work – which is something the developers should look to address.

Just for fun, I also decided to test out Among Us – and as expected, the game runs fine; which isn’t saying much; but hey, college kids will be glad to know you can at least go nuts on this title should they get bored.

A plus point for the laptop is that it stays relatively cool under heavy load; but the fans can be quite loud, but I suppose that’s a necessary evil.

Battery life

When it comes to battery life, I’m happy to report that it’s one of the
VivoBook
 14’s best features as I’ve gotten a comfy 7 hours of productivity work on this machine. If you keep the power at maximum performance, you’d be looking at around 6 hours of battery life, which is still pretty good – but then again, you’re not really going to be doing a lot of recourse-intensive work on this laptop anyways.

Verdict

For RM2,899, the ASUS
VivoBook
 14 does a lot well, particularly in the battery department; unfortunately, its low RAM capacity holds back what the laptop could be capable off with its Intel Core i5-10210U CPU and NVIDIA MX330 GPU. Perhaps for a more well-rounded alternative, I’d say go for the HONOR
MagicBook
 14, which is cheaper at RM2,299 while offering 8GB RAM, and a capable AMD Ryzen 5 3500U.

On the other hand, if you need something great to type on, is super lightweight, has great audio, plus support for
Wi-Fi
 6 – the
VivoBook
 14 is a good pick.
 Visit ASUS’s website
here
 to learn more purchase the laptop.

The Good

Lightweight build

Splendid battery life

Comfortable temps under load

Great speakers

Decent keyboard for writers

The Not so Good

Subpar display

Limited RAM and upgradability

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ASUS VivoBook 14 (A413) launched with 10th-Gen Intel Core and NVIDIA GeForce MX330

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If you’re looking for a dependable daily driver laptop that doesn’t break the bank, ASUS all-new VivoBook 14 (A413) is now available to purchase in Malaysia today –
 this
particular
 model sits below the
S-series
 which was launched last year
. The price starts at RM2,899, and during an online exclusive launch from now until 27 September, early-bird customers also stand to get a RM100 Grab voucher.

The 14-inch laptop packs a FHD display with
a
 84% screen-to-body ratio thanks to its thin bezels. The laptop’s chassis is made of plastic and comes in three finishes – Dreamy White, Cobalt Blue, Bespoke Black. The keyboard here is all black, while the Enter key is accented by a yellow trim.
Also
 good to note is that the keyboard is backlit.

Under the hood is an Intel Core i5-10210U CPU alongside the Intel HD Graphics 520 and NVIDIA GeForce MX330 GPUs. There’s 4GB of DDR4 2,666Mhz RAM, and a 512GB PCIe
NVMe
 M.2 SSD for storage.

The VivoBook 14 is powered with a 42Wh Li-prismatic battery, while weighing just 1.4KG. The laptop is 19.1mm thin, but comes with a decent set of I/O ports – 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type C, 1x USB 2.0, 1x HDMI 1.4, 1x 3.5mm jack, 1x microSD card reader.

You can learn more about the VivoBook 14 via ASUS official website
here
, or make your purchase via their
Lazada
 and
Shopee
 stores.

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ASUS launches new Vivobook S14 and S15 in Malaysia

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ASUS has officially brought in its latest stylish Vivobook laptops to Malaysia, the Vivobook S14 (S431F) and S15 (S531F) has an all new aluminum design that makes them look more premium than their predecessors.

These Vivobook models were unveiled back in COMPUTEX a couple of months back, though ASUS didn’t bring in the ScreenPad models (which the trackpad is a functional touch screen), it has a couple of features to get mid-range laptop hunters excited. For instance, you now get an IR camera for facial recognition and slimmer display bezels.

In terms of specs, the Vivobook S14 is a 14-inch laptop powered by an Intel Core i7 8565U CPU coupled with 8GB DDR3 RAM, 512GB PCIe Gen 3×2 SSD and 32GB Intel Optane M.2 SSD.

As for the Vivobook S15, it has a 15.6-inch 1080p display and you get an Core i5-8265U CPU coupled with 4GB DDR4 RAM, 512GB PCIe Gen 3×2 SSD and GeForce MX250 discrete graphics.

By all means, these new Vivobook S laptops have pretty subtle upgrades over their predecessors, but ASUS hopes that they will be able to attract the urbanites and fashionistas with the new design, even the chassis has been designed to be filled with stickers, which ASUS also includes a few of them inside the retail packaging.

Pricing wise, they remain reasonably priced for the features they offer. The Vivobook S14 will retail at RM3,899 while the Vivobook S15 will retail at RM3,199, both laptops will come with a 2-year global warranty.

As for color options, the Vivobook S14 is only available in Gun Metal and Transparent Silver, while the Vivobook S15 gets three more color options – Cobalt Blue, Moss Green and Punk Pink.

Watch our review of the Vivobook S15.

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ASUS VivoWatch First Look and Impressions

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The ASUS VivoWatch isn’t exactly the star of the company’s smart watch line ups, however it is definitely a product worth keeping an eye on as it has reached the Malaysian shores. Unlike the ZenWatch, the VivoWatch is more of a fitness tracker device that also receives notifications from your smartphone, thanks to its e-ink display and Bluetooth 4.0 LE, the VivoWatch is one of the few fitness trackers that can actually work up to 10 days on a single charge.

The VivoWatch resembles the ZenWatch a lot and you might actually mistaken it as the latter, ASUS has given it an IP67-certified water resistant design that lets you shower or swim with it, the strap is a high quality sweat resistant hard rubber material that actually feels really good when wearing it on the wrist. The VivoWatch has continuous heart rate tracking, which works pretty well if you want to know your physical condition and know when to slow your pace down should it reach a hazardous stage.

The VivoWatch will work with iOS and Android devices, the good news here is that the watch features Bluetooth SMART, which means you could actually switch between devices without resetting the watch in order to pair to a new phone and it is definitely a bonus feature for people like me. The ASUS HiVivo app requires you to have an ASUS online account and can be signed up upon launching the app, otherwise pairing the VivoWatch is simply effortless.

ASUS has given the app a very ZenUI like make over so if you are an ASUS smartphone user, navigating around the app should be pretty easy for you. I like the very user friendly dashboard as it tells me my Happiness Index (HI), a measurement that is able to tell me on how well I am on that day based on my sleep and work outs, other useful information also includes a historical chart of my steps, calories burnt and heart rate. While the essential software features are there, I was also hoping for more such as badges and challenges like some other fitness tracking apps out there, the VivoWatch also unfortunately do not support third party fitness tracking apps such as Endomondo and Runtastic.

I’ve been testing the VivoWatch for about three days and it has been good, it doesn’t look too sporty to wear for events and my friends didn’t even notice that it is a smart watch, we’ll be back soon with a full report on the VivoWatch so stay tuned. The ASUS VivoWatch retails at RM799 and is available at All IT Hypermarket and Foto Flash outlets.

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ASUS VivoWatch Review: A handsome fitness watch you will want to wear

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As a tech journalist, my friends have the tendency to notice the phone I use and smart watch I wear, the ASUS VivoWatch is the latest wearable that I have got my friends asking what it does and my thoughts about it. In most ways, it looks like a smart watch but in truth, the Vivowatch is the most handsome looking fitness tracking device I have ever seen in the market and also the first ever fitness device from ASUS, can it challenge the likes of Fitbit and Jawbone judging from the company’s success of the Zenfone? We find out.

Design

I have always admired ASUS products during my early days of venturing into the tech world, the company is famous for many iconic product designs such as the Transformer Book, ZenBook and more recently the Zenfones. The Vivowatch could well be another iconic fitness watch that makes a great impression once you set your eyes on it, the watch resembles its ZenWatch sibling a lot and you might not even be able to tell them apart until you noticed that its screen isn’t an AMOLED display.

The Vivowatch features a 1.28″ monochrome touch LCD (or probably e-paper) display which actually looks crisp with a 128×128 resolution. While the screen bezels are considerably thick, there’s actually an green LED pulse light below the display that tells your heartbeat in its workout mode and a UV sensor is located next to it. When idle, the Vivowatch’s screen is fortunately locked to avoid any accidental touches, which some fitness watches have failed to do so especially when in contact with water, the button on the side unlocks it and hold on to it, the workout mode starts.

To match the stainless steel frame design of the watch, ASUS has paired the watch with a 22mm faux fabric strap that looks good and thankfully absorbs sweat at the same time, while the material does not feel as comfortable elastomer or leather, I actually took time getting used to wearing it for a week and wore it to track my sleep as well. Of course, the Vivowatch’s strap is swappable and you can find them easily in watch shops.

The Vivowatch employs the same charging mechanism like many other smart watches by having an adapter that takes in power with a MicroUSB connector, and the good thing is that you don’t really need to keep it handy as the watch will be able to last you for around 10 days as claimed by ASUS and I can attest to that during the review period.

Software

The Vivowatch’s companion app is available to download for both Android and iOS devices, it requires the user to have an ASUS account in order to work and is able to synchronize fitness data with the cloud. The watch connects to your smartphone using Bluetooth SMART which means switching between smartphones will not require you to reset the watch and makes pairing the device a breeze, useful for folks like me who sadly does not have a permanent smartphone due to the nature of my job.

ASUS has given a Zen UI make up on both Android and iOS variants of the HiVivo app, which makes learning less of a chore if you do switch between devices all the time. As usual with most fitness apps, the HiVivo app features a very friendly looking dashboard that shows you the summary of your activity, exercise and sleep for the week.

Comparing to some other well known fitness apps, HiVivo does not keep track of food and water intake so you can’t keep track of your calories accurately, it does however feature a Happiness Index (HI) feature that tells your mood for the day based on the hours of sleep and how active you have been for the day, such information may not be too useful in my case but it is always great to know how well you have been taking care of yourselves.

The HiVivo app is very limited in terms of third party app support, while it does support exporting fitness data into Apple’s Health app, it is not able to interface with any third party fitness apps on Android and this could be a deal breaker for some who would have probably invested in the app itself to keep track of their fitness progress.

In other features, the Vivowatch has five watch faces to choose from and you can set it to receive notifications from your smartphone. In my case, notifications worked great with no delayed response, just don’t expect it to have any actions for them because the watch isn’t meant to do that.

User Experience

The Vivowatch is a great wearable despite of its software limitations, it is probably the only fitness watch that I have worn it for the longest time as it looks great for any occasion, be it a business meeting, dining session or working out in the gym, the watch will definitely grab some attention from your friends.

Functionality on the watch itself is limited in a way that you can’t install apps on to it, basic features such as music controls, stopwatch and timer is also sadly not available, which makes it hardly better than any common digital watches out there. Of course, ASUS could’ve easily released a firmware update to make these features available and I would certainly look forward to that.

Despite being a fitness device, the Vivowatch does not keep track other types of exercises apart from running and it does not have a built-in GPS as well, so you won’t be able to tell exactly how far you have been running outdoors as it merely relies on its built-in sensors to detect your running. The optical heart rate sensor is fortunately accurate according to my tests as I tried comparing it to a threadmill’s heart rate sensor, sleep tracking also works great as it automatically activates it when I wear it to sleep.

I have to admit that I have been a less active person during the review period due to busy work schedules, however when its time to get active in the gym, the Vivowatch does the work well for me, however if you are thinking to use it for activities other than running, you might probably want to skip the Vivowatch.

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ASUS will open pre-orders for the Zenbo robot in Taiwan on the January 1st, 2017

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Back in Computex, ASUS debuted the Zenbo, a robot assistant that is able to look up recipes, set up reminds and do so much more. Now, nearly seven months after the Zenbo was first shown on stage, the robot assistant will soon be entering the Taiwanese market as ASUS has announced that the Zenbo will be available for pre-order in Taiwan from the 1st of January.

Alongside the announcement that the Zenbo robot will soon be open for pre-orders, ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih announced that developers and partners from various major industries in Taiwan have decided to partner with ASUS to extend and enrich the Zenbo experience through dedicated apps and capabilities. The National Police Agency of Taiwan is an example of such a collaboration, and they have developed an app that would allow families to contact their local police department via Zenbo’s built-in video calling feature.

ASUS will be rolling out limited quantities of the Zenbo robot for its first batch. The Zenbo robots will be available in either a 32GB variant or a 128GB variant. The 32GB Zenbo will cost NTD19,900 (RM2,771) while the 128GB Zenbo will cost NTD24,900 (RM3,467). The 128GB Zenbo will also come with a self-charging dock.

Source:
Engadget

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ASUS ZenBeam Latte L1: A small, portable LED projector

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We’ve seen countless new ASUS laptops for the past two days, but here’s something different from ASUS — the ZenBeam Latte L1 projector. Featuring a unique, compact design, the Latte L1 is a 720p projector that can be carried around easily no matter where you go.

The ZenBeam Latte L1 is a projector and a Bluetooth speaker

The
Latte L1
 looks like a coffee mug — it displays a 40-inch projection at a 1m distance and a 120-inch projection at 3 meters. Apart from offering a 720p screen that also supports wireless mirroring for smartphones, this projector can also function as a Bluetooth stereo speaker with three audio modes.

It doesn’t need to be constantly plugged in

With a 6,000mAh battery, the Latte L1 offers up to 3 hours of video projection and up to 12 hours of music playback. It comes with a HDMI port, a USB-A port and a headphone jack, plus its also has a few streaming services like YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.

The ZenBeam Latte L1 will be available in the US in Q2 2021, but there’s no news on its local availability and pricing.

ASUS ZenBeam Latte L1


ASUS ZenBook 13 UX333 Review: Maximum Portability Pleasure

1K

Over the past three weeks, I have been travelling in the US with two laptops in my backpack – Yes, TWO freaking heavy laptops. Nah, just kidding, they are actually both very light -, So yeah, one of them is ASUS’ latest ZenBook 13 that has been unveiled today in the Malaysian market.

The main reason to have it packed together with my trusty MacBook Pro 15-inch isn’t exactly on purpose, though I have the review to complete during my 1-month trip here, it is such a portable device that I find it a no brainer to have it in the tablet pocket of my bag (Yes, it fits!).

Upon receiving the device from ASUS, I was totally awed with its excellent aesthetics. The Zenbook 13 feels and looks like a masterpiece that most companies would have taken years to achieve, you get a beautiful 13-inch glossy display fitted on to a super slim frame that would have been a standard 11-inch laptop display.

In technical terms, you get an impressive 95% screen-to-body ratio.

ASUS continues to calls this the NanoEdge design like it does on its other slim bezel display laptops, what’s even more impressive is that the company has managed to pack a very decent webcam on the top bezel along with face recognition sensors for Windows Hello.

Despite having great color reproduction, the ZenBook 13’s Full HD display unfortunately isn’t the brightest, in most cases I have the brightness cranked to the max as I’m working, which isn’t a good thing as it affects battery life, the reflective glossy panel also mean that you will not enjoy working on it outdoors.

If your computing activities merely happens indoors, then you should have no problems with it.

The entire construction of the ZenBook 13 is made with aluminum like its other siblings, the signature spin effect is present on the lid that makes it look unmistakably a ZenBook.

There’s so many things to love on the ZenBook 13, to name a few, the ErgoLift hinge that heightens the device to offer a better typing experience.

I/O ports are placed and designed well, for instance the charging port is placed on the left so that your right working space looks clean for your mouse, there’s two standard USB 3.1 ports on each side, a USB-C port with no Thunderbolt 3 support, and a full sized HDMI port.

You will hardly need any dongle to go with the ZenBook 13 and ASUS has included an external USB Gigabit LAN dongle in the box if you ever need it.

ASUS’ ZenBook keyboards have never failed to impress and the ZenBook 13’s keyboard is just as good with decent key travel and precise keystrokes, I actually wrote this review using this keyboard and would prefer it any time over my MacBook Pro’s butterfly keys.

However, there are still imperfections, the right ‘Shift’ and ‘Fn’ keys are as compromised to smaller keycaps as they make way for the QWERTY keys, but I have barely used them throughout the review period. The only thing that I still get confused with is the ‘Delete’ key, where I occasionally pressed the ‘Power’ button that made the laptop go on standby.

I have to commend ASUS for including a hidden numpad onto the laptop’s trackpad, which can be activated with a capacitive button on the top right side.

While it is smart enough to identify between a standard click tap and number tap, it can get pretty frustrating if you have your palm rested near it while typing, as your palm may accidentally turn it on and you tend to make a lot of errors as you type, so its either you lift up your hand while typing or totally disable the trackpad to avoid that.

The ZenBook 13 boasts one of the best sounding loudspeakers I’ve heard on an ultrabook, though they could be better positioned on the top rather than firing sound at the bottom, they easily fill a room with rich details and doesn’t distort at max volume.

The review unit I have comes with a Core i5-8265U quad-core processor, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD and a GeForce MX150 discrete graphics. ASUS does offer a higher spec variant which comes with a Core i7-8550U with the same storage configuration, you can’t upgrade the RAM or SSD as they are already soldered on its motherboard.

During the review period, I haven’t encountered any serious performance issues and it was a champ at handling over 15 Chrome tabs despite only having 8GB RAM, SSD speeds maxes out at 1.7GB/s sequential read and 1GB/s sequential write, which is very impressive for a two-lane PCIe NVMe drive.

One can easily think that the ZenBook 13 should be rather capable gaming machine with its GeForce MX150 graphics, which unfortunately isn’t the case.

While the MX150 is certainly capable of running modern AAA titles with low graphics setting at 1080p based on its official memory frequency, the ZenBook 13 uses an underclocked variant of the MX150 and uses four PCIe lanes.

GPU-Z reports that the MX150’s base GPU and memory frequency clocked at 937MHz and 1253MHz respectively, that’s close to a 30% reduction if we were to compare to the default 1227MHz GPU clock and 1502MHz memory clock frequencies. Not to forget to mention, due to the limited use of PCIe lanes the memory bandwidth is also running at a significantly lower 40.1GB/s in contrast to the stock 48.06GB/s.

This significantly strips off the performance benefits of the GPU, and games I’ve tested, such as PUBG and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, will either freeze in-game or drop to single digit frames per second, though the low profile cooling system of the laptop could have also held back the performance of the MX150.

Speaking of cooling, the ZenBook 13’s fan noise is a mere whisper despite working on full load, and its dead silent when it comes to lightweight activities such as word processing and movie watching.

Nonetheless, you probably shouldn’t be gaming on this laptop, but on the bright side of things, I’ve done simple 4K video edits on Premiere Pro and it performs reasonably well, all thanks to the CUDA cores on the MX150, exporting a 7-minute video at 100Mbps bitrate takes around 33 minutes with the CPU running at 60% load, which couldn’t have been possible with Intel’s integrated graphics.

ASUS claims that the ZenBook 13 can have up to 14 hours of battery life on a single charge, I obviously didn’t get to enjoy up to that claimed endurance, instead I managed to get 6.5 hours with my best power conserving efforts, heavy continuous usage will get you around 5 hours of usage, so I consider that a pass.

What I would really love to see on future ZenBooks is USB-C charging, which has started to become common even on sub RM3000 laptops, even though the power brick of the ZenBook 13 isn’t heavy to transport around, the laptop could probably get an extra input port if not for the proprietary charging port.

Despite some of the imperfections of the ZenBook 13, this is the best ultra-portable 13-inch Windows laptop that I have ever had the pleasure to review over the past three weeks, it fits on any café tables, it has a stunning display and build quality, it is every bit as premium as the ZenBook brand carries, and yet ASUS have made this a very reasonably priced purchase from the price of RM4,499 to RM4,999, directly rivaling at more expensive competitors such as the Dell XPS 13 and Huawei Matebook X.

The Good

Excellent build quality and aesthetics

Good ports selection

Great webcam and Windows Hello support

512GB SSD as base storage

Discrete graphics great for video encoding

Competitive pricing

The Not so Good

Right ‘Shift’ and ‘Fn’ keys are compromised

Screenpad can be activated accidentally while resting palm

No USB-C charging

Display brightness could be better

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asus malaysia
ux333
zenbook 13
zenbook 13 malaysia price
zenbook 13 malaysia review


New ASUS ZenBook 13 (UX325) and ZenBook 14 (UX425) announced: Intel Core 10th-Gen CPU and ultra thin build

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New variants of the ASUS ZenBook 13 (UX325) and ZenBook 14 (UX425) will be launched soon and they come packed with the latest Intel Core 10
th
-Gen CPUs with a good array of I/O ports.

Display and design

The ZenBook 13 is a 13.3-inch laptop with a 1080p panel, while the ZenBook 14 packs a 14-inch 1080 display. Both laptops boast a very thin chassis which measures at only 13.9mm in thickness, making it thinner than its
predecessor
. Plus, the ZenBook 13 weighs only 1.07KG, while the 14-inch model at only 1.13KGs.

The body is made of
aluminium
 alloy and comes in two
colours
 – Lilac Mist and Pine Grey. There’s also the ASUS
ErgoLift
 hinge that tilts the back of the keyboard at an angle for better airflow and a more comfortable typing experience.

To add to the premium features of the laptops is the
NumberPad
 2.0 that lights up the touch pad with a virtual number pad.

I/O Ports

ASUS is also
particularly
 proud of the
ZenBook
 13 and 14’s full-szied I/O layouts which packs 2x Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, 1x standard HDMI port, and 1x microSD card reader. Impressive considering the compact size of the
ZenBook; but you’ll notice that there isn’t a 3.5mm headphone jack here, but ASUS will provide a USB C to audio jack dongle out of the box.

Specs

Under the hood, both models can be fitted with up to an Intel Core i7-1065G7 CPU with Intel Iris Graphics; you also get up to 8GB 3200Mhz LPDDR4X memory, and up to 512GB PCIe NVME SSD for storage.

Image credit: ASUS

The laptop also comes with
an
 IR webcam that supports Windows Hello login, Wi-Fi 6 for connectivity, and a 67Wh battery that ASUS claims can offer up to 22 hours of battery life.

Availability

ASUS tells us that the laptops will arrive to local shores at the end of this month, so we’ll
keep
 you posted on the official pricing when the laptops launch.

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asus zenbook 14
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asus zenbook UX425
intel core i7 1065G7
thin laptop


ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D Review: The Prettiest Ryzen Ultrabook

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AMD’s third gen Ryzen Mobile CPU has gotten really popular in 2019 on mid-tier premium laptops, not only these machines cost lower than their Intel counterparts, they also have decent power efficiency and better graphics performance that allows you to do lightweight creative work and gaming. If that’s the kind of laptop that you are looking for, the ASUS Zenbook 14 (UM431D) might grab your attention with its extremely premium build for under RM3000.

ASUS ZenBook 14 UM431D Video Review

You really can’t find any colors that’s more unique than the ZenBook 14, unlike most laptops in this range that comes with either a black, gold or silver color finish, this one gets a unique color that ASUS calls it Utopia Blue, there’s smooth chamfered edges around the machine to give it a premium feel, the loudspeaker grille sports a honeycomb style design and the cooling vents are positioned at the back, and last but not least, its 1.39kg weight gives you a real pleasure on transporting it around.

A few things are standard here as a ZenBook, which includes an ErgoLift hinge that tilts the laptop to a better typing position, a NanoEdge slim bezel display with a good webcam position, and a trackpad with a reliable fingerprint reader. The loudspeakers are the most impressive ones I’ve ever heard on a sub RM3000 laptop, it has two bottom and top firing speakers tuned by Harman/Kardon, sound quality is actually pretty close to a MacBook and they sound really loud when maxed out.

The Zenbook 14 features a 14-inch Full HD IPS panel with 8-bit color reproduction, which is also something uncommon on laptops on the same price range and offers a great viewing experience, though brightness is pretty standard at 300 nits, you can definitely do casual creative graphics work on this display.

I have always been impressed with ports selection on ZenBooks and this time ASUS managed to include a SD card slot, which is a rarity on ultrabooks and extremely convenient if you are a creative user, the USB-C port doesn’t support power delivery charging but thankfully supports USB 3.1 Gen 1 speeds. The ZenBook 14’s keyboard is excellent with great key travel and tactile, the trackpad however isn’t great but it isn’t terrible as there is a slight lag in its tracking performance.

Most ultrabooks of the same class don’t usually allow users to access their internals, however that’s not the case with the Zenbook 14, it is extremely easy to pry open once you manage to unscrew those tiny pentalobe screws. The motherboard layout is familiar across other mid range laptops, though I have to applaud ASUS for including a huge single fan for cooling and allowing the user swap the M.2 SSD, there isn’t an extra RAM slot and you are stuck with 8GB of RAM for the rest of the ownership.

As the Radeon Vega 7 integrated graphics shares memory with the system’s RAM, there’s only 6GB of available RAM and can cause the ZenBook 14 to struggle when you have too many apps running in the background, especially when it comes to web browsing on Chrome, switching between tabs will sometimes cause the page to reload, there’s no way to reconfigure shared graphics memory if you ever want to, so you might want to consider this investment if you are a heavy multitasker.

Like I mentioned in the beginning of this review, the beauty of AMD Ryzen mobile powered laptops is the ability to run lightweight graphics processing tasks all thanks to the much better Radeon integrated graphics. I tried editing a five minute long 4K video on Premiere Pro 2020 and while there’s still a slight lag after adding some effects, it plays my edited preview with no sweat at full 4K resolution.

In terms of lightweight gaming, I find it to perform better than the HP Envy x360 that I reviewed last round, though I still unfortunately have to set graphics setting to the lowest and even reduce screen resolution to achieve more than 30 frames per second in games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Devil May Cry 5, it can handle MOBA games like DOTA 2 and League of Legends without much graphics compromise.

Most of you are probably concerned about thermals on AMD Ryzen laptops back on my HP Envy x360 review, I’m happy to report that the ZenBook 14 has no issues on that, as idle temperatures remain around 36°C and gaming will bring it up to 62°C, it is very reasonable for an efficient system-on-chip and I have not encounter any throttling issues during the period.

Apart from thermals, AMD powered laptops have long been criticised of battery life, the Zenbook 14 doesn’t disappoint fortunately and gave me up to 7 hours of usage on a single charge, it is still a farcry from ASUS’ 12.5 hours claim, but considering I’m always pushing it with a dozen of browser tabs and streaming Spotify in the background, I am not going to complain.

Retailing at RM2999, the ZenBook 14 falls under the competitive mainstream laptop category, where other brands are also offering laptops with a similar set of hardware, but what’s going to make you want to consider this machine would be its great hardware build and design, although it’s quite a shame that it doesn’t give you the option to increase RAM, you can still at least upgrade the SSD if you ever want to, this is the most beautiful AMD Ryzen mobile powered laptop that you will ever get the chance to own.

The Good

Unique color option and great craftsmanship

Decent everyday computing performance (if you don’t multitask a lot)

Upgradeable storage

Good display panel

Speaker is better than many others

The Not so Good

Non-upgradeable RAM

No USB-PD charging

amd
asus
ryzen 5
um431d
ZenBook 14


The dual-display ASUS ZenBook Duo and ZenBook Pro Duo are officially in Malaysia

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ASUS has just launched the ZenBook Duo and ZenBook Pro Duo – as their name may suggest, they are both productivity and creator laptops that come with two displays.

The ZenBook Duo is a 14-inch device with a secondary 12.6-inch touch panel right above the keyboard, below the monitor. Dubbed the ScreenPad Plus, this extra panel lets you drag and drop programs and windows from the main display for extra productivity. Alternatively, you can pick from a set of programs that’ll boot up from the ScreenPad plus – think calculator, doodle and more.

The ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is a larger 15-inch device with a 14-inch ScreenPad Plus display. Both secondary panels on each laptop supports a stylus which comes in the box. This 15-inch laptop pushes 4K resolution with its OLED touch screen, while its smaller brother goes up to 1080p only with its non-touch LCD display.

Both devices sport an all-aluminium body as well as an ErgoLift hinge design that lifts the back end of the laptop 5.5-inches off the surface to provide better heat dissipation.

Under the hood, the regular ZenBook Duo comes with the latest 10th-gen Intel Core i5-10210U or i7-10510U processors; meanwhile the ZenBook Pro Duo comes with a powerful 9th-gen Intel Core i9-9980HK CPU or the Core i7-9750H.

The smaller laptop gets a modest Nvidia GeForce MX250 GPU with up to 16GB LPDDR3 RAM, while the ZenBook Pro Duo gets the beefier GeForce RTX 2060 6GB with up to 32GB DDR4 RAM. For storage, the ZenBook Duo gets PCIe NVMe 512GB SSD storage while the ZenBook Pro Duo gets 1TB of PCIe SSD.

Being the creator laptops that they are, they come with the necessary suite of I/O ports – USB C, HDMI, , USB 3.1; however, the smaller model gets a microSD card reader, while the Pro model gets a Thunderbolt 3 port.

The Pro model, being the bigger variant, sports a trackpad that also displays a digital numpad – the smaller version doesn’t. The 14-inch laptop has a 70Wh battery while the 15-inch model has a slightly larger 71Wh pack. Both laptops come with an illuminated chiclet keyboard and a stylus.

The ZenBook Duo UX481F is priced at RM4,699 with the i5 processor and RM5,699 with the i7 processor. On the other hand, the base model ZenBook Pro Duo UX581F starts at RM12,999 while the higher-end model will set you back RM15,999.

asus
ZenBook Duo
ZenBook Pro Duo


The ASUS ZenBook Flip S is the world’s lightest convertible notebook

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Let’s face it, most convertible notebooks, otherwise 2-in-1 notebooks, are bulky and heavy. If we were to name a serious contender to Lenovo’s Yoga Book, then the ASUS ZenBook Flip S is going to be one. Built with an all aerospace-grade 6013 aluminum unibody, the ZenBook Flip S measures 10.9mm thin and weighs only 1.1kg with a 13.3-inch display, most interestingly, you will also have the option to opt for a 4K UHD display on this device, a bit of an overkill but hey, who knows you might need it. The notebook’s display supports an active stylus with 1024 levels of pressure such as the ASUS Pen, an accessory that is sold separately.

Like the ZenBook 3 Deluxe, the ZenBook Flip S is no slow machine as it will come with either a 7th Gen Intel Core i5 or i7 U series processor, it will also support up to 16GB of LPDDR3 2133MHz RAM and up to 1TB of PCI-E SSD. The notebook has a pretty impressive battery life of up to 11.5 hours, and it supports fast charging which you can expect 60% of juice in a mere 49 minutes. The ZenBook Flip S also supports Windows Hello with a built-in fingerprint sensor on the glass trackpad, which uses Windows Precision Technology drivers.

The ASUS ZenBook Flip S will be available later this year with color options of Smokey Grey and Royal Blue, prices start from US$1,099 (RM4,691) onwards.

asus
computex 2017
zenbook flip s
zenbook flip s malaysia


ASUS Zenbook Pro 15 Review – Sexy (& Expensive) Productivity!

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ASUS have decided that they want to make something that’s not just beautiful to look at, but also a joy to work on. With productivity-chasers becoming increasingly mobile, and more work being achieved on-the-go, a powerful & stylish solution to what seems to be diametrically-opposed objectives is needed. Could the ASUS Zenbook Pro 15 be the answer?

Spec Sheet

Model

Zenbook Pro 15

CPU

Intel i7-8750H (6 cores, 12 threads)

Base clock : 2.2 Ghz

Boost clock :4.1 GHz

Chipset

Coffee Lake Socket 1440 FCBGA

RAM

16 GB (DDR4-2400 x1)

Display

15.6” LED-backlit 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) 16:9 touchscreen

GPU

NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050Ti (4GB GDDR5 RAM)

SSD

1TB (
as tested
) / 512GB PCIe® SSD

Sequential Read:
Up to 3,200 MB/s

Sequential Write:
Up to 2,400 MB/s

Random Read (4KB):
Up to 380K IOPS

Random Write (4KB):
Up to 440K IOPS

I/O

2 x Type-C™ USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Thunderbolt™ 3)
2 x Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 2
1 x HDMI
1 x Combo audio jack
1 x MicroSD card slot

Connectivity

Dual-band 802.11ac gigabit-class Wi-Fi
Bluetooth® 5.0

Let’s start with the basics first.

What immediately catches the eye when you first get your mitts on the ZenBook Pro 15 is the beautifully constructed metal chassis. With brushed metal finishing, gold-coloured trim and high-quality plastics, this solidly manufactured number from ASUS offers a premium feel that just oozes sex appeal.

Tipping the scales at just 1.88kg, you’ll be amazed at how much laptop they’ve managed to squeeze in here. On the left side, you’ll find the power jack, a HDMI-out and two USB Type-C ports. On the right, you’re greeted by the sight of two USB 3.1 ports, a microSD card reader and a single TRRS audio jack (combined mic + earphones port).

Opening the laptop, you are presented with a recessed 5.5 inch combination touchscreen / touchpad (imaginatively named ‘ScreenPad’), a chiclet keyboard with a set of home keys arrayed vertically on the right, and a fingerprint sensor just below it.

Silicone for the soul.

Aside from the usual Intel and NVIDIA stickers, there are also stickers from EnergyStar, HDMI, and Pantone – the latter indicating that the colour reproduction of the monitor has been certified to be accurate, up to 100% of the Adobe RGB color gamut. Etched into the finish is ‘harman/kardon’ lettering – no surprise there as they provide the audio solution for the ZenBook Pro 15.

And last, but not least – glance up and you will lay eyes on the 15.6 inch 4K touchscreen panel, which is easily the headliner for this festival lineup of features.

What Works

What works on the ZenBook Pro 15, works amazingly so.

The display deserves a mention here – it’s bright, vivid, and extraordinarily stunning in its presentation. With a 178-degree viewing angle (as you’d expect from an IPS panel) coupled with very deep blacks and jaw-dropping colours, media consumption on the ZBP15 (Hmm, that acronym seems familiar) is an absolute joy. Netflix 4K content as well as Amazon Prime 4K content is a feast for the eyes, although YouTube 4K video isn’t as smooth or sharp (other Chrome-related issues popped up, which we’ll discuss later).

Beautiful colours and deep blacks give a great multimedia experience.

The touchscreen is responsive, although the Windows 10 interface (while greatly improved for touchscreen operation) is not the best for finger / stylus work; native touchscreen operating systems such as Android and iOS have nothing to fear.

Productivity applications (I tested Adobe Photoshop, Sony Vegas Pro 13 and Blender) worked really well with the hexa-core CPU, although loading up too many things on any of these apps would lead to a crawl. That is explained by the 16GB of RAM on offer, although if you keep your organisation and workflow light enough, there shouldn’t be too many problems (which is an issue on its own, as I’ll explain later).

The ScreenPad is easy enough to use, and lets your finger glide along its entire surface area with consummate ease. Audio is terrific, with all sorts of genres coming out sounding rather excellent, thanks to the work of harman/kardon. From the kpop boppiness of
BTS’

IDOL
, to the operatic scale of
Hans Zimmer
’s Superman theme
What Are You Going To Do When You Aren’t Saving The World,
the speakers offer lovely clarity and mid-range punch, although bass is a little lacking. This isn’t a surprise considering their small size, and physics dictating a lack of low-frequency response.

There is a lot to like about the Zenbook Pro 15 – it’s a shame about the stuff that doesn’t work so well.

What doesn’t (really) work

A moment of silence, first of all, for an idea that seems great on paper yet just doesn’t really work in practice – ScreenPad. For a start, that most basic of productivity-assisting apps, Spotify integration, just does not work. Error after error, non-detection of my registered account and an install process that can be described as a cross between water-boarding and having your toenails plucked out by the claws of a blind crab; the net-result was 2 hours lost and my Spotify just being run via a native app anyway.

You’ll be hard pressed to find a reason to use the integrated apps on the ScreenPad after a while, as productivity users will have their attention fully focused on the screen. As any power user will tell you, knowing your keyboard shortcuts, choosing when to switch apps quickly and keeping track of your open windows all in one screen (or multiple screens side-by-side) is far more intuitive than having to glance down at an additional, smaller touchscreen. It’s like going to your phone all the time as a touchpad and simultaneously trying to have it function as a YouTube viewer.

The ScreenPad in action as a ‘YouTube’ controller.

There were also mysterious hiccups along the way with browsers. Browser tabs opened automatically by apps (such as benchmark software) would crash, necessitating the browser to be manually opened first, before an auto-opened tab would not crash. Countless browser re-installs did not solve the problem, leading me to think that it’s probably an optimisation issue with memory management. Unfortunately, I could not pinpoint the exact problem.

Limited RAM doesn’t make sense for a supposed productivity powerhouse – why is there only 16GB? 32GB would be more like it, although this is probably mitigated somewhat by the 1TB SSD, which greatly helps with loading times for apps and as a paging file.

What definitely doesn’t work

Gaming performance is so-so.The GeForce GTX 1050Ti graphics chip, while a perfectly decent card when gaming at 720p or e-sports titles such as CS:GO or DOTA2, struggled with anything half decent that we threw at it. 4K performance is dreadful, although I had useful playable quality at 1080p for games such as Star Trek Online. Going to 1600p means gaming at 30 fps or less, so don’t bother. Even at 1080p, modern games such as F1 2018 need to have their settings tuned down to medium for consistently smooth gameplay. A gaming laptop this is not.

And yet you wouldn’t want to game too much on this thing anyway as temperatures get extremely toasty on the underside of the chassis, resulting in massive heatwash and an inability to actually put the laptop on our laps. This holds true for any activity that stresses out the system; benchmarking, rendering, gaming and heavy Excel workloads would result in the same heatwash. Even on idle, there were random hotspots, and seemingly random speeding up / slowing down of the fans.

Battery life for gaming is abysmal – I managed just 90 minutes on a full charge before I got a ‘low battery warning’, on balanced performance mode. Going to ‘powersave’ mode would have made it even more unsuitable for gaming – and wouldn’t power save mode be counterproductive to being a mobile productivity station? Battery life suffers when under load – the supposed 9.5 hour claim cannot be verified, with at most 4 hours on light to medium usage.

A hinge and touchscreen that doesn’t fold flat.

Which is a shame as the display, as we’ve mentioned, is gorgeous. Having a touchscreen is great, but with stylus support out of the box, why not bundle a stylus? Additional cost on top of what would start at an RM7000 price tag outlay seems to be unnecessary.

To add further misery to the situation, the screen does not fold flat (only 45 degrees)  – so drawing tablet levels of control, detail and accuracy would be difficult to achieve. This gives us an odd situation; does that not make the touchscreen sort of redundant anyway? Then what is the point of stylus support when the implementation seems rather half-hearted?

Test Scores

Final Thoughts

Almost.

It’s a word that constantly ran through my mind as I reviewed this hunk of metal, plastic and dreams.

This feature was almost awesome. That little thing they did was almost worth it. The spec sheet is almost fantastic.

This thing is almost great.

That’s a crying shame, to be honest – because what ASUS have done is manage to clothe a pretty decent set of hardware that performs quite well in productivity tasks in a beautiful chassis, yet somehow screw up enough small things along the way to make me pause and wonder about whether or not this laptop is worth it.

Ultimately, with prices starting at RM6599 for the base model (Full HD, i7-8750H, 512GB SSD), it does not seem as though there’s a lot of value to be had from the ZBP15. There are some pretty amazing highlights – the screen, the chassis, the quality of construction. This is let down by some questionable hardware decisions (ScreenPad, display tilt + touchscreen), and truly dragged down further by potential dealbreakers (overheating problems, poor battery life).

If you can live with the ZBP15’s shortcomings, you’ll get a decent laptop with a pretty useful amount of horsepower – unfortunately, you’ll be paying through the nose for the privilege.

The Good

Beautiful screen

Amazing chassis

Build Quality is top-notch

Good performance

The Not So Good

Poor battery life

Poor thermal performance

Very expensive

Questionable design choices

asus
zenbook
zenbook pro
zenbook pro 15
zenbook pro malaysia


ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo is official and sports two screens and an RTX GPU

343

Leave it up to ASUS to make something ridiculous yet so beautiful; the Taiwanese brand took to their home ground at this year’s COMPUTEX expo to show off their newest offering the ASUS ZenBook Pro Duo.

The laptop features two screens that capable of pushing 4K resolution — the main screen is a 15-inch 16:9 OLED panel, while the second is a 32:9 IPS ScreenPad Plus touch screen interface that’s placed just above the keyboard.

If you’re familiar with the ASUS ROG Zephyrus S, you’ll notice the form factor is similar — the touchpad is also placed to the far right of the keyboard and features a digital num pad.

The ScreenPad Plus panel serves as a secondary touch screen that serves to improve productivity as it provides an extension to the main monitor. You can also choose to split displays — have a video playing on the main panel and MS Word open on the second panel.

The laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i9 processor as well as an Nvidia RTX 2060 GPU, so this laptop is capable of gaming, but it’s design is more suited to content creators. The ZenBook Pro Duo is equipped with a Thunderbolt 3 port, two USB-A ports, a headphone jack and a HDMI port.

ASUS says that the ZenBook Pro Duo should be available sometime third quarter this year.

asus zenbook pro duo
computex 2019
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intel core i9


ASUS ZenFone 2 goes on sale at the #IncredibleZenDay

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The Zenfone 2 has gone on sale in Malaysia today and ASUS has celebrated this by hosting the Incredible Zen Day this morning over at KL Live, the Zenfone 2 is the most powerful smartphone that the company has ever made and the first smartphone to be sold in Malaysia that comes with up to 4GB RAM.

ASUS Malaysia’s Incredible Zen Day event has received an overwhelming response of over 3000 registered Zenfans and over a thousand units of Zenfone 2s are being sold to customers today. Unlike last year, ASUS has kept just one model for the Zenfone 2 this time with different hardware specifications, the entry level model ZE500CL comes with a 5-inch HD display, an Intel Atom Z2560 CPU with 2GB RAM and 8GB of internal storage will retail as affordable as RM599 while the flagship model comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD display, a 64-bit Intel Atom Z3580 2.3GHZ CPU mated to 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage will retail at RM1,299.

Apart from the announcement of the Zenfone 2, ASUS has not revealed pricing for its accessories such as the ZenFlash, LolliFlash and the phone’s backcover, folks who are not able to attend the event today will still be able to purchase the Zenfone 2 over at
http://store.asus.com/my
 very soon, stay tuned to us we shall be receiving our very own Zenfone 2 for review.

Here’s the complete price list for the Zenfone 2:

ZE500CL (5″ HD, Atom Z2560 1.6GHz, 2GB RAM, 8GB ROM) – RM599
ZE550ML (5.5″ HD, Atom Z3560 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM) – RM749
ZE551ML (5.5″ FHD, Atom Z3560 1.8GHz, 2GB RAM, 32GB ROM) – RM899
ZE551ML (5.5″ FHD, Atom Z3580 2.3GHz, 4GB RAM, 32GB ROM) – RM1,099
ZE551ML (5.5″ FHD, Atom Z3580 2.3GHz, 4GB RAM, 64GB ROM) – RM1,299


ASUS ZenFone 2 Laser ZE601KL Review: The best huge ZenFone 2 ever made

503

ASUS may have released a slew of ZenFones for the past year, the company has been at least smart enough to sport a different feature set for every Zenfone 2 (well, mostly cameras and screen sizes) it releases. Back in my original ZenFone 2 review, I commented on its uninspiring design from its predecessor and less compelling when compared to its competition of that time, and yet the company still isn’t shy in releasing similarly designed devices locally in the pass month, as in the case of the ZenFone 2 Laser ZE601KL that we have in our labs, despite being the largest Zenfone 2 of all it looks just the same like its siblings.

Design and Hardware

Despite sporting pretty much the same aesthetics and design language as the original ZenFone 2, the 6-inch Zenfone 2 Laser is a rather sleek looking device and tends to offer a satisfying grip for large hands, all thanks to the efficient screen to body ratio that makes it one of the most compact 6-inch device in the market. Nonetheless, the phone’s overall construction is still made of plastic and its glossy frame attracts scratches in the long term, hence a protection case is recommended if you ever want to keep it in a mint condition.

I’m actually glad to see ASUS making improvements to hardware design on the ZenFone 2 Laser. First, there is a removable battery made for the power users, and due to that, the SIM slots have been relocated. While the main SIM slot will require you to remove the phone’s battery, the secondary SIM slot doesn’t, making it really sweet for those who wants to quickly swap a SIM without switching off the phone, but still, some may feel the need for ASUS to start implementing Nano SIM slots on its phones, as SIM adapters do not play too nice with the ZenFone 2 Laser, in my case, my nano SIM tends to fall of the adapter easily when I attempt to insert it to the slot.

The 6-inch Zenfone 2 Laser is powered by a Snapdragon 616 processor, this is one of the best chips in the market and ASUS has also given 3GB of RAM, which means you should be able to open a number of apps without having to refresh your memory too often. For the average user, the hardware power on the ZenFone 2 Laser will suffice for most applications and real world performance is on par with the original ZenFone 2.

For a mid-range device, the ASUS ZenFone 2 Laser’s display is definitely a pro feature, it is also one of the few 6-inch device to sport a Full HD resolution, color reproduction is also really good with great viewing angles, there were a number of times I have used the phone for watching Netflix and I must say it was a really enjoyable experience.

Sound may not be a big thing on ASUS smartphones, however this time ASUS has put a little emphasis in this department, the phone now sports dual speakers at the back and mind you, they are really loud and do produce a certain level of warmth that some flagship devices today do not offer, its just a shame that they were not front firing speakers however with the phone faced down, the speakers are loud enough to fill up a room without attaching to an external speaker. On a side note, audiophiles should be happy to know that the phone supports the aptX lossless streaming, which the phone will indicate once you pair it to a aptX headphone or speaker.

Software and User Experience

ASUS has been really smart at its smartphone software and that’s pretty much all thanks to ex-HTC engineers working in the team, ZenUI has been one of my favorite Android skins since the first ZenFone and sadly on the ZenFone 2, ASUS starts preloading bloatware that might not be useful for many users out there. The device that we are reviewing now is using pretty much the same version of software as other ZenFone 2 models, ASUS has kept the phone’s overall user experience optimized by updating its system apps periodically on the Play Store, although there are still unnecessary bloat preinstalled, they can be easily removed easily if you do not need them.

ZenUI works well on the ZenFone 2 Laser’s hardware, given that ASUS have done a couple of firmware and software updates to the phone during the review period, I have never encountered any issues in app launches nor any freezes in its software. The Snapdragon 615 processor has performed very well in terms of thermal control, the phone remains fairly warm when using resource intensive apps and games, and that 3GB RAM does help in switching between applications fast.

One of the things I loved about ZenUI is the ability to customize the user experience with a wide variety of high quality themes, though most of its features are generally inspired from Chinese Android skins, ZenUI’s customizability extends to its system apps and app icons. There is also a lock app feature which I have always liked since the early ASUS Android devices, which is pretty useful when you want to lock data sensitive apps and games from other users. In a nutshell, you are literally getting a lot of value added features and a more polished software experience out of ASUS’s software which some other similar priced Chinese smartphones do not offer.

Camera

ASUS’s smartphone cameras have never ceased to impress me and the ZenFone 2 Laser’s has once again proven itself as a competent device for taking everyday photos, adding laser autofocus to its already capable 13-megapixel main camera definitely increases its usability in low lighting conditions, the camera however lacks hardware stabilization, which we shouldn’t be particular about for the phone’s category. If you are familiar with ASUS smartphones, you would have known that the camera software has a number of useful shooting modes that you will find it fun to use for a road trip. Check out the sample images down below, we’ll let you be the judge of picture quality.

The front facing 5-megapixel camera features a decent wide angle that can easily squeeze in a party of 8, as you can see from the image down below, however you might want to have steady hands when you are taking pictures in low light.

Benchmarks, Battery Life and Network

The ZenFone 2 Laser is a solid performer in many departments and while I encountered no major performance issues during my review period, the phone just doesn’t perform well in rendering 3D graphics when running benchmarks, thankfully most modern Android games are still playable, hence you need not worry too much on the figures you are getting from benchmarks, hence I suggest that you dismiss them, it doesn’t change the fact that this is a very snappy device.

We’ve reviewed numerous Snapdragon 615 powered devices here and all of them have incredible power efficiency, the ZenFone 2 Laser here managed to deliver a solid working day of juice, you will also be surprised on how little the battery depletes when using apps like Waze, but once the battery really goes off, you’ll have a tough time charging up as ASUS hasn’t enabled Qualcomm’s Quick Charge tech on it.

During the launch, ASUS has emphasized on the phone’s antenna system and even compared it to the iPhone and some other flagship Android devices, I can actually attest to that as the phone did really well in both GPS and cell reception, GPS fix is almost instant and the phone tends to deliver solid 4G performance when used with all Malaysian telcos.


ASUS ZenFone 2 Regional Launch Event VLOG

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The ASUS ZenFone 2 regional launch is happening on 21 April 2015 and we are over at Jakarta, Indonesia bringing you the coverage of the launch. This time, we are doing things a little differently than last year as we wanted to be more interactive with you folks and hence, I’ve decided that we should jump on a Vlog style posting that will give you a better view of what is happening on the scene. As they always say, a picture or video tells a thousand of words.

Part 3: Wrap Up!

 It’s a wrap people! The ASUS ZenFone 2 is now official in the region and sales will begin to kick off in May 9th, in this final Vlog we share with you on our experience on the event and a little thought on the ZenFone 2’s hands on and its newly launched accessories. Part 2: Venue Preview and Procedures While this is certainly no Consumer Electronics Show and Mobile World Congress, any international event can be overwhelming to a first timer and I’ve personally attended a couple of those huge crazy events. Similar to last year, ASUS has chosen Pullman Hotel Jakarta for its event launch and looks like we have folks from more Asian countries this year heading to the event – Myanmar, The Philippines and Taiwan, so we’re going to expect a really packed event for today and we therefore give you a preview tour around and how we register ourselves to get into the event. Part 1: Which Gadget accompanies me to Indonesia Shot at my very humble home a few hours before departing for the airport – its just only 2 hours of sleep after the editing work. I believe most folks would like to know what gadgets we bring abroad to an international event like this and I have my favorite gadgets to bring along to make my work more productive and fun. The ASUS ZenFone 2’s availability and pricing will be revealed on the Incredible Zen Day happening on 9th May 2015 at KL Live, Kuala Lumpur, we expect the phone to be priced around RM1259 for the flagship variant with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage.


ASUS Zenfone 2 (ZE551ML) Review: Does 4GB of RAM win our hearts over?

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The Zenfones are an amazing family of smartphones from ASUS, they are the only smartphones that pose a real threat to Chinese manufacturers. With a strong backing and huge marketing push from Intel, its really no wonder that a world’s leading PC motherboard manufacturer could rise to one of the top five smartphone brands in the market, and it certainly made of its competitors look really stupid with its affordable price tag for a great amount of features. This year, major flagships are starting to enter an era of 64-bit processors and Quad HD displays, and ASUS has played the game quite differently as well – by making and selling the world’s first
smartphone with 4GB RAM
, and that, is the Zenfone 2, or simply call it – the 2nd generation Zenfone.

ASUS ZenFone 2 (ZE551ML) Hardware Specifications
Processor:
 Intel Atom Z3580 64-bit 2.33GHz
RAM/ROM:
 4GB (Dual Channel)/32GB expandable up to 2TB MicroSD
Display:
 5.5″ Full HD (1920×1080) IPS with Gorilla Glass 3
Camera:
 13MP PixelMaster f/2.0 (Rear), 5MP (Front)
Connectivity:
 WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0, NFC
Networks:

Dual SIM 4G
 LTE Cat 6/DC-HSPA+/GSM
Battery:
 3000mAh

Marketing Confusion and Uninspired Design

When I attended the the Zenfone 2’s regional launch back then, I had already expected the company to announce a couple of variants of the product but little do I know that the company had in fact brought in all variants of the Zenfone 2 – well, that is actually a problem. I’m personally acceptable to the idea of ASUS selling entry to flagship hardware on a smartphone but to be honest, simply asking consumers to know which model number to buy is simply ridiculous and a really bad marketing move. ASUS, nobody wants to remember your smartphones just like your motherboards and I really tried convincing everyone I met that the Zenfone 2 is in fact a new phone, but when it comes to specs, things start getting complicated.

ASUS hasn’t changed much on the Zenfone 2’s design, I actually had a pretty good impression of it but until the retail unit falls into my hand, it failed to impress me like a premium and affordable smartphone like what the Zenfone 5 used to be. The Zenfone 2’s overall construction is cheaply made, its glossy plastic frame gets scratched easily even if you take extra good care of it, no doubt ASUS has made the bezels slimmer on its new flagship, we think it could be even slimmer by simply removing that spin effect bezel and switching to on screen buttons, it could be a design signature of the Zenfone however its not too late to give a slight change to a product’s design language.

The brushed finishing back cover definitely gives viewers a really premium look on first impressions and ASUS has thankfully not used flex plastic like Samsung’s older generation smartphones, our rant here is that ASUS just simply doesn’t want to make the phone’s battery removable despite of the phone’s thick size, though it may come to some point to argue that some users may not need to swap batteries, ASUS could have actually made that design but sadly you are getting pretty much the same hardware design as its predecessor.

Last but not the least, the volume rocker’s placement is a good rip off from LG however the power button isn’t, its too shallow to press on and you do need to turn on touch gestures to make life easier, like seriously, why can’t ASUS just steal that design properly or place that power button on the side? To be honest, the overall hardware design isn’t ugly, but I find it to be half baked and really uninspiring, and it certainly isn’t a product design that I’ve come to expect from ASUS.

ZenUI is great but ASUS could’ve done better

Its difficult to make great software experiences and as an experienced users of many smartphone user interfaces, ZenUI is actually one of my favorites for its energetic and vibrant color schemes, I would actually think since ASUS does hire HTC engineers over they could’ve pretty much include some HTC Sense inspired features however, the Zenfone 2’s software experience is nowhere different from most of the company’s current smartphones apart from running on Android 5.0 Lollipop.

ZenUI on the Zenfone 2 has a significant performance improvements thanks to the phone’s 4GB RAM and speedy 64-bit performance, you virtually see no lag in most parts of the user experience which ASUS has promised in its keynote, however the main issue here isn’t really about performance but what you can really do with the hardware’s added capability, while I’m not suggesting that ASUS should include bloated features (there’s in fact a lot of bloatware!), the company could have made use of that additional amount of RAM to implement more multitasking features such as split screen or floating widgets, which is so common in smartphone these days and ASUS hadn’t care of including it on the Zenfone 2’s software experience.

Nevertheless, I still have to commend ASUS’s effort in keeping a reliable software experience throughout our review period and while ASUS have introduced ZenMotion which is another rip off from Chinese phone makers, I have rarely used them because I simply do not need to.

The same great camera with no breakthroughs

ASUS’s PixelMaster camera was one of the most impressive camera technology last year, the company’s emphasis on low light photography was pretty commendable back then and this year, the Zenfone 2 gets the very same 13-megapixel f/2.0 camera back on the Padfone S and
Zenfone 6
, the camera performs generally well in most cases, focus and shutter speeds are fast and pictures are saved in a snap. Apart from that, ASUS has improved the camera’s manual mode and included a Super Resolution Mode that oversample pictures up to 50-megapixels. Pictures taken with the Zenfone 2’s camera are decent enough for most users but there really isn’t any breakthrough from last year’s offering, we could really appreciate a f/1.8 aperture being implemented on the phone.

Benchmarks, Battery Life & Network Quality

The Zenfone 2’s performance is beginning to show some edge over last year’s Snapdragon chip and we definitely have no doubts on it, you certainly can’t compare the chip’s true performance with today’s processors however you can be rest assured of a future proof hardware on the device.

Sadly, the Zenfone 2 tends to disappoint once again in battery life similar to its predecessors, even though ASUS have installed a pretty huge battery in the phone, its mere 11 hour battery life with a mere 2 hour on screen time just doesn’t do justice for its hardware, there could be just only two things to blame which could be the optimization behind ZenUI or Intel’s processor.

Fortunately, the Zenfone 2 maintains a steady LTE connection in supported coverage areas, the phone’s speakerphone produces a comfortable volume for listening to phone calls and callers are reporting a clear voice on our end.

Verdict – A decent smartphone that leaves us wanting more

Dwelling on a current success is an extremely dangerous thing and ASUS have certainly been enjoying that taste of success for its last generation Zenfones, the Zenfone 2 may feature a powerful 4GB RAM and the fastest processor that Intel has ever made however the company isn’t doing right in a few things – product model, ripping features off its competitors, a decent but outdated camera and unsatisfactory battery life. Despite of that, the
ASUS ZenFone 2
 is still a powerful smartphone that we would definitely recommend to users looking for an affordable flagship that delivers a stellar smartphone experience, however if you are already rocking a Zenfone 5/6 or Padfone S, it is best that you keep your cash and wait for the company’s next flagship, the phone’s mediocre build quality and software experience could’ve been better judging by ASUS standards, we simply want to see more from ASUS.

The Good:
+ Fast and speedy performance
+ Affordable
+ Great touch screen response
+
Dual SIM 4G
 standby
+ Great camera

The Not so Good:
– ZenUI is no longer innovative
– Mediocre build quality
– Power button placement isn’t great
– Poor battery life
– Loudspeaker could be better
– Product variant confusing

The
ASUS Zenfone 2
 gets a score of 8.1/10.

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ASUS Zenfone 3 Deluxe arrives in Malaysia

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The Zenfone 3 trio is finally complete as ASUS officially announces that the Zenfone 3 Deluxe has arrived in Malaysia.

ASUS Zenfone 3 Deluxe is the flagship of the entire Zenfone 3 line. Available in two configurations, the top-of-the-line Zenfone 3 Deluxe comes packed with Qualcomm’s latest flagship chip, the Snapdragon 821, 256GB of storage space and 6GB of RAM. A step below that, the standard Zenfone 3 Deluxe comes with a Snapdragon 820 processor, 64GB of storage space, and 6GB of RAM.

Both phones will come with a 5.7″ Full HD Super AMOLED display, and will sport a 23MP camera that utilises Sony’s IMX 318 lens. The Zenfone 3 Deluxe will come with Quick Charge 3.0 technology, as well as fingerprint security.

For those interested, the Snapdragon 820-64GB storage version of the Zenfone 3 Deluxe will retail for RM2,599. Meanwhile, the Snapdragon 821-256GB storage version will go for RM3,299.

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ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom arrives at Malaysia

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We met the ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom back in CES 2017 and ASUS has finally brought it to the Malaysian shores, the ZenFone 3 Zoom features an optical stabilized dual camera setup just like the iPhone 7 Plus, which has both a wide angle and telephoto lens that offers up to 2.3x optical zoom at 25mm and 59mm focal length, the phone’s camera will take 12-megapixel photos and features a maximum f/1.7 aperture on its wide angle lens, which is a significant improvement over its predecessor and should deliver much better low light performance.

In terms of hardware specifications, the ZenFone 3 Zoom is powered by the reliable Snapdragon 625 processor mated to 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, the phone also comes with many decent features, which includes a 5-magnet speaker with a NXP Smart Amp, a 5000mAh battery with reverse charging support, a 13-megapixel selfie camera, dual SIM with VoLTE support, and a 5.5-inch Full HD AMOLED display with 2.5D Gorilla Glass 5.

Retailing at the price of RM2,099, the ZenFone 3 Zoom is a rather attractive buy if you are not too particular about that mid-range system-on-chip, the phone still comes with Android 6.0 with ZenUI out of the box at this point of time, but you should expect an Android Nougat update very soon.

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ASUS ZenFone 3 Zoom Review: A phone that deserves to succeed

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ASUS didn’t made a tremendous success with the Zenfone Zoom last year, though it brought back optical zoom to phone cameras, the phone is sadly bogged down by a poor choice (but no choice) of hardware…*cough* Intel *cough*, the company was also late to launch the device as a quick follow up to the Zenfone 2, and the camera back then wasn’t as impressive as compared to other flagship devices of that time. A few days back, I have finally managed to get hold the final retail unit of the ZenFone 3 Zoom at the company’s media trip, it was my camera when hiking up the mountains, bracing the strong waterfall current and walking along the peaceful streets of Sungai Lembing, this short trip has managed to convinced me that the ZenFone 3 Zoom is a way more capable smartphone than I ever expected, and it is a phone that ASUS deserves to succeed in the competition.

Design and Hardware

The ZenFone 3 Zoom employs the very same design language that you will find on recent ASUS phones like the Max and Laser, which employs a metal unibody design that feels very good to the touch, not to forget to mention that this device isn’t a brick considering that it has a 5000mAh lithium-ion battery built in, the ZenFone 3 Zoom weighs 170 grams and measures 8mm. I’m glad that ASUS provides a TPU case out of the box this round, which not only protects the device but also makes it a less slippery device to hold. Despite of the great build quality that the Zoom has, ASUS has not made it resistant to dust and water.

ASUS has rarely disappoint when it comes to phone displays and the Zoom is no disappointment, the 5.5-inch display is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 and produces a still decent Full HD resolution with an AMOLED panel, I was particularly impressed with the touch response time as I have never find myself touching the wrong thing when using the phone, the capacitive touch controls also provide a decent haptic feedback which I absolutely love. However, I do miss the dedicated camera shutter key that is present on the previous Zoom, and there’s no way that you can attach a lanyard to the phone’s chassis, but these are compromises that ASUS needs to make for the phone’s current design, which is completely understood.

Under the hood, the Zoom is powered by the efficient Snapdragon 625 processor that we are extremely familiar with, there’s also 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage, users can expand storage using a MicroSD card using the second SIM slot if required. Despite of the huge battery that ASUS has provided, the Zoom only accepts a 10W 2.0A input through its USB-C port, it will still charge at an acceptable speed but not as fast as you would expect from phones with fast charging. The Zoom is also no slouch when it comes to the audio department, as it features the same 5-magnet speakers with NXP Smart AMP from the ZenFone 3, while supporting Hi-Res audio 192KHz/24-bit output via its 3.5mm headphone jack. Therefore, if you loved what the ZenFone 3 has offered, you are not going to have problems with the Zoom’s hardware.

Software and User Experience

If you have used a ZenFone 3 before, the experience is going to be the same as it uses the same performance internals, the Zoom is fast and snappy like most Snapdragon 625 powered device that we have come across. At the time of writing this review, the Zoom is running Android Marshmallow out of the box with ZenUI preloaded, which you should expect very much the same set of software features present on recent ZenFone models, ASUS has already delivered Nougat to the ZenFone 3 and it shouldn’t be long that the Zoom receives an update as well.

What makes the new Zoom such an enjoyable device is the reliability it delivers, if you were to compare with its predecessor, it doesn’t overheat and never slows down as you use more apps, which saves the need to clear the phone’s memory every now and then. During the review period, the phone has been a very comfortable typing device not just because of its light weight, but also the great touch screen response that allows me to type confidently with two hands.

The Zoom scores high in my books when it comes to the audio department, although ASUS didn’t employ a dual speaker setup like what HTC has done with BoomSound, the phone’s mono loudspeakers produces clean audio even when the volume level is maxed out, though the experience could have been even better if ASUS have included another speaker at the earpiece. In addition, the Zoom’s headphone output is able to power my Sony MDR-1000X without any issues, and since this is a Hi-Res audio certified device, it plays lossless audio files and is able to deliver detailed sound to your headphones, not to forget to mention that it also supports Qualcomm’s aptX for CD quality wireless streaming, an audio equalizer is also present with support for DTX Headphone:X 7.1 surround sound.

Camera

When I saw the ZenFone 3 Zoom back in CES, I was rather doubtful of its camera capabilities as I wasn’t able to test it properly in the experiential zone, I was also quick to conclude that the camera should work pretty much the same or worse than the iPhone 7 Plus, but it turns out that the Zoom’s dual camera setup exceeds my expectations after spending a few days with it, and I can confirm that it is better than the iPhone 7 Plus in some ways.

Let’s drill down to specs, the phone’s dual camera sensors capture 12-megapixel photos with a focal length of 25mm for the wide angle lens and 59mm for the zoom lens, while having an aperture range of f/1.7-f/2.6, which is a much improved setup from its predecessor. In contrast, the iPhone 7 Plus’ dual camera setup is a 28mm wide angle lens and a 56mm telephoto lens, with an aperture range of f/1.8-f/2.8. Last but not the least, the ZenFone 3 Zoom’s camera has a large 1/2.55″ sensor size, which is significantly larger than the iPhone 7 Plus’ 1/3″ sensor size, hence you do already see who the winner is here.

On top of that, there’s a lot of tech included behind that dual camera lens, 4-axis optical stabilization and 3-axis electrical stabilization, dual pixel phase detection autofocus, laser autofocus, ASUS SuperPixel Engine that increases light sensitivity up to 2.5x and a Color Correction Sensor for producing accurate colors in pictures. These features may be overwhelming for the average user, but it is what makes the ZenFone 3 Zoom the best mobile shooter in its class even when you are an amateur photographer, the camera takes impressive pictures in auto mode most of the time, while you do find pictures to be easily overexposed due to the sensor’s sensitivity to light, fiddle a while with the manual settings and your pictures will look just the way you want. The ASUS Camera app is also something that I have been commending for a while since the first ZenFone, and it continues to impress with a variety of shooting modes.

Camera Samples

Camera Sample (Zoom, right for Standard focal length, left for 2.3x optical zoom)

Video Recording (4K 30fps)

Since the ZenFone 3, ASUS has promoted the use of both OIS and EIS for the phone’s video shooting capabilities. With the same stabilization hardware included, the Zoom takes pretty stable videos on handheld, while I’m also glad to see an improvement in the phone’s software in using the ISO speed to control the brightness of the video, the shutter speed unfortunately changes during the shoot if the camera requires more light, which results a drop in video frame rates, let’s hope ASUS can fix this using a software update.

Though it may seem like ASUS has only worked hard on the Zoom’s main cameras, ASUS isn’t missing out the opportunity to attract selfie lovers with a wide angle 13-megapixel front camera, it has a sensor size of 1/3.06″ and a f/2.0 aperture, which works pretty well in low light.

Battery Life

As we have come to know of the Snapdragon 625 system on chip, it has delivered superb power consumption on devices like the Oppo R9s, which only sports a 3000mAh battery. With a 5000mAh battery onboard, you can definitely trust the ZenFone 3 Zoom to last a full day if you are using it as a road trip camera, and up to 2 days if you are using it purely for web browsing and texting. However, the Zoom lacks support for Quick Charge 3.0 and should the battery ever run flat, it is going to take a while to get the phone fully charged, there’s also no wireless charging included as well.

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The ASUS Zenfone family of smartphones are pretty impressive in both pricing and performance, the Zenfone 5 that we reviewed a couple of months back has impressed us a lot as well. Of course, the company isn’t resting its laurels on waiting other manufacturers to catch up and have continued to update its Zenfone variants, one of the updated variants have finally reached our labs, meet the ASUS Zenfone 4 A450CG, this updated entry-level smartphone now has a larger 4.5-inch display, an 8 Megapixel Pixelmaster camera and a slightly larger
1750mAh
 battery.

ASUS Zenfone 4 A450CG First Impressions & Unboxing Video

A good phone that gets even better

We had a great impression with the original Zenfone 4 though we haven’t had a chance to review it, the refreshed Zenfone 4 is much more better now with a larger 4.5-inch display, display resolution maintains the same at 854×480 pixels which is still fine for such a display size. As you can see in the picture above, the screen brightness has been maxed out and visibility is pretty poor outdoors.

The phone maintains the very same hardware internals such – powered by an Intel Atom Z2520 1.2GHz processor with 1GB RAM and 8GB of internal memory with
MicroSD expansion
. Back on the original Zenfone 4, its battery was removable and at an extremely low 1200mAh, the updated model now has its battery fixed on to the device and a major increase to an additional 550mAh capacity, it is also still a dual SIM capable device.

Similar to the Zenfone 5, this entry-level sibling has a really solid build material that feels good on hand, the increased screen size has provided a better grip for bigger hands, the back maintains the same rough plastic material which hides away finger prints brilliantly especially with the white color model.

Probably the best upgrade of all is the main camera optics, which has been upgraded to a similar resolution found on the Zenfone 5. With its updated camera resolution, the new Zenfone 4 would have one of the best cameras in the entry-level smartphone segment while supporting ASUS’s PixelMaster low light photography technology, which is absent on the original Zenfone 4. Check out the shots that we’ve taken down below and comparison with the Zenfone 5’s camera.

ASUS Zenfone 4 A450CG (Left), ASUS Zenfone 5 (Right)

Low light mode, ASUS Zenfone 4 A450CG (Left), ASUS Zenfone 5 (Right)

Stay tuned for some comparisons and full review coming right up. Have a wishlist on what phones you want it to compare with the Zenfone 4, leave a comment down below!


ASUS ZenFone 4 (A450CG) Review: Upgraded capabilities, affordability maintained

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ASUS first led the affordable smartphone market here before Chinese brands start storming in the market, the ZenFones arrived late in the market, but they were generally well received for its elegant design and surprisingly affordable price tag yet offering a beautiful software experience onboard. Six months has passed, the company has upped its own game by introducing an updated variant of its entry level ZenFone 4, in which we find an increment in display size, upgrade camera optics while maintaining the same iconic design.

ASUS Zenfone 4 A450CG Video Review

Raising the bar on the entry-level smartphone game once again

After ASUS announced the Zenfone 4, competition of entry-level smartphones became fierce, so fierce that almost everyone attempted to bring their own entry-level products down to the similar price of the Zenfone 4. With all that success, ASUS isn’t just going to stop there and feel comfortable with selling the original Zenfone 4, which lead to the birth of it’s successor with the model number A450CG. The new Zenfone 4 has raised the standards of entry-level smartphones once again, by introducing the same solid build quality that you’ve probably loved on the original Zenfone 4 but with a larger 4.5-inch display with Gorilla Glass 3 and better 8 Megapixel Pixelmaster camera. And with that kind of update, ASUS still managed to maintain the phone’s price tag below RM400.

ASUS ZenFone 4 (A450CG) Hardware Specifications

Processor:
 Intel Atom Z2520 1.2GHz Dual Core Quad Thread

RAM/ROM:
 1GB/8GB (expandable via MicroSD)

Display:
 4.5″ WVGA (800×480) LCD with Gorilla Glass 3

Camera:
 8MP PixelMaster f/2.0 (Main), 0.3MP (Front)

Connectivity:
 WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, BT 4.0, USB OTG

Features:
 ASUS ZenUI, What’s Next, Do It Later, ZenLink

Networks:
 DC-HSPA+/GSM, Dual SIM

Battery:
 1750mAh

Most of the hardware internals remain the same as the original Zenfone 4, due to a larger screen size, the new Zenfone 4’s display looks pixelated with its low WVGA resolution and screen brightness isn’t that great for outdoor use, touch response and viewing angles are fortunately acceptable.

ZenUI + Android 4.4 – ASUS has done the right thing

Ever since we’ve reviewed the ASUS Fonepad 7 FE170CG and ASUS ZenFone 5, we fell in love with it as it feels so simple yet elegant, it also feels very HTC Sense like with its flat icons and you will find similarities to it in its user experience. ASUS has also done one right thing that many entry-level phones failed to possess – shipping Android 4.4 KitKat out of the box, though the adoption of KitKat is gradually increasing but its good to have it shipped by default rather than having customers dreading for the update to come.

ZenUI introduces some of the many favorite features that we’ve come to love on ASUS smartphones, What’s Next and Do It Later keeps you informed of your upcoming appointments and tasks that you have saved to do later, you also have the usual ZenLink apps – PC Link, Remote Link, Share Link, and Party Link which lets you mirror your phone’s display on your computer and sharing content to other smartphones easily, you basically have the full suite of ZenUI on the Zenfone 4.

PixelMaster Camera – No other entry level devices can have this

Let’s admit it, apart from the Xiaomi Redmi 1s, no entry-level smartphone has such a high resolution camera as the ASUS Zenfone 4, the company has probably realized that it is worth having an updated camera onboard it’s entry level device rather than having it’s processing internals upgraded, though some users may prefer the other way round. Back on the Zenfone 5 review, we commented that the Pixelmaster isn’t the best camera that we’ve seen, however in the Zenfone 4’s
case
, we have to give it pretty good rating, it produces detailed images and accurate color saturation in good lighting conditions, indoor and low light shots aren’t as outstanding, the phone’s camera has attempted to maintain a low ISO sensitivity but despite of that, we can still find loss of detail and noise in images. Check out the sample images down below.

When we saw the 1080p Full HD video recording option in the camera’s setting, we were so excited to try it out and expected some decent quality from the phone’s camera, but we are left totally underwhelmed after pressing the record button and viewing it on our PC. You don’t need to take our word for it, just view the video recording sample down below.

Similar to other ASUS devices, the Zenfone 4’s camera app is fully featured with various interesting shooting modes such as Time Rewind, Miniature, Beautification and GIF Animation, which give users one of the best entry-level smartphone photography experience out there.

Benchmarks, Battery Life and Network Quality

Entry-level devices don’t really farewell in benchmark results, the Zenfone 4 has the same fate and we can easily translate that score into real world usage, we experienced choppiness and app crashes in our review period and that happens after using the phone for some time or we have too many background apps active, the phone’s limited RAM and ZenUI could attribute to that performance issue, however if you aren’t multitasking too much, it works fine actually.

(Note: By default, WhatsApp can’t be moved to the
SD card
)

ASUS has done one great stuff on the storage part, by enabling many apps to move to the SD card thus having more free space for apps, this is also one thing that many entry-level smartphones have failed to implement. In addition, our Spotify offline files are downloaded into the external
SD card
 instead of the internal storage.

Battery life on the Zenfone 4 isn’t outstanding, we’ve expected such battery life from the phone despite having it used very minimally while having an active data connection and dual SIM standby, ASUS has also removed the capability to swap the phone’s battery which was previously available on the original Zenfone 4, you’ll need to keep a powerbank handy, the phone charges pretty fast over a 1A current.

The Zenfone 4 is a champ in phone calls, while its dual SIM feature works well out of the box, network quality maintains strong all the time and we hadn’t face call drops at all on the Maxis and Celcom network, the phone also supports DC-HSPA+ 42Mbps data connection speeds and this is one thing you’ll never get to have on some entry-level devices.

An great entry-level phone that gets better, ASUS should offer more upgrades

The original Zenfone 4 can be considered a game changer in the entry-level smartphone market, it has great hardware quality and a beautiful software experience, the new Zenfone 4 A450CG has set a new standard in the entry-level smartphone market again, giving consumers the best of what the company itself can offer. Of course, we would’ve expected more from ASUS rather than a screen and camera upgrade, if the phone has 2GB of RAM, a qHD (960×540) resolution display and a slightly higher battery capacity, the Zenfone 4 could very well pose a threat to the entry-level smartphone competition.

Verdict

Bigger and better, the all new ASUS Zenfone 4 introduces a necessary upgrade to its predecessor, the upgrade PixelMaster camera rules entry-level smartphone photography.

The Good
+ Solid hardware quality
+ ZenUI is a beautiful software
+ Great camera and photography experience
+ Larger display fits better in big hands
+ Great network quality

The Not so Good
– Average battery life
– Average display quality
– 1GB of RAM isn’t sufficient
– Choppy video recording frame rates with video stabilization turned on

The new ASUS Zenfone 4 A450CG retails at RM385, we give it a rating of 3.5 out of 5 stars.