Asus, a well known player in the PC industry has brought its signature Zenbook Pro line of laptops to the Kenyan market.
The laptop in question is the Asus Zenbook Pro UX480F which is squarely aimed at the premium market and it has the specifications to boot.
| Specification | Zenbook Pro 14 |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel® Core™i7 8565U (1.8Ghz quad core with Turbo Boost upto 4.6Ghz) |
| Graphics | NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Max-Q with 4GB of VRAM |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro/Home |
| Displa | 14" 1920 x 1080p LED 100% sRGB colour gamut, Pantone validated 5.2 mm thin bezel |
| RAM | 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 |
| Storage | 512GB PCIe x2 SSD |
| Keyboard | Full backlit with 1.4mm key travel |
| ScreenPad™ | 5.5" 1920 x 1080p Super IPS+ display Precision touchpad technology |
| Audio | Asus SonicMaster stereo audio Array microphone 3.5 mm headphone jack |
| Wireless connectivity | Dual band 2x2 802.11 ac Bluetooth 5.0 |
| Battery and Power | 70Wh battery 90W power adapter |
| Ports | 1 USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C 1 USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A 1 USB 2.0 Standard HDMI 1 Combo audio jack |
| Colour | Deep Dive Blue |
The Zenbook Pro UX480F is a premium laptop from Asus. It has a beautiful metal chassis in the deep dive blue colour variant. The screen is a great 1080p panel with excellent colour calibration out of the box and tiny bezels. Thanks to its excellent colour reproduction, this laptop is great for video editing, photo editing, surfing the web, watching movies and much more.
It also has a unique hinge that lifts up the keyboard for better ergonomics and for better cooling. The hinge is balanced well and you can open the laptop without lifting its base up which is a good thing. The extra benefit of the raised nature means that this laptop stays cool
Underneath the system is the Core i7 8565U which is a powerful CPU for this ultrabook. It has 4 cores and 8 threads and handles work you throw it at ease. Paired with the 16GB of RAM and the blazing fast 512GB SSD storage, opening apps or doing any type of work will feel zippy. It also has the NVIDIA GTX 1050 Max-Q graphics card which will help accelerate such workloads like video editing, photo editing in apps like Lightroom and also gaming on latest titles.
The laptop also has a generous 70Whr battery which paired with its frugal components gives it great battery life. It has 3 USB ports, one being a Type C port which can be used to charge the laptop. There is a full HDMI port, a combo headphone jack and a microSD card reader. There is no Ethernet port for those people who like being tethered but there is great fast ac Wi-Fi on board so you will not feel the loss too much.
The most defining feature about this laptop is what Asus terms as the ScreenPad. Asus debuted this feature last year and it is quite cool. Instead of opting for a traditional glass or plastic touchpad, Asus used a touchscreen that acted like both a touchscreen and a touchpad and it has its interesting uses.
It has different modes where you can use apps to extend its utility, use it as an extended display or turn off the interface altogether and use it as a normal touchpad. Apps you can use include a calculator, using it as a virtual NumKey, calendar and even download a special Spotify app that allows you to use the Spotify Windows app in cool ways.
This laptop has pretty high end specifications and as such, it is not cheap. The Core i7 8565U/16GB RAM/512GB SSD/NVIDIA GTX 1050 Max-Q variant will retail in Kenya for Kshs 209,990. There is a cheaper version (UX433) with the Core i7 8565U, 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD storage and it will cost Kshs 149,990.
They will be available at Bright Technologies and Text Book Centre Branches.
