Review on 💻 ASUS ZenBook 15 Ultra-Slim Laptop: 15”FHD Touch, Intel Core i7, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, GeForce GTX, ScreenPad 2.0 by Mark Kolipano

I really wanted this laptop to be liked. i7 10th Gen 16GB 4K LCD NVIDIA GTX1650 512GB SSD? Where else can you get a laptop with these specs for less than $1,200? I could not find it. Initially, I was completely impressed with the laptop's style, screen, USB-C port, etc., but once I started using it, things took a turn for the worse. cute, but it's just a gimmick we can all live without. I love that I can play YouTube video music while working on the home screen, nice but not necessary. I also like that I can launch the calculator and that you can switch between using it as a second monitor and as a touchpad with a click of an icon. But that's where the good ends and the bad begins. The onscreen bar would sometimes become unresponsive and I couldn't return to the touchpad. It also seems to have caused my system to freeze. As with any touchpad, sensitivity is also very important here, since mouse buttons are almost completely eliminated. Due to the feature rich design of the touchpad/touchpad, a little but more pressure is required as if the buttons were still there. I found this to be problematic for my workflow when not using an external mouse, as it sometimes didn't register my click and forced me to click on it like a mouse button. I also noticed that when I used it as a second screen, placed a browser tab or even a video there, I spent a lot of time looking down, which quickly became uncomfortable on my neck and reminded me of the pain, that I had suffered before. due to poor posture and deficiencies in the ergonomics of some computers. Keyboard: The keyboard is just too narrow for my taste and has been shrunk to a 10-key number pad. The arrangement of the up/down - left/right arrows is absolutely inconvenient, and the color of the keys is silvery. While this is not a major problem, it is an issue due to the light color of the letters and numbers, which can be highlighted. If you're in a brightly lit room they can be hard to see with the backlight on, and if you're in a dark room the backlight won't be as bright. The keys aren't textured either, meaning they're slippery huh isn't great when typing, other than the fact that the keys are a bit smaller than regular laptop keyboards as they're compressed to combat the 10-key keyboard. Worst of all is the position of the power button, which is on the keyboard right next to the rest of the keys. I accidentally pressed it a couple of times, which activated sleep mode before changing the function in the Control Panel under Power Management. The more I used it, the less I liked this keyboard and the more it annoyed me. Looking back I remember a similar keyboard issue in an old HP multimedia laptop, the same lighting and skid issues with the paint peeling off the keys over time in less than 3 years of use. GPU/CPU: The GPU in this laptop is a pretty decent model, and while I didn't buy this laptop for gaming, the included NVIDIA card should suffice for an entry-level graphics accelerator. I decided to use this laptop for Adobe Lightroom. I found Intel Core i7-10510U, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GPU; 16GB of RAM would have been a massive improvement in processing time over my Surface Pro 4 with a 7th Gen i5, Intel integrated graphics and only 8GB of RAM. I was surprised this wasn't the case. Performance with LR was about the same, if not worse, than my Surface Pro 4. I thought it was a coincidence, but to my surprise, did a direct comparison using the same directory and image files. , I found no noticeable increase in processing speed with ASUS over my favorite Surface Pro 4 tablet. I turned off all background apps, and while it improved performance, it was something to write home about. The only thing that really stood out was the fan noise. Not the sound of a fan failing, but the sound of a fan speeding up to cool the system. It was quite noisy compared to the fan in the smaller, less powerful Surface. So loud it was distracting. LCD: Great 4K screen, vivid colors, pictures and movies looked great but felt a little flimsy for my liking, but that doesn't bother me as I usually use an external monitor or two as part of my USB-C process I'm using : I was specifically looking for a laptop with at least one USB-C port so I could use two external monitors, only to find that I can't do that with this model as it only uses USB-C Gen 2 and not flash. This was a hurdle for me as the listing didn't specify what USB-C generation was on board. I checked the ASUS website and found that none of the available models with the configuration I needed (i7, UHD, 16GM RAM, NVIDIA Geoforce GTX 1650 or higher) were available with Thunderbolt, possibly due to the screenpad only on board found a Zenbook Duo with the configuration I needed which was about $2000 more expensive and again the screen I had to look down at wouldn't start up because of the neck pain it would cause, although I initially got the idea liked back as I couldn't find the configuration I was looking for, because in a lightweight 15 inch form factor from ASUS. I have a previous 15" ASUS laptop with an NVIDIA 3D card which I really liked but it also had its issues, 1TB HDD and 128GB SDD on board that had an OS , which had to be completely disassembled to be replaced. When I got sick I had to send it back for a replacement and found I needed a bigger SSD as the apps got bigger and bigger with each new version. But I thought I would give ASUS another chance with this new design but unfortunately this laptop is not for me. I replaced it with a Dell XPS 15 (which pays $600 more for 3 years of customer support and 3 years of antivirus), slightly heavier, same configuration except has a 9th gen i7 and USB-C Thunderbolt. Dell's OLED screen is much brighter, text and graphics are crisp, and the body is silver, but the keyboard is carbon fiber. Jet Black without a 10-key keyboard that allows using the full-size keys of the laptop, except for the arrows, which are quite noticeable when used, but I can live with that. Performance was noticeably better, which was quite surprising, and fan noise wasn't as loud as ASUS, and the fans didn't spin as fast when the LR was running when no other apps were running in the background, which is indicative of this heat dissipation on XPS was better. in general (there may be a difference between the 9th and 10th generation due to additional cores). In contrast, the 10th gen i7 and 9th gen i7 are comparable processors without much difference in design, but the 10th simply has more cores, but it says that for gaming and Lightroom in particular, the 10th gen is noticeably faster should be. This did not happen in my side-by-side ASUS Zenbook 15 vs XPS 15 comparison. The 9th Gen i7 in XPS was faster and the laptop was quieter than the ASUS Zenbook 15 with the 10th Gen i7. I happily returned ASUS the next morning and have never regretted that decision. Dell has its own little quirks, but I can live with that. SUMMARY: If you need Thunderbolt USB-C, this laptop isn't for you. USB-C Gen 2 doesn't have Displayport capabilities, meaning you can't use it to connect external monitors to your laptop. Thunderbolt has a higher transfer rate. Its speed allows faster access to more data compared to USB-C Gen 2. If you're looking for a gaming laptop, get one of the dedicated gaming laptops instead, skip the on-screen bar and upgrade to an RTX processor instead of a GTX. thanks later Unless you need to connect more than one external monitor in addition to what you can connect via the built-in HDMI port, you can live with the keyboard issues I've pointed out and don't need or expect heavy CPU usage, might this cute laptop will be for you. It looks really good, especially the screenpad. If you're after looks, this screen will draw a lot of attention in a coffee shop. YMMV