Always travel ‘light’ with Asus Zenbook UX433F

We all need a personal computer or a laptop in our life which is as an important companion as our own family member. For busy professionals and those who are on frequent travel it is imperative to own a light laptop and with the advent of technology and new design, an era of lightweight laptops has arrived.

We had received a blue colour ZenBook to experience first impressions and provide our review on the product. At the outset it is a sleek premium laptop carved in aluminium and gave us a premium feel. Many players like Dell, Acer and Asus have brought light weight premium laptops in the market.

Design & Display : The Asus Zenbook is a premium light weight notebook weighing just less than a kilogram at 1190 grams. The 14 inch notebook can be carried very comfortably in small backpacks as well.

• The 14-inch display with Full HD resolution 1920 x 1080 with wide view angles and the thin bezel design, gives it an edge-to-edge look.
• Anti-glare properties make it convenient to view even in sunlight and tube lights or LED lights.
• The 14-inch Full HD display is larger than the ones found on Apple’s offering.
• The matte-finished exterior is a shift away from the usual glossy metallic surfaces that are found on ZenBooks and with this model, the attraction of fingerprint residue is greatly diminished.
• The lid is very sturdy with minimum wobble.
• The ultra slim bezels are just 2.9mm thin at the sides, 3.3 mm at the bottom and a mere 6.1 mm at the top to accommodate the camera. Asus ZenBook 14 has a crisp, clear, high-resolution display that makes any visuals look their best, with wide viewing angles and vivid, accurate colors.
• Featuring an all-metallic body, the lid is extremely sturdy and there was minimal wobble observed.
• Asus has conducted battery tests including tough military grade ones and it has survived extreme climatic temperatures.

Keyboard and connectivity:

The keyboard has been designed very well.

The keys look big and well-spaced, allowing users to type fast without pressing the adjoining keys. The keyboard is full size backlit with 1.4 mm Key Travel. This means that one can type in the dark with the same ease as in a well-lit room.

ZenBook 14 also introduces the exclusive new number pad, a touchpad with a switchable numeric keypad for speedy data entry. Even when the number pad is activated, the touchpad retains its cursor function.

It comes with two full-sized USB-A 3.1 ports, a headphone jack, one Type-C port, a microSD card slot, and a full-sized HDMI port. These ports are significantly more than what its competition offers.

ASUS has used a Chicklet-styled backlit keyboard on the ZenBook 14 and there is an option to customise the lights depending on the lighting environment the laptop is used in. There is a fair amount of travel between the keys with it measuring 1.4mm; making it extremely comfortable and convenient for working longer periods. Moving on, the trackpad is great too and it comes with Windows 10 gestures. It is smooth and pretty responsive and we did not find any issues with it.

The entire trackpad surface is a left-click button when pressed upon, except of course the area that’s designated for the right-click. Apart from this, there is the super-responsive fingerprint sensor that’s located below the arrow keys.

Connectivity options include HDMI and USB.

There is no LAN port, however, Asus is bundling a free USB to LAN converter with the notebook.

Performance: The Asus notebook runs on Intel’s 8th gen Core i7 chipset with 8GB RAM and Windows 10 (64-bit). It handled most tasks comfortably. It comes with 512 GB storage which is good enough to tow away a lot of photos, offline movies and music. However, it ensures the apps and OS will boot up a lot faster than HDD notebooks.

Though the design and build is the main selling point of the laptop, the ZenBook 14 is built around some amazing hardware. It boasts an 8th Generation Intel Core processor. For storage, ASUS has thrown in a 512GB PCI-E Gen3X4 SSD here, which is sufficient enough for storing documents, media and other data.

As far as the thermal area goes, the laptop remains pretty cool even during continuous usage and the heat management is taken care of well. It does get a bit hotter whilst charging, but it cools off petty quickly as well.

Sound Quality

• The Zenbook notebook comes with 1 Watt of Harman Kardon speakers which give you clear sound clarity.
• During review we had observed that streaming of movies and TV we had clear sound clarity and it was good experience.

Battery

• Asus Zenbook comes with a three cell 50 Watt-hours polymer battery which lasts for an average of 15 hours.
• During review using the laptop continuously we found the battery lasted for about 7 hours on an average.
• This much is good enough to last for day’s work without charging it.

Miscellaneous

• The laptop comes loaded with Windows 10 (64-bit) and it also features Modern Standby and Cortana.
• With Modern Standby, you get an instant on, instant off experience, which is similar to a smartphone.
• It also features Asus Wi-Fi Master Technology with ultra-fast downloads and smooth streaming experience.

Verdict:

• The ZenBook 14 is one of the most ergonomic friendly and thin notebooks which is well priced competitively alongside other brands like Acer and Dell.
• Must for a frequent traveller to carry it easily at all times.
• Must for a working professional or social media professionals.