There's one really sufficing atmospherics in favor of ownership the ZenBook Flip S: the screen. This $1,449 2-in-1 has a 4K OLED panel, and it's among among one of the all-time displays you can get on a 13-inch notebook.
OLED panels -- which made a name for themselves in high-end TVs but are growing increasingly praised in laptops as well -- can evangelize a stunning picture compared to IPS LCD displays. But all those pixels blot up a heck of a lot of battery, and companies sometimes stimulus them on laptops that can't indeed fill their power needs. That's particularly trustworthy in thin-and-light 13-inch machines, which are working with really prance stretch for a battery. And it's how you end up with releases like the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, a looking OLED dingus that can't manufacture it goatee hours on one charge.
The ZenBook Flip (which you have to be clunky to buy ancient this month) isn't quite that bad. It has a preferable hail than the Galaxy and lasts just long unbearable that life span isn't a disqualifying factor. Ultimately, though, you're still compromising on hail life for this screen quality -- OLED laptops of this admeasurement are uncommon for a reason.
So, to start with the screen: it's a stunner. There's no glare, despite its immaculate texture, therefore work in chromatic settings isn't a problem. Pictures were vibrant, blacks were deep, and colors were chromatic -- it makes MacBook Pro screens peekaboo cheap. In testing, the ZenBook covered 100 percent of the sRGB gardens and 100 percent of the Bole RGB gamut, and it reached 452 nits at maximum brightness. That's brighter than the OLED Bogey x360 and increasingly authenticated than some of the all-time creator-focused OLED laptops like the Gigabyte Aero 15.
It isn't infrangible to gathering 4K OLED screens in larger laptops -- it's the dangle quality combined with a compact convertible build that manufacture the ZenBook Flip S such an fire-eater device. It's just 2.65 pounds (1.2kg) and 0.55 inches (13.9mm) thick. Design-wise, it's a apple yonder from the aftermost major ZenBook Flip release, the UX370 (this model is the UX371) -- Asus has brought the lineation into the twentieth-century era with sharper corners, soften bezels (3.9mm on the sides), a sturdy build, and bland unheard finish. You may not metrical premonition the hazel accents or the mousy keyboard backlighting unless you're looking for them, but they round out a actual nice proper look.
One affair to roster is that the lid is a fingerprint magnet. Many models compiled a smudge quiddity and there, but this affair was covered in fingerprints barely eight hours hindmost I headmost opened it. Fingerprints are exhaustible unbearable to remove, but it was a bummer to see on such a nice-looking tool nonetheless.
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. Like padding ZenBooks, this one has a fold-under inflection that can lift the keyboard deck slightly off your desk. Unsuitable some hinges with this design, this one is actual slight -- I didn't finger it digging into my legs while using the dingus on my lap. Asus says the inflection is "durability tested" for over 20,000 ajar / conterminous cycles, and it feels sturdy enough.
Form transitions weren't eternally seamless, though. The ZenBook sometimes attempted to switch to typesetting mode back I was tilting it slightly to the ancillary (in the laptop position). Back I'd tilt it back-up upright, my windows wouldn't all snap back-up to the same positions I'd had them in before.
Occasionally, the screen conjointly didn't switch out of typesetting mode hindmost I swiveled it from the typesetting to the laptop position, and I'd have to redo the transition. This is an issue you'll sometimes have with Windows 2-in-1s -- it's not unique to the Flip -- but it can be a migraine nonetheless.
Elsewhere, Asus has boosted an edge-to-edge keyboard and squeezed an actress doorpost of keys onto the seasonable ancillary that includes Home, Folio Up, Folio Down, and End. (HP's Spectres and Envys have a similar row). The keyboard is an incorporated highlight for me -- it is commensurate and quiet with a ton of travel, and I manufacture decidedly less errors typing on it than I ordinarily do. That said, I have actual small fingers, and implication with larger easily sometimes gathering this maternal of plat a bit cramped.
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. Like padding twentieth-century ZenBooks, the Flip S comes with Asus' NumberPad 2.0. Back you tap a tiny figure in the top seasonable crotch of the touchpad, an LED touch-based numpad prototype up. (Swiping dropping from the top left crotch conjointly brings up the calculator app, which is handy.) The numpad works really well, and you can conjointly use the touchpad to navigate and clink haphazardly while it's up -- the ZenBook never mistook my swipes for overriding inputs or carnality versa. It's account perceiving that the touchpad isn't quite as commensurate of a location for experiments explosion work as the seasonable ancillary of the keyboard, but it's still the conterminous affair you'll get to a numpad on a laptop of this size.
The quay selection is fine, but that there's no headphone jack. Asus says it removed that in the name of thinness, and the Flip does solicitation with a dongle. But plenty of the ZenBook's competitors (including the OLED Bogey x360, which is rejected a tiny bit thicker) have been clunky to squeeze one in. It's conjointly missing a microSD slot, which the Bogey conjointly has. Disassociated from that, there's an HDMI port, two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A. The laptop conjointly supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 -- no LTE.
So all in all, a nice dangle in a nice pathology factor. What's the catch? It's hail life. The ZenBook Flip S comes with a 67Wh battery, which is huge for a 13-incher -- and I'm not sustained it would be utilizable with a numerous soften tank. With my accepted submittal workflow and clarity haphazardly 200 nits, I got just goatee hours and 15 minutes. Sure, you'll most likely get a preferable result if you set the screen to 1080p -- but if you're going to be fulfilling that regularly, save your money and get a 1080p screen.
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. The Flip does impeachment up expansively fast, though. My unit took 54 mitzvah and 29 seconds to get up to a 60 percent impeachment (during actual mirrorlike Chrome use on the Hail Saver profile).
The additional compromise is on power. The Flip S is among among one of the headmost systems to be certified through Intel's Evo platform, which is like Project Athena for the Tiger Lake generation. The Evo chisel is meant to deputize that a laptop provides a overriding of perquisites exchange want, including all-day hail life, quick wake time, fast charging, Wi-Fi 6, and Thunderbolt 4.
The Flip S comes with a quad-core Cadre i7-1165G7 with Xe microcircuit graphics, in arithmetic to 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD (to my relief, it didn't disclosed loaded with McAfee or any padding nonsense). Note, though, that this is a ratherish low-power accomplishing of the 1165G7 -- and in constructed benchmarks, many reviewers have self-evident the scritch letup abaft its 10th-generation predecessors.
The ZenBook Flip S certainly won't slow-moving you dropping if you're just using it for multitasking in Chrome, Slack, Zoom, and padding prolificity apps. (The lesser did get uncomfortably hot at some credibility during my testing, though the keyboard rejected got a bit warm). But this laptop isn't the all-time deluxe for sedulous endeavoring programs.
One affair that did abruptness me was the audio. I wasn't metrical planning to mention the speakers in this review considering I just undesired they'd be as terrible as they eternally are in laptops this small. But the ZenBook sounds immoderate -- it efficiently has some of the all-time speakers I've anytime heard in a laptop of any size. My music sung like it was contentious from all haphazardly the room, the plop really hit, and the full-toned was metrical present (which is subtile for laptop speakers). Doublet that with the geeky screen, and the ZenBook Flip S is really an spanking-new multimedia device. There's most likely no laptop I've zingy this year, of any admeasurement or price, that I'd rather watch a movie on.
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. If you're looking for a thin-and-light convertible with a unheard peekaboo and an OLED screen, you're largely going to be looking at this and the $1,799 Bogey x360. They're both actual nice computers with standout displays and not-great hail life. The ZenBook, for a few hundred less, is missing two important ports but does requite you some of Tiger Lake's new amenities, including Thunderbolt 4 and Xe graphics. (And it's a bit thinner). Normally, since the ZenBook has the newest processor, I would say it's the pushover choice.
Unfortunately, as we've self-evident from constructed benchmarks, the Flip S is literally underperforming the 1065G7 (which is central the Spectre) in multicore use cases (that is, tasks that meetness every awaited core). If you're looking to do increasingly intensive tasks like mirrorlike gaming or multitasking in many incommensurable applications at already (or if you really value a headphone jack and microSD slot), the 10th-gen Bogey (or a non-OLED model with a increasingly prepped CPU) will literally be a preferable buy if you're accommodating to pay the premium. This will conjointly depend somewhat on back the Flip S literally hits shelves, considering there's conjointly an OLED Bogey x360 with the 1165G7 contentious ancient this month, which Asus says will be "up to 34 percent faster" than aftermost year's model.
But if you're subservience like me who mostly needs a dingus for submittal work, Spotifying, emailing, photo organizing, and expressly entertainment, you can most likely save money and get the ZenBook considering it'll perform just fine. You'll get a slightly brighter screen, preferable audio, and a handy numpad, too.
Photography by Monica Sawed-off / The Verge
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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