ASUS ZenBook S UX391 first impressions: designed to impress

“Our first impressions of ASUS’ latest ZenBook, the UX391”

Having established its dominance in the gaming industry with its Republic of Gamers laptops, Taiwanese tech giant ASUS now hopes to get a piece of the action in the ‘thin and light’ category with its latest ZenBooks. Today, the company unveiled a slurry of ultra-portable and powerful machines in India, including the ZenBook Pro (first impressions) and the ZenBook S UX391. I managed to get my hands on the latter and here are my first impressions of the same. 

The biggest talking point of the latest ZenBook S UX391 is its design, which as per ASUS, is better than what the competition has to offer. In fact, during the event, the company compared its latest offering to the popular Dell XPS 13 and bombarded us with some interesting figures. Not only is the ZenBook S UX391 lighter than the new Dell XPS 13 (1 kg vs 1.22 kg), but the machine boasts sleeker bezels and consequently, a much higher screen-to-body ratio too (85 percent vs 80.7 percent). As is the case with most premium ultrabooks in this segment, the ZenBook S UX391 has been constructed entirely out of metal, and features diamond-cut edges which add a bit of flair to the laptop’s design. You’ll also be greeted by the company’s iconic concentric circle finish on the laptop’s lid, as is the case on most of ASUS’ premium offerings. 

That said, there’s no shortage of compelling thin and lights in the market and shaving a few grams or reducing the bezels ever so slightly is not going to win anyone any laurels. Therefore, to make the ASUS ZenBook S UX391 stand out, the company has furnished it with an Ergofit hinge, which tilts the laptop at an angle of 5.5-degrees to provide better comfort whilst typing. A fringe benefit of the same is that the laptop cools better and has an improved audio output too. Moreover, the hinge doesn’t protrude outwards once you close the lid and therefore, your ZenBook S will retain its sleek and sexy profile. Now, I only had a few hours to play with the machine and therefore, couldn’t make out just how well the hinge mechanism benefitted my typing. I will say that the hinge makes using the laptop when placed on the lap a little uncomfortable but to the company’s credit, it’s not possible for anyone to get accustomed to the design in just one sitting so I’ll reserve my judgment for my full review.

Unfortunately, the laptop’s sleek design does come at a cost and with the ZenBook S UX391, you’ll get a total of four ports, including two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 3 ports, an audio jack which is positioned on the hinge mechanism and a USB 3.1 Type-C port. So if you are planning to invest in the machine, be prepared to buy a couple of adapters too. 

Moving on, the keyboard and the trackpad were a pretty standard affair, with the former offering full-sized backlit keys with a travel of 1.2mm and the latter shipping with Windows precision drivers and a fingerprint sensor on the top. Although the laptop can be configured with up to a 4K touch-screen panel in the west, the company is unveiling a full HD, non-touch panel in India. As far as the quality of the display is concerned, the panel boasts wide viewing angles of 178-degrees and gets adequately bright too, so no complaints here. 

Spec-heads in the audience will like to know that the ZenBook S UX391 ships with a quad-core, Core i7 8th Gen 8550U processor, 16 gigs of RAM and an ultra-fast 512GB of PCI-e based storage. Moreover, since the laptop comes with Thunderbolt 3 ports, buyers also have the option of plugging in an external GPU to get better frame rates whilst gaming. Furthermore, ASUS claims that the ZenBook S uses an uprated cooling system with a liquid-crystal polymer fan with 71 blades. Consequently, the latest ZenBook S runs 5-degrees cooler than the previous models, despite being powered by a much more powerful quad-core CPU. 

In the battery department, the ASUS ZenBook S UX391 ships with a 50Wh cell which allegedly provides up to 13.5 hours of battery life on the Core-i5 variant of the machine which makes use of a full HD, non-touch panel. However, since the company is bringing a significantly more powerful variant of the laptop in the country, you’ll have to wait for our full review to get a gauge on the machine’s battery life. 

As for pricing, the ASUS ZenBook S UX391 carries a price tag of Rs 1,29,990. The laptop will be available on leading e-commerce platforms starting August 13th in a Deep Dive Blue or a Burgundy Red colourway. We’ll surely be bringing you our review of the machine soon, so stay tuned. 

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