It’s only been a few months since the Asus ZenBook S premium thin-and-light laptop went on sale in the US. But Asus is introducing an updated model at the IFA show in Berlin this week.
The new ZenBook S looks… a lot like the old model. It’s still a compact notebook with an all-metal chassis and a “hinge lift” design that has the lid act as a sort of stand so that when you open the laptop, the back of the keyboard is raised a bit.
What’s new is that the updated model comes with Intel’s new Whiskey Lake-U processors which offer higher boost speeds and faster WiFi.
The new ZenBook S is available with three display options: a 1080p matte screen, a 1080p glossy touchscreen, or a 4K glossy touchscreen. Each has 5.9mm screen bezels for an 85 percent screen to body ratio.
Asus will offer the laptop with up to 16GB of LPDDR3-2133 memory and up to 1TB of PCIe 3.0 x4 solid state storage. It supports Intel Core i5-8265U or Core i7-8565U processor options.
Other features include 802.11ac Gigabit WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, an HD webcam, a headset jack, and Harman Kardon-certified stereo speakers.
There are three USB Type-C ports on the laptop: two are Thunderbolt 3 ports and one is a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port, but Asus says all three can be used to charge the laptop or for data. The system has a 50 Wh battery and supports fast charging.
The Asus ZenBook S measures 12.2″ x 8.3″ x 0.5″ and weighs about 2.3 pounds.
Nice… but what happened to all the 2018 mid-range VivoBook S models with NanoEdge displays Asus announced at Computex nearly 3 months ago? So far I’ve only seen the 15″ variant with Intel graphics (S530UA) here in the US.