The war on bezels is moving from smartphones to laptops. Yesterday Acer showed off a laptop with slim bezels on all sides for what the company said was a 92 percent screen-to-body ratio. Now rival PC maker Asus is introducing a new set of laptops that it says have up to 95 percent screen-to-body ratios.
The new Asus ZenBook 13, 14, and 15 all feature Intel Whiskey Lake-U processors, optional support for NVIDIA graphics, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of solid state storage.
All three laptops should be available in North America in the first half of October.
Asus says the 13.3 inch model is the laptop with the highest screen-to-body ratio. It features a 1920 x 1080 pixel display with 72 percent color gamut and a “four-sided frameless display” to hit that 95 percent ratio.
The 14 and 15.6 inch models aren’t far behind though: they have 92 percent screen-to-body ratios.
Despite the slim bezels, Asus managed to squeeze HD webcams and IR cameras above the displays of all three laptops, allowing you to use Windows Hello facial recognition to quickly login to a laptop, even in the dark. And despite the laptops’ diminutive sizes, Asus says they’re all pretty sturdy: the company used the military-grade MIL-STD-810G test to examine durability.
Asus has also introduced a new NumberPad option that turns a laptop’s touchpad into a dual-function device. You can use it as a normal touchpad, but you can also tap the NumberPad icon in the upper right corner of the touchpad to view an LED-illuminated numeric keypad for entering figures.
The NumberPad is an optional feature for the ZenBook 13 and ZenBook 14. You don’t need it on the ZenBook 15 because that laptop has a physical numeric keypad to the right of the keyboard.
Here’s a run-down of the specs for each new model:
Asus ZenBook 13 (UX333)
- 13.3 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display
- Intel Core i5-8265U or Core i7-8565U processor
- Optional NVIDIA GeForce MX150 (2GB) graphics
- 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR3-2133 RAM
- Up to 1TB of solid state storage
- 3D HD IR camera
- 802.11ac WiFi
- Bluetooth 5.0
- USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C
- USB 3.1 Type-A
- USB 2.0 Type-A
- HDMI
- microSD card reader
- Headset jack
- 50 Whr battery
- 11.9″ x 7.4″ x 0.7″
- 2.4 pounds starting weight
Asus ZenBook 14 (UX433)
- 14 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display
- Intel Core i5-8265U or Core i7-8565U processor
- Optional NVIDIA GeForce MX150 (2GB) graphics
- 8GB or 16GB of LPDDR3-2133 RAM
- Up to 1TB of solid state storage
- 3D HD IR camera
- 802.11ac WiFi
- Bluetooth 5.0
- USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C
- USB 3.1 Type-A
- USB 2.0 Type-A
- HDMI
- microSD card reader
- Headset jack
- 50Whr battery
- 12.6″ x 7.8″ x 0.6″
- 2.4 pounds starting weight
Asus ZenBook 15 (UX533)
- 15.6 inch, inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel or 3820 x 2160 pixel display
- Intel Core i5-8265U or Core i7-8565U processor
- Optional NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Max-Q (2GB or 4GB) graphics
- 8GB or 16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM
- Up to 1TB of solid state storage
- 3D HD IR camera
- 802.11ac WiFi
- Bluetooth 5.0
- USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C
- USB 3.1 Type-A
- USB 2.0 Type-A
- HDMI
- microSD card reader
- Headset jack
- 73Whr battery
- 13.9″ x 8.7″ x 1.1″
- 3.5 pounds starting weight
I don’t like the small fragile bezel. My kids would break that in less than a week! I’d prefer a thicker TPU rubber covered polycarbonate bezel that’s reinforced with kevlar. Then add some reinforced steel hinges for when my kids knock it off the couch or drop it at the airport.
These also don’t seem to have TB3, odd, guess this will only be on the zenbook pro line, shame.