Last night in London, KitGuru had the chance to catch up with ASUS for the launch of two new laptop lines. The new Zenbook range featuring the ‘ScreenPad' and the NovaGo, a new always on, always connected 2-in-1 PC with LTE connectivity.
The Asus Zenbook UX480//UX533/UX580 lineup is something we've seen teased at events throughout the year. There are 13-inch, 14-inch and 15-inch flavours to choose from, each with a four-sided ‘frameless' NanoEdge display, with 2.8mm thick side bezels, offering a 95% screen to body ratio. The ScreenPad is also new, allowing the touchpad to double up as a secondary touchscreen display, with quick access to various tools, like media functions, a calculator, your calendar, reminders etc.
Under the hood, these new Zenbooks pack an Intel Core i7 8th Gen processor and either Nvidia MX150 or GTX 1050 MaxQ discrete graphics. You get up to a 1TB PCIe SSD for blazing fast speeds and up to 14-hour battery life, making this a true all-day work machine.
The NovaGo is one of the first Windows 10 laptops to launch running on Qualcomm Snapdragon hardware. The switch to Snapdragon has some benefits, the pinnacle of which is LTE support, allowing you to remain connected constantly while working away from home. The NovaGo is capable of reaching 1Gbps speeds and comes with a Nano SIM built in. Here in the UK, that Nano SIM will hook up to EE and will net you 24GB of data.
Under the hood, you'll find a Snapdragon 835 10nm processor, 6GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS 2.0 storage. Connectivity runs via a CAT 16 LTE modem, which supports gigabit speeds, 10 times faster than 1st gen 4G LTE modems. Finally, the NovaGo has what Asus calls ‘beyond all-day battery life', rated for 30 days on standby and 22 hours while playing back video content. Its an ultra sleek laptop too, measuring in at 14.9mm thick and weighing in at just 1.39kg.
KitGuru Says: The new Zenbook series and NovaGo laptops sound very good. We'll be looking forward to getting more hands-on time in the future.