With the Asus ZenBook 3 and the Transformer 3 Pro, Asus has taken a huge leap by shifting from their comfort zone and pitting their products in the same price category as the MacBook Pro from the Cupertino giant. Priced at Rs 1,47,990 and Rs 1,44,990 respectively, neither the Asus ZenBook 3 or the Transformer 3 Pro is light in your pocket. The Taiwanese maker has covered up for the sky-high price tag of their ultrabook by providing some capable internals.
Talking of specs, the Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA sports Intel’s latest Kaby Lake series of chip namely the Core i7-7500U. This is a quad-core processor with each core clocked at 2.7GHz (up to 3.5GHz) and 4MB cache. That aside the latest ZenBook from Asus packs up to 16GB LPDDR3 RAM (2133Mhz) under the hood and 1TB M.2/M.3 SSD. Asus is also providing the option to increase the storage of their Ultrabook by making use of the three unused PCIe slots. As expected from a laptop of this, the Asus ZenBook 3 comes with a 12.5 inch Full HD Ultra Slim display with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 up top and aims to offer an excellent multimedia experience to its users.
Just in case you were thinking that the internals was the only strong point of the Asus ZenBook 3 then you are wrong. Rather the design is one of the aspects where the Asus ZenBook 3 punches over its competition. The premium laptop that won the Best Choice Award this year sports an 11.9mm slim profile and weighs up at just 910g thanks to its aerospace grade alloy built. Incidentally the Asus ZenBook 3 sports only a single USB Type-C port to the side. Fortunately, the Taiwanese firm will be selling an Asus Universal Dock for their ZenBook 3 which in turn will come with a USB Type C 3.1, USB 3.0, HDMI, VGA, RJ45 Ethernet and a 3-in-1 SD card reader. That said it’s also worth mentioning that the Asus ZenBook 3 packs a Fingerprint Sensor integrated onto the touchpad to provide support for the all new Windows Hello feature. Besides, it comes with a backlit chiclet keyboard and a five Harman Kardon made speakers for the best in class audio performance.
The Asus Transformer 3 Pro, on the other hand, is a premium convertible that sports a slightly larger 12.6 inch Full HD LED display with a peak brightness of 300nits. The top end version of the Transformer Book, however, comes with a QHD panel that boasts of 85% NTSC color gamut. The Transformer 3 Pro is powered by the Intel i7-6500U quad core chip with cores clocked at 2.5GHz (peak 3.1GHz). This is clubbed with 16GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 512GB of M.2 SSD. Unlike the ZenBook 3 that features a 6-cell battery, the Asus Transformer 3 Pro packs a markedly smaller 2-cell unit. The number of ports on the Asus Transformer 3 Pro, however, is much more than the ones found in the ZenBook 3. Rather it comes with not one but two USB Type C 3.1 port, one USB 3.0 and one HDMI port. That said, the convertible that weighs just 0.80 kg comes bundled with a Stylus in the box. Dubbed the Asus Pen, the stylus is a writing and drawing tool that offers up to 1024 pressure points for proving impeccable precision while taking note or sketching. It’s also worth noting that the Asus Transformer 3 Pro comes with a 13MP rear and 2MP front facing the camera. The Asus ZenBook 3 and Transformer 3 Pro both run on the latest version of Windows 10 (64 bit) and comes with a 1 month of free Microsoft Office 365 trial. The premium ultrabooks are expected to go on sale on October via online and offline retail chains across the country soon.
