yeah I just folded this clean in half
I got you this thing's designed to fold
in half the Zenbook 17 fold is the largest
foldable device that we've seen hit the market yet it's equipped with an
enormous vibrant OLED display that puts nearly every other laptop to shame and
offers unparalleled flexibility traditional clam shell of course would
you like a physical or touch screen keyboard kickstand naturally book well
that's a new one it looks like an
amazing little package but perhaps like my demonstration of strength
there is more here than meets the eye
it's okay though because I'd never deceive you about our sponsor War
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the usability of any foldable device
hinges pun intended on the mechanism for
opening and closing the main display and there's a lot that ASUS got right here
the rear panel is partially covered in a large faux leather binding that protects
the hinge assembly and on the top portion we've got a really trippy
holographic effect etched on dark blue glass the hinge itself is surprisingly
smooth and well it is stiffer than you might expect I think it's fair to say
that it still qualifies as a one finger lift ASUS rates the hinge for about
thirty thousand folds and while the 12.5 inch size might not impress you in its
clamshell mode the story changes dramatically when you pop off the
removable keyboard more on that later and open it up into tablet mode with a
reassuring funk now that's impressive the foled or
flexible OLED panel comes courtesy of BOE and is both Pantone validated and
capable of a whopping 500 nit Peak
brightness it runs at 2560 by 1920 which
is suitable for even up close viewing and did I even mention Dolby Vision
certification yet with the included kickstand this thing is basically a home
theater grade HDR display that you can take with you on the airplane I've never
seen anything like it and they claim it should sound just as good thanks to a
quad speaker arrangement with Dolby Atmos support tuned by Harman Kardon
without rear speakers you shouldn't expect any kind of meaningful surround
out of Atmos content but the audio is
surprisingly clear throughout the entire range with a very wide Sound Stage it
gets easily loud enough for viewing with a friend and while the bass is a little
lacking compared to the latest from Dell or apple I'd give it a solid a minus
probably the best thing is we haven't talked about so far or even really
noticed the crease every foldable is
going to have a bit of waviness near the fold but on the Zenbook 17 fold it's
only really noticeable when the light catches it and from straight on it's
hard to notice even that if this was a
portable monitor instead of a computer I'd be impressed as hell and throw it
straight into my backpack the super durable Tech friendly one I got from
ltdstore.com now with limited lifetime warranty it's pretty good trust me bro
unfortunately it's not an external Monitor and that's where the sheen
starts to come off a little to start with the CPU and GPU are a little
underpowered for the price the core i7 1250u has a base speed of
1.1 gigahertz and the efficiency cores outnumber the performance course four
times over it's not unusable and it can boost to 4.7 gigahertz but the general
experience in PC mode isn't as smooth as I'd like you're not going to be gaming
on this thing and playing back 4K HDR content on YouTube nearly pegs the
integrated XE graphics the good news is it doesn't get very hot
under load nor does the fan get very loud having achieved that however I can't
tell you since ASUS specifically forbade me from disassembling this one frankly I
don't think I would have tried anyway it looks extremely intimidating to take
apart but it apparently does come apart and it's possible to upgrade the SSD
this internal imagery also reveals the 75 watt hour battery in there that
contributes to 11 hours of battery life at 50 brightness
it's not quite MacBook territory but despite the fact that I literally
sneezed while writing this line it's nothing to sneeze at
by the way given the glossy finish of the display and the schmoo accumulating
nature of its rubberized bezel here
I'd recommend the down the front of the shirt technique anytime you need to
sneeze in front of your Zenbook 17-fold keeping it clean has been a real chore
not that I think many of you will end up owning one of these I'm not even saying
that you can't afford it's thirty five hundred dollar U.S starting price it's
just that it's time for me to start talking about the problems
starting with the keyboard and trackpad
the included compact Bluetooth keyboard can conveniently be stashed inside of
the fold when it's well folded and it
has two Bluetooth profiles so you can use it on multiple devices should that
strike your fancy the keys themselves are pretty solid and have way more
travel than you'd expect considering the keyboard's extremely thin profile it's
also got a very slick glass track pad underneath that's big enough but it has
one of the worst click hinges I've seen in a long time it's supposed to click
along the bottom here but it's so flopsy
that you can actually click it at the top point if you push hard enough or
even from the underside
and if you're supporting the device one-handed it's so poorly supported that
it will sometimes fail to return to a neutral position
and it gets worse while it's solid on a
desk when you use it on the zenbooks folded screen
its feet sit on the slightly raised rubberized bezels making for some
worrying deck Flex even while trying to type normally it also has the tendency
to move around slightly too and generally feels not much better than if
you'd propped a keyboard on top of a tablet screen making matters worse it's
a dumb Bluetooth keyboard meaning that while the Zenbook can detect its
presence the keyboard itself doesn't actually come out of sleep when you open
the lid you need to hit a key and wait for it to connect and then wait for it
to actually start working and if you leave it for a second or two without
touching anything the touchpad will skip when you touch it it's just it's real
pain and there's no wired option either that port on the side is for charging
only and yes it must be charged separately too
the very worst thing about it is the input lag never mind for gaming it's so
bad that it impacts even accurately moving the cursor around the screen to
click on icons like the tablet size keyboard Tablet
really defines the Zenbook folds IO too there are physical buttons for volume up
and down and a power button as well along the top right corner the headset
Jack is at the right or the top depending on the orientation and while
it lacks a dedicated charging Jack meaning you'll need to use your
Thunderbolt 4 ports to charge it does have two of those so I kind of consider
this a non-issue and use with a Thunderbolt dock with power delivery also unlike apple Jesus had enough sense
to include a type c to a dongle in the box so at least you don't have to Shell
out for one of those should you want to use a mouse or a flash drive though that
doesn't mean I'm giving it full marks for usability let's make our way through
all of ASUS's recommended modes PC mode
I already touched on it is in my opinion the strongest argument for buying is
inbook 17 fold there simply isn't anything else on the market with a
screen this size that packs up this small unfortunately laptop mode is not
as good following the Zen book and placing the keyboard on it automatically
switches the screen to portrait mode and disables the bottom half imitating a
12.5 inch display in this configuration it has no
additional functionality compared to a standard Ultrabook and it's nearly twice
as thick at the hinge the Windows hello webcam is awkwardly in portrait mode
like this too you know since the device is kinda in portrait mode
and I wouldn't have thought it possible but ASUS managed to make the Windows 11
taskbar worse by adding a curve to it
that makes it hard to activate with the touchscreen if you have large fingers
like I do it's usable but if you want a laptop
then just buy a laptop but Anthony you say you can easily solve this just take
off the keyboard oh yeah I could do that look at how many
comments I can read under our YouTube videos this way and it's so fun to
scroll but the second I want to reply to anyone the experience is pretty bad the
included window management software and I think this is actually part of Windows
pops up to help you better utilize the bottom display but you'll find yourself
really wanting to use fancy zones to
split the top and bottom into separate virtual displays since dragging Windows
between them is pretty cumbersome without a trackpad using the Bluetooth
keyboard separately and what ASUS calls extend mode could make sense in some
situations but it's hardly the killer app this device desperately needs
tablet mode on the other hand have you ever wanted a massive tablet well you're
in luck I legitimately could see some people buying the Zenbook 17 fold for
this reason especially someone older or with a visual impairment that makes
large print a necessity for reading it
does have some drawbacks though the 1.4 kilogram weight means that you're gonna
want to rest it on your lap or the seat back in front of you or feeling that
ASUS suggests holding it partially folded in what they call book mode and
this just about made my eyes roll out of their sockets but it is legitimately
easier to hold like this like any foldable though the Zen book is only
about 40 percent about the hardware the rest is software and out of the box we
got off to a bad start with McAfee Live Safe just yelling at me that I was
unprotected I chose to accept the risk
only to be bugged again and again and
again this on a laptop that starts at
34.99 us the same price as the M1 Max 16
inch MacBook Pro which has a much faster
CPU and GPU more IO a better track pad
and double the memory now why aside from the price am I comparing it to a Macbook
because ASUS has a service they call glidex that allows you to extend or
mirror your screen to an external device either wired or on the same Wi-Fi
network just like sidecar from Apple the problem
it's a subscription service
for a feature that requires no server it's literally your PC and your phone or
tablet there is a free version but this can only be used via Wi-Fi only does
720p at 30 FPS and is AD supported you
get a year of pro with your Zenbook purchase that's a 36 value for a feature
that's literally just a DRM lock this is a really cynical cash grab by
ASUS and they should feel bad for it if
you thought that was a digression go check out this exclusive overallplane.com where Linus goes
completely off into tangentville oh if none of that matters to you at all
then on the PC side you can buy an XPS 13 with the same laptop form factor for
19.99 and it also has a faster P series
CPU with three times the P cores and twice the memory compared to either the
XPS 13 plus or even a base model M1
MacBook Pro this thing might be in the ballpark per thread but doesn't cut it
in multi-threaded that means that this laptop is almost purely a Content
consumption device that might be good for 2D artists if like the Lenovo X1
fold it had an optional stylus but sadly
it does not and if you needed to do any kind of heavier work MacBooks aside the
most expensive XPS 15 pre-config is still 600 less expensive has a dedicated
GPU a full fat core I9 12900 HK far far
more IO and yes double the memory too which is even upgradable
we'll have these laptops linked down below but in the end what you are paying
for with the Zenbook 17 fold is the privilege of being one of the first to
buy a premium foldable laptop and the privilege of helping answer the question
of why it needs to exist now I'm sorry if this is getting a little ranty it's
been a little ranty already I know but that really is a legitimate question
even ASUS didn't really want credit for
the idea for this thing rolling the that poop ball down the hill onto Intel and
given this was conceived before Intel's current CEO Pat gelsinger took the reins
when they had no clear answer to ryzen and were bleeding market share I
honestly doubt Intel knows either I think it's possible that they were
just throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks all of which is to say the
Zenbook 17 fold is a very Niche product one that will appeal to a small number
of people an even smaller number of which will actually be able to afford it
the cold hard truth is I don't see ASUS selling very many of these on the box is
ASUS's long time motto in search of incredible
they'll have to keep searching but your search has ended for our
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guys I don't like to go negative like this but it just really pushed my
buttons for an example of when Intel did predict the future of computers go check
out our recent video on their Journey inside the computer kit from 1996. it's
way more interesting than the view Camp would ever suggest