Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA Review : Best Ultrabook 2017

The ZenBook lineup from Asus is one of the most popular premium series we have ever used till now. They have some unique designs within their high end laptops or we can say premium ultrabooks that in look wise is awesome. The best part is the design which i love the most. You will never going to have a single complaint regarding the style and design of the laptop.

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So, today to review we are having the latest laptop from Asus zenbook lineup, Asus Zenbook 3 UX390UA. This is one of the most premium laptops from Asus and is priced at 1,47,990 INR. This laptop is surely going to give huge competition to Apple 12″ Macbook and some other premium manufacturers.

Design and Built

Design of Asus Zenbook 3 UX390UA is similar to what we get in other premium laptops from Asus. They have maintained the same Circle Concentric Design all over with Big asus Logo on the Top. The complete built is made up of premium metal, which seems to be very elegantly crafted. The color combination which they have used in Zenbook 3 series looks very eye catching. My personal favorite is Royal Blue with golden line which we are reviewing right now. The Asus Zenbook 3 comes with only 910 gram of weight with latest hardware loaded in it. In other words i would say it is still “ultra” portable and best for travel purpose with all kind of stuff.

One more thing, the UX390 does not have any kind flex around the keyboard, which we also see in some other ultrabooks. This makes again a good point under built for Zenbook 3.

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We get proper travel space for typing on Zenbook 3 UX390, and the best thing is that they have not removed the backlit keyboard which was removed in Zenbook flip. Rest keyboard is fast and you are surely going to love your typing on it. While we were testing our unit, i just can’t make my hands of from zenbook 3 for all office work.

TrackPad and Fingerprint

We also get nice metallic trackpad which is works well and will give you great feel. We get all Windows 10’s gestures for multitasking and accessing the Notification Center. While using left or right click it will give you nice tactile and audible feedback, and the pointing device drivers offer great response and accuracy not having a single issue with the trackpad works really well with great built. One more thing we can even use the trackpad for writing purpose like a touch screen.

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We also get a fingerprint scanner added on upper right corner of trackpad, which is extremely fast. I would say the placement of fingerprint sensor is not appropriate they can take some other place which will be more convenient for the users to use the trackpad as well as fingerprint

Display

The Zenbook UX390UA gets a 12.5-inch FHD display, with resolution of 1920 x 1080px. They have given a IPS panel and a sheet of protective Gorilla Glass 4 on top of it. This is not a touchscreen like what we get in Zenbook Flip UX360.

The display is quite reflective and using in sunlight might affect you. If you travel a lot then i would suggest you to use some matte screen guard which will give extra protection to the screen as well as it won’t get reflective while using in outdoor.

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In Zenbook  we get 300 Nits of brightness which i think is more than enough for this kind of ultrabook. Still i would day while watching movies on Full HD or on 4k, they look awesome.

Ports

There is nothing much which we get under the ports section, in total we are getting only two ports in the laptop. One at the left side which is a 3.5mm Audio jack which also has a MIC support in it.

And turning around to the right here we get a USB Type C (1st Gen) port which is used for charging. There is no dock which is available in the box which can be used to insert a full size pendrive in the laptop which is a kind of drawback same like Macbook. They have launched separate dock using which you can insert pendrive and get additional ports for 13,000 INR.

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I think at least with this price they should add USB Type-C 3.1 (10 gbps), rest i would say for daily travel it is having enough what they need with this specs and portability, Asus zenbook 3 is way better than what we get in Apple 12-inch Macbook.

Sound

Coming to the sound quality of Asus zenbook 3 , it is loaded with four harman kardon, and take my words i don’t think so till now any of the ultrabook sound so great and loud. I am really impressed with the audio output. We get two speaker on top of the keyboard and other two on the bottom side of the Zenbook 3. Really impressed with the sound output.

Performance

Coming to the main part which is performance, here Asus Zenbook 3 UX390UA comes with Kaby Lake Core i7-7500U CPU which is supported with 16GB of DDR3 memory running in dual-channel mode, and a 512GB Toshiba M.2 PCIe Gen3 SSD. You also get Bluetooth 4.1, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac and a VGA webcam. We get Intel HD integrated graphic card for normal graphic usage which include, 720p gaming, Photo editing, Watching 4k movies and Web Browsing. We can also do normal 1080p Video editing in Premiere Pro. I think with this power in portability you will just love it.

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Even using it on high end usage with this kaby lake processor it wont lag in any scenario. Asus Zenbook 3 is a portable beast.  If the price is little bit low i will surely buy it for personal use.

Battery life

There’s a 40 Wh battery on the Zenbook UX390UA, which seems to be bit small when we see the power of an Intel Core i7 processor, but it will still last you more than 6.5 hours on normal usage, and if you are doing some high end stuff, then it depends on you want stuff you are working on still it will give you the battery back up of 3.5 hours. It charge 60% laptop via USB Type -C port in about 50 minutes which is nice.

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Overall i would say it will be easily up for you whole day of normal usage which includes web browsing and other small stuff. If you use it intensely with high end graphics work it will surely die in 3 to 4 hours max.

Verdict

Overall, i would say if you are a traveler and need to laptop which is way portable with windows and can handle all your high end stuff then this one is for you.

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Pros

• Design (Top Notch)
• Performance
• Awesome audio
• Battery is great with this processor
• Type -C Adapter is Included in the package using which you can connect normal pendrive in the laptop. (Macbook won’t provide any adapter)

Cons

• Very expensive
• USB Type -C (1st gen)