ASUS ZenBook Pro UX550 Quick Review: Beauty Is A Beast

ASUS ZenBook Pro UX550 Quick Review: Beauty Is A Beast

We go hands-on with the new ASUS ZenBook Pro 550!

ASUS refreshed their top-end ZenBook Pro at their Edge Of Beyond event yesterday along with ultra thin ZenBook Flip S and affordable VivoBook S. The ZenBook Pro hasn’t seen a full refresh since its introduction 2 years ago – sure it received a slight specs bump, but today the notebook line is getting revamped hardware along with a thinner and lighter chassis.

Initial Impressions: Beats its competitors handily in the specs department

The ZenBook Pro UX550 dons the same spun-aluminum chassis as its other brothers, but loses the gold color accents on the side. It’s not too dissimilar to the ZenBook Flip S in terms of design, though obviously the ZenBook Pro is significantly thicker to fit more powerful hardware.

The screen is a 15.6-inch 4K deal, though the notebook now has more power under the hood to properly run the display without running into bottlenecks. There’s two USB 3.0 plugs and two USB Type-C connectors that support Thunberbolt connectivity, which means you’ll be able to power up to two 4K displays with the new ZenBook Pro.

That 4K display has a 72-percent NTSC color gamut plus a smaller 7.3mm bezel, which reduces the overall size of the notebook substantially. Other improvements include a bigger battery that ASUS says is capable of powering the notebook for 12-14 hours on a single charge, plus a quick charging system that takes the notebook from 0 to 60 percent in just 40 minutes. There’s a Harman/Kardon certified audio system that’s embedded around the aluminum chassis of the notebook.

ASUS did have to ax a few things to make the ZenBook Pro as portable as it is. There’s no longer a numberpad on it to reduce the size of the chassis, and the notebook can only take microSD cards from here on out.

Just like any other notebook, you can have the ZenBook Pro in a number of configurations, which include either a Core i5-7300HQ or Core i7-7700HQ processors, up to 16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM, NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti discrete graphics and up to 1TB of PCIe x4 SSD storage. Pricing for the ZenBook Pro UX550 starts at $1,299 (Php 64.7K) and goes up as you put in better hardware.

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