Asus ZenBook UX430U - Review 2022

The Asus ZenBook UX430U ($one,099) is proof that sleek, powerful ultraportable laptops don't have to cost an arm and a leg. This fourteen-inch laptop weighs just ii.72 pounds, a feat that would accept been all but impossible just a few years ago. It'south now possible to pack larger screens into smaller enclosures past reducing bezel size, a technique that Asus has pulls off with aplomb hither. Add in some seriously powerful specs (an 8th-generation Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive) and the UX430U becomes an attractive culling to—though not a perfect substitute for—the Editors' Choice-winning Dell XPS 13 and the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

High-Quality Screen and Webcam, No Touch

The UX430U looks best from the outside, with its clamshell chapeau closed. The brushed metallic of the display chapeau outside, complete with faint concentric rings around a silver Asus logo in the middle, gives off a premium air that's wholly different from the Space Grey colour that MacBooks are known for. The lesser of the chassis is similarly well-synthetic, albeit without the rings.

Open the display lid to reveal a fairly conventional hinge, keyboard, and touchpad. The virtually notable function of the interior is the thin bezel. It's very slim on the sides, perhaps less than one-half an inch, merely slightly wider on the height in order to accommodate a conventionally placed webcam. This webcam placement is far superior to the one on the XPS 13, which has a bezel that is so sparse that the camera must be relegated to the bottom of the display, where it mostly captures your duke and nostrils during a Skype session. The UX430U'due south HD camera delivers decent video quality, even though it lacks IR sensors to facilitate face recognition logins to your Windows account.

In betwixt the webcam and the thin bezels is a full Hard disk drive (1,920-by-i,080) display with a matte finish and a luminous if not extraordinarily bright backlight. The lack of a bear on screen is non unexpected for an ultraportable at this price. For instance, the version of the Dell XPS 13 to which we awarded an Editor's Option accolade last year is not touch-enabled, although y'all can order an XPS 13 with a 4K touch display if you're so inclined.

Nevertheless, the lack of touch support is a meaning drawback when comparing the UX430U with its similarly priced two-in-ane competitors like the Lenovo Yoga 920. The $100 or and then price difference between the Lenovo and the Asus gets you lot bear on and a 360-degree hinge, features that are incredibly handy if you programme to use your PC to spotter videos or while traveling. As of the time of this writing, the UX430U is available in a single configuration, with no option to upgrade or downgrade components.

That said, the components you lot do arrive the standard configuration are height notch. 16GB of retention and a 512GB solid-state drive should be more than enough for frequent multitasking and the snappy opening and closing of apps. Coupled with the Intel Core i7 processor, this is a very capable machine, and a great value to boot.

If you need more than storage, you've got several options to connect to external drives. At that place'south a total-size SD card slot and a USB 2.0 port on the right edge, as well every bit a USB iii.0 port and a USB-C port on the left. The USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt, merely Asus includes a separate mini HDMI port for connecting to external displays. At that place's also a separate power connector and an audio jack, which means that fifty-fifty if you lot're connected to a monitor, a ability supply, and have your headphones plugged in, you'll still have iii USB ports complimentary for additional peripherals. The same can't be said of the MacBook Pro, with its sole port options beingness a headphone jack and two USB-C ports.

In addition to its shoulder-saving weight of 2.72 pounds, the entire UX430 won't accept up much room in your backpack or briefcase, either. It measures 0.6 by 12.8 by 8.nine inches (HWD), which makes information technology one of the thinnest ultraportables we've tested recently. The XPS xiii is also 0.6 inches thin, while the MacBook Pro has both of them crush past a hair, at 0.59 inches.

Comfortable Keyboard

If you spend a lot of time typing, yous'll capeesh the UX430U's comfortable, backlit keyboard. At that place is a generous 0.55-inch of key travel, which is far more than yous'll become from the butterfly switches on the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. On the whole, the typing experience is comparable with the XPS xiii, but non quite as comfortable equally the keyboard on many of Lenovo's laptops, particularly the business-oriented ThinkPad T470.

Beneath the keyboard, centered in the middle of the laptop, is an boilerplate-sized clickable touchpad with an integrated touch fingerprint sensor. Like many Windows touchpads, the pad on the UX430U suffers from significant input lag, which forces you to either turn upwardly its sensitivity settings and hazard accidental inputs, or stick with the default settings and patiently paw around until yous can get the cursor to move. These problems are nonexistent on Apple laptops, which have far superior touchpads that are also larger and have the added do good of Force Touch on virtual clicks, which allows your clicks to be registered anywhere on the pad, not just the bottom portion.

Audio quality is remarkably practiced for an ultraportable, with very petty distortion even when the volume is set to maximum. The fact that Harmon Kardon tuned the audio probable helps with this. Despite the quality, the audio is a bit anemic thanks to the placement of the speakers on the laptop's underside so that they face your desk or lap, rather than upwardly-firing speakers like you'll observe on the MacBook Pro.

Asus includes a one-year parts and labor warranty for the UX430U.

Centre-of-the-Pack Performance

The Intel Core i7-8550U is quickly becoming the processor of pick for both midrange and high-end ultraportables. It runs at 1.8GHz, and because it'south a U-series processor, information technology sips power, which, coupled with a capacious battery, tin translate into some seriously impressive results on our battery rundown test. With a rundown time of x hours and 16 minutes, the UX430U is unfortunately at the lesser end of a listing of similarly equipped competitors. The Dell XPS 13 far outpaced it with a time of 15:56, and the HP Spectre 13 was also longer-lasting at 12:12.

When it comes to the rest of our computing benchmarks, still, the UX430U and its closest competitors turned in much more similar results. Its score of 3,357 on the comprehensive PCMark 8 benchmark is just a few hundred points lower than the Dell and the HP, and any score above 3,000 indicates that the system is very capable at word processing, web browsing, videoconferencing, and other mutual tasks. Notably, the Razer Blade Stealth's score of 2,971 is much lower on this test despite having the same processor.

On our specialized multimedia benchmarks, the story is largely the same. The Dell, the HP, the Razer, and the Asus all finished rendering a video in Handbrake inside 18 seconds of one another, and they were clumped fifty-fifty closer together around the 3-infinitesimal mark on the Photoshop image-editing test. The only competitor to perform significantly worse on these tests is the MacBook Pro, which uses an inferior Cadre i5 processor from Intel'south previous (7th) generation. That means that the Asus and its competitors are improve than the similarly priced MacBook Pro for people who need to dispense multimedia on the get.

Predictably, none of the Windows systems turned in good results on our graphics benchmarks, with frame rates mostly below the acceptable 30fps threshold. All of these systems (with the exception of the MacBook Pro) use the Intel UHD Graphics 620 integrated GPU, which isn't capable of delivering the frame rates yous demand for hardcore gaming. You should still exist able to play less-enervating titles at their everyman quality settings, though.

Encounter How We Exam Laptops

During each of these tests, in that location was meaning fan dissonance. The fans even kicked in occasionally when the laptop wasn't in use. The fans aren't very loud fifty-fifty when they are spooled upward, which means you'll hardly hear them in a busy part, but you volition certainly notice the racket in a quiet home.

Lots to Like, Worth a Look

The Asus ZenBook UX430U is everything most people are looking for in an ultraportable, correct down to the affordable price. At that place's a lot to like here, particularly the trifecta of a high-quality display, optimal webcam placement, and thin bezels. Battery life isn't as proficient as the Editors' Choice Dell XPS xiii, and there'due south no touch screen like yous'd become with many similarly priced ii-in-1s. Only if these aren't dealbreakers for you, the UX430U has a lot to offer.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/laptops/19841/asus-zenbook-ux430u

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