Laptop manufacturers are still striving for the thinnest and lightest products they can develop. Apple has been the leader in this market for some time, producing high quality designs like the MacBook, but over the past year we’ve seen PC manufacturers join the party in a significant way. Just a few months ago I was reviewing the attractive HP Spectre, which was surprisingly decent for a laptop so thin.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been testing Asus’ competitor in this space, the ZenBook 3. Of all the ultrathin laptops I’ve reviewed, the ZenBook is most like Apple’s MacBook from a design perspective. It packs a 12.5-inch display, an edge-to-edge keyboard, and a single USB-C port for charging and all connectivity.
Where the ZenBook pulls away from the MacBook is on the inside. While the current MacBook packs an Intel ‘Skylake’ Core M processor, the ZenBook uses a current-generation, full-powered ‘Kaby Lake’ Core i5/i7 CPU. The performance difference between Core M and Core i7 is significant, and allows the ZenBook to deal with more tasks simultaneously.