ASUS is evolving with its design to its performance with every upcoming laptop. The Taiwanese have been doubling down the narrow bezels at a quicker pace when compared to its competitor, which is pretty evident in the latest iterations of ZenBook.
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ASUS has launched ZenBook 14 UX433FN in India, after the introduction in Computex 2018. We received the variant powered by Whisky Lake 8th-gen Intel Core i7-8565U, along with Nvidia MX150 GPU, paired with 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB PCIe solid-state drive (SSD). So, is this laptop worthy or hold goodness of what you’re paying? Let’s find out in this review.
ASUS ZenBook 14 UX433FN: Specs Overview
- 13.3″ FHD (1920 x 1080) NanoEdge display
- Intel Core i7-8565U CPU
- 8GB 2133MHz LPDDR3
- Nvidia GeForce MX150, 2GB GDDR5 VRAM
- 512GB PCIe SSD
- Windows 10 Home
- 50Wh 3-cell lithium-polymer battery
- Dual-band 802.11ac gigabit-class Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0
- Dimensions: 31.9cm x 19.9cm x 1.59 cm; Weight: 1.9kg
ASUS ZenBook UX433FN: Design
Right out of the box, the design of the laptop is astounding. The dark-blue paint job with the signature concentric-circle design (with golden ASUS logo), premium materials, smaller footprint, NanoEdge display (92% screen-to-body ratio) makes the laptop look stellar and maybe, an inch better than the XPS 13.
The laptops cleverly adopt ErgoLift hinge we seen on other ZenBook’s. So, when you open the laptop’s lid, the whole chassis lifts off the ground a few millimeters, apparently raising the keyboard for a pleasant typing experience and also optimizing the cooling and audio quality.
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Along with the looks, the sturdiness of the laptop is unquestionable. The laptop is tested to MIL-STD 810G or military-grade durability, which means it can withstand in extreme temperatures, humidity, and altitudes, as well as drops and vibration. Unlike many of the ZenBooks, this machine lacks a fingerprint sensor, instead, an IR camera is added for faster and secure Windows Hello login.
PORTS
ASUS has not hesitated to put out a wide variety of ports for all your accessories and peripherals; At the left, there’s a USB-C port, a USB 3.1 input, and an HDMI connector. To the right, there’s a microSD card slot, a USB 2.0 port, and a combination headphone/mic jack.
No downfall, but ASUS could have gone with Thunderbolt 3 port for charging instead of the slow-charging DC-in connector and also a full-sized SD card port would have been way better than the microSD slot.
ASUS ZenBook 14 UX433FN: Display
The most highlighted part about the laptop is its NanoEdge near bezel-less 92% screen-to-body ratio display, which is immensely satisfying. Well, in our testing, the display of ZenBook 14 reproduced 121 percent of sRGB color gamut, giving out a comforting vividness and a decent color reproduction.
The indoor visibility is nice, however, things change in outdoors. The glossy non-touch panel is poor because of its dim backlighting. This is pretty evident when we saw that the notebook barely crossed the 200 nit mark. Just to put the statement into perspective, the average mark for a good brightness is 317 nits.
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ASUS ZenBook 14 UX433FN: Keyboard, Touchpad, Audio And Webcam
We have seen sleeker laptops generally suffer from low key travels, but not in this case. The typing experience in this laptop was excellent. The tactile feedback with a relatively shallow 1.1m backlit keys was ample. As the laptop is sized small, the keys are slightly cramped, but some minor (no deal breaker) adjustments will solve the issue if any.
Coming to the trackpad, the machine has well laid out trackpad with Microsoft’s Windows Precision Drivers. Not just that, the touchpad is blended with LED-illuminated numpad, which can be activated by pressing a small icon in the corner, which is handy. When you press the button, a grid lights up on top of the surface, allowing you to type numbers and use mathematical functions.
In our testing, the feature worked really well, however, there was a missing no haptic response. Apart from the lit up touchpad, the accuracy and the gestures were unprecedented and worked really well. No complaints here.
The ZenBook 14 has two down-firing speakers which are unexpectedly good, considering the size and the position of the drivers. The overall sound quality and richness were bright, thanks to Harman/Kardon for fine-tuning.
It was astonishing to see a webcam over a thin top bezel. That said, the camera is just sufficient enough for standard video calling, not the best in class but does the job.
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ASUS ZenBook 14 UX433FN: Performance
The ZenBook 14 UX433F comes with i7-8565U CPU paired with 8GB RAM and a 512GB SSD, won’t let you down in terms of overall power to run for most regular apps and software, which is evident in the laptop’s score 11,084 on Geekbench 4.1. The 512GB NVMe SSD duplicated 4.97GB of data in 10 seconds for a rate of 508 megabytes per second.
In my daily usage which includes 10 to 15 Chrome tabs open, a slight Photoshop and Lightroom, and a few other Windows apps running simultaneously, the ZenBook 14 UX433FN never really gave up on me. The ZenBook took 5 minutes 34 seconds to render out a 1080p res video from Adobe Premiere Pro.
GRAPHICS
It is hard to full fledge play games on the integrated UHD 620 graphics, however, we unit was powered by GeForce MX150. In our testing, the ZenBook 14 scored 84,556 on the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics test. Speaking of games, the laptop pushed 52 frames per second (FPS) in the Rocket League at 1080p and performance settings is par for the course.
ASUS ZenBook 14 UX433FN: Thermals And Battery
The ZenBook 14 UX433FN comes with a 50Wh 3-cell lithium-polymer battery. In our daily usage with streaming videos on Netflix / YouTube and slight documentation with 70-80% brightness, the battery lasted us around 7 hours 30 minutes on average, which is respectable.
Speaking of thermals, the elevated deck quite a bit gave the laptop to breathe and manage temperatures. However, we faced a slight heat-up under load and not just that, we could evidently hear fan’s noise, which was to some extent disturbing and is no expected.
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PROS
- Tiny chassis
- Sturdy build quality
- Unquestionable performance
- Touch NumberPad is a classy addition
CONS
- No full-sized SD cards lot
- Average bright display
- Runs hot with demanding loads
- Fan noise is evident
- Battery life could have been better
Verdict
The ASUS ZenBook 14 UX433FN is an extremely lightweight laptop with a gorgeous, premium design. It has a strong performance, but the main attraction is the integrated numpad in the touchpad, a feature which will be adopted by many.
Furthermore, the laptop sports a good keyboard, transcendent speakers, decent battery life and nevertheless, a compact chassis – which fits 14-inch display in a traditional 13-inch body makes this laptop looks great. Coming to whether or not you should go for this one? well, with all the mentioned features, the ZenBook 14 UX433FN is worthy one. The ZenBook 14 UX433FN is priced at Rs 92,790 (as of now on Amazon.in).
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