The Asus VivoBook Pro learns to be more Zen
The Taiwanese company's mainstream notebooks get a more premium look.
Asus is jazzing up its VivoBook range with a new look inspired by its ZenBook line, and the result is a midrange laptop that looks premium.
The new VivoBook Pro 15 N580, announced Monday at the company's Computex press event in Taipei, packs powerful specs in the form of Intel's new seventh-generation processor, either the Core i7-7700HQ or the Core i7-7300HQ. It will sport discrete graphics from Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1050 and have up to 2TB of HDD storage space.
Having borrowed design cues from the ZenBook range, the Pro is a looker. It comes clad in gold, with a brushed aluminium finish and backlit keyboard. The Pro makes good use of space: There's a numpad on the laptop, a rarity in more space-constrained laptops.
Look ma, a numpad!
The trackpad has shifted slightly to the left, to better accommodate your hand placement when typing. I like how sturdy the keyboard was compared to the ZenBook Pro. I didn't notice any flex.
Also, because the laptop's clad in gold, it's a lot harder to spot fingerprints, which was a problem I noticed on Asus' other shinier machines.
Since it doesn't need to be as slim, there are plenty of ports, with two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a single USB 3.0 port and a USB 3.1 Type-C port. There are also LAN ports as well as HDMI, an SD card reader and audio jack.
The VivoBook Pro will have a $799 starting price (roughly £620 or AU$1,075), but there's no word yet on when it will go on sale.
Key specs
- Intel Core i7-7300HQ or Core i7-7700HQ
- Up to 16GB RAM, 2TB HDD
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050
- 47Wh battery
- 2.2 kg
- $799 (roughly £622 or AU$1075)
Check out the rest of CNET's Computex 2017 coverage here.