Asus ZenBook 13 review: This sweet-looking ultraportable has a surprise inside

Asus claims the ZenBook 13 UX331UN is currently the world's thinnest laptop with discrete graphics.

8.2

Asus ZenBook 13

The Good

The 13.3-inch Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UN delivers overall excellent performance from its eighth-gen Intel processor and discrete Nvidia graphics chip. Nearly 11 hours of battery life. All in a slim, lightweight and attractive package.

The Bad

The glossy body is impossible to keep clean of fingerprints, its USB-C port isn't Thunderbolt 3 and can't be used to charge the laptop, and its keyboard doesn't deliver the best typing experience.

The Bottom Line

With impressive performance for its size and long battery life, the Asus ZenBook 13 UX331UN is hard to pass up for the price if you want a travel-friendly laptop for school or business.

If you're not sure why you should care about that, it's because it shows we've finally reached a point where you can get an ultraportable laptop with long battery life without sacrificing graphics performance or spending a ton of money. 

WIth laptops that are half an inch (12.7 mm) thick like the ZenBook 13 , you'd typically get integrated graphics that are more power efficient, run cooler and cost less than a standalone discrete graphics chip. The downsides are integrated graphics also eat into your system memory and just can't handle more demanding graphics tasks or gaming . Though the Nvidia GeForce MX150 chip used here is entry level, it has 2GB of its own memory, and Nvidia says it can deliver up to four times faster performance over integrated graphics for photo and video editing as well as deliver better gaming performance. 

Although you wouldn't mistake the ZenBook 13 for a full-fledged gaming laptop or a graphics workstation, games are smoother and faster, and it can make quicker work of tasks you wouldn't even consider doing on other ultraportables. Not bad for a system that sells for $999 in the US and £1,040 in the UK, or in Australia for AU$1,599 with a higher-end processor and twice the memory. 

All the nits to pick

Overall, this is a great little laptop with no genuine deal-breakers here for me. However, there are a few things that are less than ideal, and I could see the sum total being enough to stop the purchase. Or even just one or two -- say for example, the inability to add more system memory. You can open up the laptop to increase storage, but you're stuck with its 8GB of RAM, giving you no room for improved performance down the road. 

The keyboard might also flip your decision. Though it is spacious and has a three-level backlight, the key travel feels short, so if you really hit hard when typing, you might find it uncomfortable. There was also something just slightly off in the placement for me that took some adjustment. Eventually I did adjust, though, and found the experience to be satisfactory. I did have to take the touchpad sensitivity down a notch to keep my palm from accidentally moving the cursor around, but it is otherwise quite good. 

The other issues I had are things that just make using the ZenBook 13 feel a little less premium. For instance, the laptop is a brilliant blue and really looks nice -- as long as you never, ever touch it. The special mirror-like finish Asus used is impossible to keep clean of fingerprints. Even the bottom, which is metal with a matte finish, picks up prints quickly. 

The 13.3-inch full HD-resolution touchscreen is bright at 300 nits and has good color performance. It's plenty responsive, too, and works with Asus' optional active pen, something the company uses as a selling point. You probably don't want to consider it for that use, however, since the screen only goes back 135 degrees. That's fine for a typical clamshell laptop, but awkward for writing or drawing on a screen. Also, the webcam above the display is only VGA resolution and leaves you looking soft and painterly. 

Another potential strike against it would be its USB-C port. It's USB 3.1 (gen 1) and not Thunderbolt 3, so data speeds and display support is more limited and it doesn't support charging the laptop, so you'll need to carry its little 65-watt power supply. It does charge quickly with that adapter, though, and you do get a decent set of other ports: two USB 3.0 (type-A), a headphone/mic combo jack, a full-size HDMI 1.4 output and a microSD card slot. You will need the included adapter for Ethernet, however. 

The laptop's speakers sound good, too, and get loud enough to drown out the system's cooling fans when you're gaming or doing anything else demanding. But the speakers are in front and fire downward so they tend to be muffled slightly by whatever surface you're working on. Again, these are all fairly minor things that keep the ZenBook from feeling like a true premium laptop and not necessarily deal breakers for everyone. 

Gaming, but not GAMING

As ultraportables go, the combined performance from the ZenBook 13's eighth-gen quad-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of memory, 256GB M.2 SSD and 2GB Nvidia GeForce MX150 didn't disappoint. Cranking through day-to-day activities like streaming videos and music while running Google Chrome with a dozen or more tabs open didn't slow it down. 

The laptop also handled basic edits of high bit-rate 4K-resolution video and large raw images with relative ease. Playback of that 4K video wasn't an issue either, which was not the case when I tried to do the same on an older laptop with a seventh-gen Intel Core i7 processor and integrated HD Graphics 620. 

As I mentioned earlier, the entry-level MX150 graphics chip isn't going to blow you away with its gaming performance: This isn't a gaming laptop. Frame rates aren't going to be fast enough for enjoyable play on high detail settings with newer graphically demanding games. It is, however, a clear improvement over Intel's UHD Graphic 620 integrated GPU. 

The chip did hit playable frame rates on Bioshock Infinite at high detail settings, and playing Overwatch at medium settings at the display's native 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution was fast and smooth, and even over Wi-Fi it was lag-free. Both the laptop and the power supply get understandably hot under heavy load, however, so you'll want to make sure you're giving this plenty of air. 

Just as the performance was impressive for a laptop so thin, so was its battery life. In our streaming video test it ran for 10 hours, 45 minutes. In general use, I was able to get through an 8-hour workday with performance settings and brightness dialed back to 70 percent. What's nice is that it had a full battery again in a little more than an hour. 

Mostly great

Asus' ZenBooks are its premium laptops, so you might expect nothing but greatness and for the most part, that's what you get with the ZenBook 13 UX331UN. It looks good (if you can get past the fingerprints), it performs well and overall is just a nice ultraportable for the money, which, while not cheap, is well priced. There are several things that could be better, but if you want a travel-friendly laptop for school or business that has some extra graphics power, put this on your short list.