ASUS ZenBook 3: thinner, lighter, and faster than the MacBook with Core i7, 16GB RAM, and 1TB SSD for $1,999
How much more can ASUS shave off of the ZenBook, its flagship ultraportable? Apparently, quite a bit. The company's new ZenBook 3, announced today at Computex, clocks in at just 2 pounds and 11.9mm (0.46-inches) thick.
Context & Ripple Effects
At Computex 2016, ASUS pushed its flagship ultraportable past Apple's reference point: the ZenBook 3 lands at 2 pounds and 11.9mm — thinner and lighter than the MacBook — while carrying a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD at $1,999. That is a direct spec-and-thinness challenge to the machine that defined the category.
The follow-on coverage shows how the bet played out: an October review praised the power-per-pound and lower price but flagged a hard-to-use keyboard and trackpad, and ASUS iterated rather than retreated — first with the ZenBook 3 Deluxe adding three USB-C ports and a Kaby Lake i7 at $1,699, then by pushing the thin chassis into larger, graphics-capable machines.
First-order effects
- Buyers shopping the premium ultraportable segment get MacBook-beating thinness with double the RAM and storage at the same $1,999 tier, making Apple's laptop the spec laggard on paper.
Second-order effects
- The review's keyboard and trackpad complaints show the cost of chasing 2 pounds, pressuring ASUS to fix ergonomics in the Deluxe refresh rather than chase further thinness — and giving rivals a usability angle against the spec sheet.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the ultraportable arms race escalates from thinness alone to thin-plus-powerful: the same design language ends up in the Zenbook Pro 15 with six-core CPUs and optional discrete GPUs, collapsing the gap between ultraportables and performance laptops.
The trend: Premium Windows ultraportables are converging on the MacBook's thinness and then leapfrogging it on specs, forcing the category to compete on ergonomics and graphics rather than millimeters.