Asus Zenbook 17 Fold review: Is there a place in the office for a foldable PC?

The Asus Zenbook 17 Fold is How nice New hardware is so different that it’s not always attractive. If you pull it out in the office, your head will spin, but everyone has their own opinion.of IT Professional For example, the team had mixed feelings. One or she two found it “funny” while others found it just silly.

A 2-in-1 laptop or a tablet/desktop hybrid? Nothing seems to define it well enough, and “Foldable PC” isn’t great either. There’s a tablet part that folds out into a 17-inch OLED display, a very thin keyboard, and a USB-C power adapter brick. The keyboard can be attached to the tablet when the tablet is partially folded. This makes it look like a chunky 12.5 inch laptop. Or you can use the keyboard when it’s not plugged in, so the tablet rests on your desk like a touchscreen sunlounger.

In our experience, the best use case is to deploy the 17″ display on your desk like an external monitor. It almost feels like a desktop computer, but the 4:3 aspect ratio is still a bit too tight to fit multiple applications across the screen. We tried, but the ones with at least one app were either too small or could intrude on other apps.

There are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, volume control buttons, and a 5MP infrared webcam. Each placement can be a little awkward depending on how you use it. For example, when fully unfolded, the webcam is on the side of the display. It has a kickstand, but it can only stand sideways. So to use Windows Hello facial recognition, you have to tilt your head in an uncomfortable position.

Putting away the device suddenly makes it very stylish and a little less practical. It comes with a carrying case that holds the folded display and keyboard. It’s a black faux-leather affair that certainly makes you look like you’re carrying a wallet. That said, it fits nicely in a rucksack and looks elegant under your arm.

Asus Zenbook 17 Fold review: foldable display

The Zenbook 17 Fold is either a laptop, the biggest tablet you’ve ever used, or a monitor. It basically depends on how you use it. Either way, it renders excellent colors. Everything is vivid and bold. This is apparently why it has a ridiculously flashy default screensaver of cloudy colors swirling in water.

Under our calibrators, the Zenbook 17 Fold reproduced 100% sRGB color gamut coverage and 120.4% color volume. This compares well with laptops like the Dell XPS 15, tablets like the iPad Pro, and even monitors like the Samsung Odyssey Neo G8. However, you can pretty much buy all three of these for the price of the Zenbook 17 Fold.

Despite the larger form factor, the screen isn’t good enough for detailed color work. Its Adobe score was 80.6%, so it may not be for photographers or advanced illustrators. On the final note, the touchscreen elements are pretty slick, and the space seems like a bonus for using the stylus, which Asus doesn’t recommend. Since it can be stretched, it is also suitable for video editing.

Sadly, this big beautiful screen doesn’t get bright enough to work outdoors in sunlight because it reflects everything. Our calibrator manages a peak brightness of 252.53 cd/m2. but this is poor. This is why you find the creases too reflective to ignore. Also, if you set a slight angle from the window, you can also capture the light from the window. So, in practice, there are slight limitations to where you can use the Zenbook 17 Fold (unless you can get past the distracting glare). Of course, there is another device in this new category, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold, which also seems to have problems in direct sunlight.

Asus Zenbook 17 Fold review: keyboard and trackpad

When it comes to peripherals, the keyboard feels like an afterthought. Rather, its function is. It fits in the screen crease and then in the carrying case, so you get this complete kit, but it’s not a good accessory. It feels very rickety to type on and loses charge much faster than the screen. Travel is OK, not too deep, and very responsive. The solution here is very likely to be with a better Bluetooth keyboard, but it fits inside the folded screen The keyboard is less likely to be found, which ultimately makes it a little less portable.

That trackpad is fine too. There’s plenty of room for the cursor to fly around his 17-inch screen, and it’s nicely centered so there’s room for your palm to rest. Unfortunately, the click action is a little too sensitive, making copy-and-paste controls a bit difficult.

Asus Zenbook 17 Fold review: specs and price

The Zenbook 17 Fold has an impressive set of specs under the hood, but nothing seems to justify its price. Powered by an Intel Core i7-1250U processor, paired with 16GB LPDDR5-5200 RAM and 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD. There is also a 75Wh battery.

To its credit, the performance is exceptional. Geekbench 5 scored 1,439 for single-core workloads and 4,051 for multi-threaded workloads. They’re a little different than the MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 15, but they’re close enough to be considered rivals. It certainly has enough power for the average user. It went through every task we performed with very little noise coming from within.

A 75Wh power supply keeps the screen powered. In our loop video test, the battery lasted him 9 hours and 33 minutes, which is pretty good. That’s about two hours longer than the Dell XPS 15 and about the same score as the Surface Laptop 5.

Ultimately, though, nothing cuts costs when it comes to actually buying a Zenbook 17 Fold. £3,299.99 or £174.45. Therefore, it is too expensive for most home workers.

What about businesses? Looking at the laptops available under the Asus for Business service, a hardware package aimed at SMBs and startups, the Zenbook 17 Fold is missing. Asus recommends that it works best with Windows 11 Home for Business.

Either way, this is definitely too expensive and too much for a consumer device for startups and small businesses. The keyboard is poor, the brightness is low, and the form factor is actually more cumbersome than convenient. We like the concept and admire the work put into it, but still There are no serious business use cases.

Asus Zenbook 17 Folding Specifications