Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW

   If you are a do it all person or jack of all trade, then this might be the laptop that you need.  It’s a lot cheaper than the MacBook Pro or Dell XPS 15.. Cheaper does not mean it’s less in quality, mind you the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW can perform as well as it’s 2 competitors.  It has only one model as of now and this is the one that comes with an Intel Core i7, 16 GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, Windows 10 Home and NVIDIA discrete graphics. Discrete means it has a separate processor that runs it’s graphics. It is not dependent on the processor that runs this machine. This is one of the things I love about this PC. This model cost $1500 and it’s $500 cheaper than the two brands I mentioned above. This 15 inch has an aluminum housing and it’s famous circle ring finish on it’s metallic gray lid. It has fine polished edges on it’s side. Open the lid and you will see more circle rings on the rear sides of the keyboard. It has a nice looking dull metal flat surface. It is so comfy and you can rest your tired palms on it. The Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW weighs 5 pounds and measures 15.1 x10 x 0.80 inches. This is a sturdily built laptop.

  

   The Keyboard of the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW is so pleasant to use despite it’s 2.1 millimeters of travel distance. It may take time to get used to a keyboard that has a longer travel length. This may slow down your typing speed but not that much. The right side shift key is a half the size of the usual full size, while the right side arrow keys is full sized.  As for me, I can live with it, infact it makes no difference. The Zen Book Pro UX501VW comes with a 15.6 inch 3840 x2160 UHD touch screen. This is so useful when you are doing photo or video editing. It has a subdued blue colored tint. The coating looks a bit too lustrous. I believed that Asus should have toned it down. The brightness has a rating of 289 nits which is above average. The color gamut ( sRGB ) has a rating of 111 percent and this is really strong.  It only averaged 4.37 on the Delta-E Test ( Color Accuracy ) and this is below average. For it’s audio, it uses The Bang& Olufsen speaker which you can locate at the bottom of the laptop. The audio works so well.

    When you are using discrete graphics, it is difficult to contain the heat. You can stream videos and it will not overheat. It uses two fans. The benchmark for heat is 95 degrees Fahrenheit but the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW registered 91 degrees Fahrenheit. The Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW has 3 USB ports and a speedy USB-connection that supports the Thunderbolt 3. It has also a connection for your dual microphone/headphone jack, HDMI 2.0 and an SD card reader. I’d rate the HD cam as standard. I don’t find it spectacular in any way.  The Geekbench 3 is a processor rating for speed  and the Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW got a score of 11,472 which is below average. In the Spreadsheet Macro test, it registered a score of 3.41 which is strong.  In the File transfer test it got a rating of 462.66 which is also strong. The Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW figured well in the 3DMark’s Fire Strike graphics test. With it’s Nvidia 960M GPU and 2GB of vRAM it has a rating of 4,308 better than most of it’s competitors.  Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW has a battery of 8 hours. The category average is 5.37 hours. If you are a person who does a lot of things like graphics, spreadsheets and other intensive work, this could e the laptop that you are looking for.