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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So this is the 2018 ZenBook Pro, and this is a device
00:09that gets updated pretty regularly by Asus, like every year there's some kind of iterative
00:13change to this thing. But this year, in 2018, they brought something that was, well, I think
00:19this is the first true innovative laptop technology that I've seen in quite a while. So every
00:24year we're seeing things like thinner bezels, better materials, lighter materials, thinner
00:28laptops which are cool and everything, but they don't really change the way that we actually
00:32work with our laptops, right? They're nice upgrades and stuff like that, but this is
00:36different. This is a screen that's built into the touchpad. So you can run it as a screen
00:41pad thing where you're running basically Asus apps and an Asus interface, so you can pull
00:45it down and you'll see stuff like your calendar, a number pad, so this keyboard doesn't actually
00:49have a number pad, but you can use the number pad feature on the bottom thing, a calculator,
00:54and you have your Spotify music player, and you have other apps that Asus can develop
00:57and put onto this screen pad interface. Now you can also run it as a secondary display
01:02which is actually pretty cool, so it essentially is a smaller secondary screen that you can
01:07just kind of use to drag and drop your programs or your Windows folders or whatever you would
01:11use your secondary display for. Now, Mac, like the Apple MacBooks, they have that touchpad
01:16at the top, and I said this in my original review, but the utility of that strip, like
01:20the actual functionality of that strip, is pretty limited, and it's highly dependent
01:25on the developer, so you need Adobe or whatever app you're using, you need those developers
01:30to create functionality in that strip for the user, which is cool, but it's not nearly
01:35as functional or even practical as something like this screen pad. So I've only been using
01:39this device for a couple of days, and my initial reaction was, wow, that's really cool, like,
01:43you know, what can I do with it? But then, like, the secondary immediate reaction was
01:47that, is it really that useful? Because, like, your viewing angle on this thing isn't
01:52ideal, right? Like, if you're staring at your screen like you normally would, now you have
01:55to glance down to look at the secondary screen. But after using it for a little bit, it just,
01:59it feels natural. Not that it's, like, a better option than looking straight, if there were
02:03two screens in front of you, that would be ideal, but, I mean, that's never going to
02:07happen on a laptop anytime soon. This starts to feel useful after even a couple hours of
02:11using it. If you're loading up Premiere, you can have, like, different palettes down there,
02:14if you want to watch videos, like Twitch or YouTube, you can just pop that window down
02:18there, and it's just in a position where you can kind of keep tabs of whatever's going
02:21on on the screen, without actually having it take the real estate of your regular screen.
02:25It's nice, and you can run whatever application you want in this. So if you have, like, security
02:28camera footage, or if you're running a remote access program, like, whatever you want, you
02:33can just make it work. And that's the thing, like, when I first saw this thing, your brain
02:36just goes right to that thing. Like, there's just something that you can imagine, something
02:40that you can think of, that has utility in this setup. With the MacBook Pro, it was more
02:44like you had to imagine it, you kind of had to think about, you know, how could I use
02:47this if the developer did it right. This, it's immediate, kind of, it makes sense when
02:52you stare at it. So, how's the rest of this device? It's, well, it's a ZenBook, it's built
02:57pretty well, it's not as well built as, like, a Dell XPS product, or a MacBook Pro, but
03:02I like it. The color, it's like this blue, they also have different colors, I imagine,
03:06but the one I'm looking at is this kind of navy blue with copper trim, and it also has
03:10your standard ZenBook texture to the metal. Now, the screen is a 4K panel, 83% screen-to-body
03:15ratio, the color gamut is great, 100% Adobe RGB, 100% sRGB, this is supposed to be color
03:21calibrated at the factory with Pantone certification. It's a nice looking screen, it's not super
03:26bright though, it's bright, but it doesn't achieve the same kind of peak brightness as
03:29a MacBook Pro, and I keep bringing them up as an example because, I mean, this is a very,
03:33very good product for content creators, and you can see the similarities in terms of,
03:37product category. So, the keyboard feels kind of standard, like your ZenBook Pro keyboard,
03:42slightly mushier keys than I would want, but good layout and good keyboard overall.
03:47The port selection is a little bit weird, so they have microSD, I really wish on a device
03:51like this, especially because it's obviously geared towards content creators, that they
03:55would include a full-size SD, it's not there, it's got two USB-A's, two Thunderbolt 3's,
04:00and an HDMI out. So, to get into the inside, it's like your standard ZenBook thing, flip
04:04it over, remove a bunch of screws, this one I removed in advance, see if I can pop it
04:08off, here we go. Okay, so, first thing I noticed was that there's only two heatpipes, and because
04:13it's running some pretty powerful hardware, I was hoping there'd be more. Turns out, there's
04:17a third heatpipe that runs underneath the motherboard, so on the back side of it, that'll
04:21help cool this down. The i9 is a beast, it's running a GTX 1050 Ti, and the components
04:26in here are cooled by two fans that are supposedly upgraded from the previous generation, so
04:30they're supposed to have like thermoformed plastic and just have better airflow and stuff.
04:34I haven't been able to test it out thoroughly because this is an engineering unit, I haven't
04:37been able to run proper benchmarks, but the preliminary results are good. This thing's
04:42not throttling, but the temperatures are a little warm. Hopefully, it does get better
04:45before it goes into retail, again, this is just an engineering sample. So, the RAM is
04:50soldered onto the board, I really don't like that. On a device like this, I wish you could
04:54just kind of upgrade it when you want it. It only comes at up to 16 gigs of RAM from
04:58the factory, and it's just baked right onto the board, so that's not the best thing. The
05:02SSD and the Wi-Fi card can be replaced. So, the battery's down here, I haven't really
05:06done battery tests on this because it's just, there's probably a ton of software that's
05:10going to go into the retail version that's not on here yet. The speakers, they're good,
05:14and they've always been good. ZenBook Pro speakers have always been one of the better
05:16ones on the market, and yeah. I feel like this is going to change the way that some
05:22people use their laptops. I love that little screen, it's useful for a lot of people, it's
05:26obviously not for everyone, but the best part is that the functionality of the touchpad
05:29or the trackpad itself doesn't get reduced. It feels exactly the same as a regular trackpad.
05:35You wouldn't be able to tell the difference. In fact, if you turn off the screen, it just
05:38looks like a black trackpad. It's got that smooth textured glass with good tracking.
05:43The trackpad is sunken in a little bit more than your average trackpad, but you don't
05:47notice it when you're using it. I don't know, it's really cool to me. What do you guys think?
05:51Do you think you could make use of it? Obviously, you could watch movies and stuff on this,
05:54but aside from that, do you guys think you would use something like this if you had access
05:58to it on your trackpad? Do you find it gimmicky? Do you find it legit? I don't know. In terms
06:02of battery life, I don't know how this affects it. Again, I'll have to test this in the future,
06:05but yeah, kind of like an early look at what I would consider one of the more innovative
06:09pieces of tech I've seen in laptops for this year. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.
06:13Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time.