Asus ZenBook NX500 review

Feast your eyes on Asus' newest premium 15-inch notebook. The $2,699 Asus ZenBook NX500 will make your jaw drop with its gorgeous 4K, Ultra HD touch screen and sleek design. It's not all eye candy, either. Powered by an Intel Core i7 processor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 850M graphics and a 512GB SSD, this laptop packs a powerful punch. While expensive, this is one premium 15-incher that's well worth the price of admission.Asus is pretty ambitious with its advertisement and describes its Zenbook NX500JKasus eee slate ep121 netzteilas a symbiosis of beauty and power. No compromise in terms of performance, GPU with gaming capabilities, the fastest SSD, and all that in a timeless and elegant case. Furthermore, you get a 4K Visual Master display, which offers the highest quality for professionals and gamers with accurate colors and wide viewing angles.The rivals for the NX500JK only include the best of the best. For example, the Apple MacBook Pro 15 Retina (rating 89%), even though it is not really up to date anymore with the GT 750M and 3K resolution. Then there is the Dell XPS 15 (3K), which also uses a GT 750M.

The Asus ZenBook NX500 looks just as high-end as its price tag would suggest. Like other ZenBooks, its aluminum lid features soft circles swirling out from the middle, where the company logo sits. The edges have a slight taper to them, leading to sleek, diamond-cut beveled edges. Even without opening the notebook, you can immediately tell the ZenBook NX500ux31a akkuis a premium device that demands attention -- if not downright awe.The following competitors are completely different in terms of design and hardware equipment. Lenovo Y50 (GTX 860M) and MSI GS60 Ghost (GTX 870M) are slim gaming notebooks with an aggressive styling, but they cannot compete with the stability and sophistication of the NX500. Because of the high resolutions of 3840x2160 pixels and 2880x1620 pixels we still list them as rivals for our 15-inch Zenbook.

This impression is supported not only by the finish, but the smallest details. A rubber stripe surrounds the panel, and is flush with the base unit when the NX500 is closed. Two magnets underneath the front edge of the palm rest secure the lid. This, combined with the weight of the lid, creates a tight connection, but one hand is still sufficient to open the display due to the heavy base unit. The top display edge is slightly protruding, so it is easier to open. Other details are the subtle status LEDs for the battery charge, and the system status at the front. This means you can also see the lights when the lid is closed. There is no status LED for the storage, but this is not really necessary with the super fast SSDs. The working environment is entirely free of buttons or LEDs.Opening the notebook seals the deal. The stunning 15.6-inch, 4K display puts most other laptopsadp 90cd db I've seen to shame. In addition to looking gorgeous, the touch screen allows you to swipe to your heart's content on the Windows 8.1 Start screen and beyond.

The internal layout also reveals why the NX500 is so sturdy: There are, for instance, two spacers underneath the keyboard that support the hollow space between the bottom cover and the palm rest. Unlike many notebooks with an aluminum finish that only put an aluminum plate on top of the plastic frame, the NX500 is actually made of a single piece of metal. The keys break through the plate towards the top and the motherboard is mounted from below.All of this sexiness is packed into the notebook's 14.9 x 10 x 0.7-inch frame, which weighs 5 pounds. That's a bit lighter than the Toshiba Satellite P50Tpa 1121 28 (14.9 x 9.6 x 1.1 inches, 5.2 pounds), but the Dell XPS 15 (14.6 x 10 x 0.7 inches, 4.6 pounds) and the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (14.1 x 9.7 x 0.71 inches, 4.5 pounds) are slightly smaller and lighter.The keyboard deck is gorgeous and spacious, with a matte-silver finish. The Chiclet-style keyboard sits at the top of the deck in the middle, and on either side sit the notebook's speakers, which are embedded into its chassis and bubble to the surface in the form of subtle, concentric black dots.

Asus equips its 15.6-inch notebook with a striking 16:9 panel: The LQ156D1JX02 (manufacturer unknown) has a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels (pixel density 282 ppi). It seems to be the same panel that we know from the Toshiba Satellite P50t-B-10T (LQ156D1JX01), which also has similar measurements. The display is also a capacitive 10 fingers touch display; the NX500 is only available with the 4K touch panel.The real stunner of the Asus ZenBook NX500asus adp 120zb bb is its 15.6-inch display. At 3840 x 2160 pixels of 4K Ultra HD resolution, this screen is one of the best on any notebook.I watched hours of videos -- movie trailers, vlogs, TV-show clips -- and the Asus' display only made me want to watch more. Details are sharp, colors are bold and bright, and everything feels like it's alive in front of you, just 2 feet in front of your face.

The center brightness is 309 cd/m2 and the brightness distribution is even. We cannot determine any screen bleeding, not even at the edges with a black picture and the highest luminance (picture right column). This is a very good result for the NX500 and the rivals are just slightly brighter (see table).The ZenBook NX500's display is also the first 4K touch screen to use 3M Quantum Dot Enhancement Film technology, which dramatically widens the range of colors it can achieve. Asus claims the ZenBook NX500asus ep121 netzteil can reach 146 percent of the sRGB color gamut, and in our test, it came close, measuring 140.6 percent. That blows the category average of 80 percent out of the water, and even the Satellite P50T, with its good score of 98.6 percent.

For music videos such as Gwen Stefani's "Spark the Fire," which has bold illustrations and bright hues, the high color gamut really makes those elements pop off the screen. In more natural settings, like in the music video for Mr. Probz's "Waves," greenery looked amazingly lush, and ocean water looked like crystal.The IPS panel already has a color profile ex-works. Asus promises that every device is calibrated to compensate nuances of the display quality. We assume that this is not the case. The reason: The same panel in the Toshiba Satellite P50t-B-10T manages much lower DeltaE values for the grayscale and colors (Toshiba factory calibration). We performed our own calibration for the NX500m6500 akku panel and were able to reduce the DeltaE from 4.7 and 3.3 to 3.5 and 0.85, respectively. We suspect every NX500 gets the same profile, which results in good, but not the perfect colors that were promised. We can see the best colors on the display of the MacBook Pro Retina 15 as well as the Toshiba Satellite P50t.

However, the NX500 doesn't have the brightest screen. The display averaged 267 nits, making it brighter than the category average (253 nits) and the Satellite P50T (229 nits), but not as luminous as the Dell XPS 15 (364 nits).With a Delta-E score of 4.7 (closer to 0 is better), the ZenBook NX500 produces colors more accurately than the typical mainstream notebook (5.8). However, it couldn't beat the Satellite P50T's score of 3.3.The i1 profiler determines that the sRGB colors are not completely displayed (90% coverage), but they are at least very natural. Only the XPS 15 manages a full coverage among the rivals. AdobeRGB (1998) - and this is really rare - is covered by 83%, not even the Toshiba Satellite P50t can keep up with that. Not many devices are better, only workstations like the HP ZBook 17asus ux31a ladekabel (E9X11AA-ABA) with a matte Full HD display (display rating 92%) are able to cover most part of AdobeRGB and the full sRGB color space (Dreamcolor display).The display has excellent viewing angles as well, due to its TruVivid technology. The screen is constructed with direct bonding, which gets rid of the gap between the cover glass and the LCD panel, increasing transparency and reducing reflection. I could clearly see the text on the screen even when it was turned 90 degrees; reflections weren't eliminated, but they were certainly reduced.

Pressing Fn + C on the keyboard brings you to the Asus Splendid control panel, which lets you customize the display's settings to your liking. It has four preset modes: Normal (default setting), Theater, Vivid and Manual.Vivid mode makes things brighter -- much brighter. Highlights are exaggerated, colors are superpigmented and lights blare on the screen. Animated videos, such as the trailer for Minions, got the most out of this mode. However, since Normal mode is stunning in and of itself, I wasn't compelled to keep Vivid mode on all the time.Theater mode puts a yellowish film over the entire screen, as it's supposed to show more realistic skin tones. However, I didn't see much difference when toggling between Normal and Theater mode -- if anything, Theater-mode skin was simply more yellow.

The keyboard illumination is unfortunately a blessing and a curse at the same time. Asus uses a version where not only the key margins are illuminated, but also the lettering. This makes it tricky to see the lettering under unfavorable lighting conditions, which also means you have to deactivate the illumination in these scenarios. This is mainly an issue for users who cannot touch type and need to see the keys. There's a lot of room on thesony vaio pro 13 power supplyAsus ZenBook NX500's keyboard deck for your hands and wrists to get comfortable, and its matte finish makes it easy to spend hours typing.

The ClickPad with a diagonal size of 12.5 centimeters (~5 in) has a very smooth surface, so there is hardly any resistance for the fingers. The pad is one large single button, left and right clicks can be executed with clicks on the corresponding position on the lower left or right corner, respectively. The travel is pretty limited, which does not result in a good feedback. The clicking noise is also quite loud, which does not really match the quiet keyboard.The springy keys are spaced comfortably apart, and thanks to their 1.7 mm of travel, I was able to type a quick 82 words per minute on TypingTestOnline.org. Two dedicated buttons at the top of the keyboard control its periwinkle backlight, which comes in handy when you're up late.The 4.1 x 2.75-inch touchpad was buttery smooth, making two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom gestures quick and seamless.

The Asus ZenBook NX500 packs a 2.3-GHz Intel Core i7-4712HQ quad-core processor complemented by 16GB of RAM, and it features a 512GB solid-state drive. Multitasking was smooth in my testing; having multiple tabs open with email, video, music and documents was a breeze for this notebook.Asus combines a standard voltage Core i7 with a fast Samsung SSD from the XP941-series. Combined with the performance of the dedicated GTX 850M and the integrated HD Graphics 4600, respectively, we get a very high system performance. Games are quickly copied, applications rapidly installed, and the loading times are phenomenally short. This means the NX500asus ad820m0 charger is suited for professionals (workstation with 4K display, wide gamut) and demanding multimedia users (sound, 4K, system performance) at the same time. With the powerful CPU as well as the upgradeability of the memory, even demanding and performance-oriented customers should be satisfied for at least four years. Let us look at the details.In the OpenOffice Spreadsheet Macro Test, the ZenBook NX500 took 4 minutes and 5 seconds to match 20,000 names and addresses, beating the category average of 5:31. It's slightly faster than the XPS 15 and the MacBook Pro (both 4:14), but the Satellite P50T (3:59) was speedier.

On the Geekbench 3 test, which measures overall performance, the ZenBook NX500 scored 10,953. It beat the 9,599 category average, but was bested by the $2,399 Dell XPS 15 (11,630; 3.2-GHz Intel Core i7-4702HQ processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD), the $1,599 Toshiba Satellite P50T (13,034; 2.4-GHz Intel Core i7-4900HQ processor, 16GB of RAM, 1TB hybrid hard drive) and the $1,699 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display (13,652; 2.3-GHz Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD).To test real-world performance, we put the ZenBook through the Laptop Mag File Transfer Test, which measures how long the notebook takes to copy 4.97GB of mixed-media files. The ZenBook NX500 took only 13 seconds, for a rate of 391.5 MBps. That's faster than the XPS 15 (231.3 MBps) and the MacBook Pro (309 MBps).

The NX500 is supposed to manage two weeks of standby with one charge of the 96 Wh battery. We did not perform this test, but our measurements during standby of 0.4 Watts would result in a standby time of just ten days. But we do not want to be too fussy, and look at the more realistic WLAN test, which opens websites via script with an adjusted display brightness of 150 cd/m2 (dim by 5 steps) and the energy-saving mode (no keyboard illumination). As usual, we deactivated the display energy-saving mode in the Intel driver, otherwise the brightness sensor would prevent the fixed luminance. Despite the powerful battery, the test "only" determines 5:43 hours, our alternative WLAN test (beta status) with the same settings is already finished after 4:51 hours. Both the Apple MBP Retina 15 (84 Wh) and Dell XPS 15 (91 Wh) are much better. ULV equipped systems, in this comparison only the HP Envy 15-k010ngacer aspire s3 951 2464g24iss laptop battery, are not necessarily better. The HP has a lower power consumption, but the battery capacity is also much lower at 41 Wh.On the Laptop Mag Battery Test, the Asus ZenBook NX500 lasted 6 hours and 38 minutes. That's better than the category average of 6:13, and close to the 7 hours of battery life that Asus promises. It's also much better than the Toshiba Satellite P50T (2:38), but not as long-lasting as the Dell XPS 15 (7:07) or the stellar 15-inch Mac Book Pro with Retina display (8:57).

A feature called Instant On lets the notebook get up to two weeks of battery life in standby mode. When the battery meter reaches that last palm-sweating 5 percent in this mode, the notebook will automatically back up documents in use, ensuring you don't lose anything you're currently working on.The Asus ZenBook NX500 runs Windows 8.1 Professional, and with its touch display, you can really get the most out of Microsoft's OS. A dedicated button on the lower-left corner of the keyboard lets you easily switch between desktop mode and Windows' tile mode.The standard warranty period is 24 months. Asus collects the notebook and returns it to you for free (Collect & Return service). Warranty extensions are only available for products with a one-year manufacturer's warranty.Asus doesn't bog down the ZenBook NX500 with bloatware. Instead, the machine comes installed with useful Windows apps like Twitter, Zinio, Skype Wi-Fi, Flipboard, Netflix and TripAdvisor.

The Asus ZenBook NX500 isn't just a premium notebook; it's a work of art. Its sleek design makes it a device you'll want to put out on display, and you won't find any screen better than its 4K touch screen. The battery life could be better, but that's a minor trade-off for an otherwise stellar system.It seems that the GPU Turbo is not used during gaming either, so the NX500 manages less fps than comparable devices with the GDDR5 GTX 850M in general. We listed the V3-772G for this reason, which manages up to 12% more in the synthetic benchmarks, but the Zenbook is clearly faster than the rivals with a GT 750M. The Physics score shows that the review unit falls behind comparable processors by 22 to 28%, which could be caused by the limited Turbo utilization.

So, is the NX500 worth the high $2,699 price? Yes. The Dell XPS 15 with the same processor, RAM and 512GB SSD costs $300 less and lasts longer on a charge, but it has a lower-resolution screen and weaker graphics. The ZenBook's other major competitor is the MacBook Pro with Retina display, which is $200 less and similarly configured. It's also lighter and has significantly longer battery life, but it doesn''t have the same gaming chops. Overall, the ZenBook NX500 is one beautiful 15-inch powerhouse.