Here we have the brand new ASUS ZenBook Flip S with the model name UX371. This laptop was announced a month ago in conjunction with Intel’s 11th Gen processor announcement.
This is actually one of the most interesting flip laptops I’ve tested since it performs great and it also uses an OLED screen.
Design
The new ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX371 is a convertible ultrabook – which means you can use it as a laptop or flip it over and convert it to be a tablet or anything in between. It’s 13.9mm thin and only at 1.2kg in weight – which is surprising considering the fact that it’s made entirely out of metal.
The one we have here has the “Jade Black” finish. And I’m specifically wearing this shirt because the color scheme is way too similar. It has a very deep blue color overall but the accents – including the chamfered edges all around the rim of the ZenBook Flip S – is in a copper color. ASUS is calling it “Red Copper diamond-cut highlight” but hey – all I care is that it looks amazing.
What’s not amazing here though, is the fingerprint magnetism on the lid. It has the usual ZenBook design with concentric circles rippling out from the ASUS logo, and the circles are very fine this time. Not sure if that’s the reason that it has so many fingerprints, but it’s happening.
Screen
I was caught off-guard, actually. This ZenBook Flip S uses a 4K 13.3-inch AMOLED touchscreen, which I thought was an extremely high-grade IPS LCD at first because the colors aren’t as overly-saturated as the Gigabyte AERO 15 OLED XB – which we reviewed here – but have that extreme brightness. What I mean here is that the ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX371 has excellent color calibration.
ASUS also touts that this screen here is Pantone-validated, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, and also has VESA DisplayHDR 500 certification. Yes, HDR is supported.
Specs and performance
Now, 4K resolution is not easy to drive – especially for an ultrabook with lower-powered chips. This is where Intel’s new 11th Generation Tiger Lake is supposed to shine – and it does shine. The Intel Core i7-1065G7 with the Intel Irix Xe integrated graphics can get a lot of things done.
Here’s a quick list of specs:
- 13.3-inch 4K OLED screen
- Intel Core i7-1165G7
- Intel Iris Xe graphics (96 execution units)
- 16GB RAM 4267MHz
- 1TB Western Digital PC SN730 NVMe SSD
Through my usage experience, the ZenBook Flip S never once showed any signs of lag. And with proper power profile management, the fans can also be dead silent.
Now, if I tuned the power profile to its maximum performance – the ZenBook Flip S UX371 can actually be used to edit videos. I installed Premiere Pro in it for lols and took one of our videos, dumped it into the laptop – since it also has a 1TB NVMe SSD – and tried running it. I was surprised by how well Iris Xe handled the task.
I should also mention that the ZenBook Flip S UX371 that we have here, has 16GB of RAM. In task manager, Iris Xe reports 8GB of shared memory – which I suspect has half of the total system RAM allocated as the Iris Xe’s VRAM. This really is important as my problem with AMD’s Ryzen 4000 series integrated GPUs have only 512MB of VRAM – which means we can’t do much even if that graphic processor is powerful.
Speaking of the graphic processor power, we have another video where we test out games on the ZenBook Flip S UX371. We did that over at Tech Critter’s channel, and we dive deep into the i7-1165G7’s performance and a few other things.
Touchscreen, trackpad, keyboard
Okay, so other than that – let’s talk about some other things about the ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX371. The touchscreen works as expected – why wouldn’t it?
The touchpad has now grown horizontally, making it ultrawide like my 21:9 monitor which also has the NumberPad feature. The trackpad works great but has the usual palm rejection issue.
And the keyboard is something that I truly love. It’s springy, has a relatively long travel distance, and feels like there’s an internal dampener. The typing area’s keys have shorter keycaps vertically, but I got used to it real quick. It also has ErgoLift hinge, by the way, elevates the laptop just a little bit when the lid is opened.
Buttons and ports
Quick complain – the power button on the right side is very mushy. And while we’re at it, let’s talk about the ports.
At the right side beside the aforementioned power button, there’s a USB-A port (5Gb/s).
At the left side, we have a full-sized HDMI port, and two shiny new Thunderbolt 4 bolts.
I have 2 complaints here. Firstly, thank you ASUS for including two Thunderbolt 4 ports, but please move one of it to the right side so I can charge by plugging it to either left or right side. I feel like a broken record for saying this same thing over and over away, honestly.
Secondly, no audio jack – again. Just like the ZenBook 14 UX425 that we reviewed earlier.
Battery life
Packed with a 67Wh battery, the battery life… is quite decent. The ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX371 can last for about 7 hours or so under our usual heavy workload. I’m using it at about 50% brightness and remember – we have the OLED variant of this laptop.
The speaker
Tuned by Harman Kardon, the speakers on this thin and light laptop is surprisingly good! We’ve shown how the speaker sounds in the video at the top of this review.
Should you buy the ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX371?
I can’t really answer that for now. I still do not have the pricing or availability of this laptop in Malaysia as of now. But, the ASUS ZenBook Flip S UX371 is an amazing laptop. It’s beautiful, thin, lightweight, yet powerful thanks to the new 11th Gen Intel Core chipset.
I’ll just say this – if you’re looking to buy an ultrabook right now, then consider getting any of the latest ASUS ZenBook series of laptops with Tiger Lake chips. The 11th Gen Intel Core chipset is such a big upgrade over 10th Gen Intel Core chipsets.
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