Asus ZenBook 3 UX390UA - Admirable MacBook Imitator

[jiyeon]

 

Hello and welcome to my experience with the Asus ZenBook 3, a 2016 12.5” Windows laptop that was created and marketed to compete against Apple’s own 2016 12” MacBook, with the ZenBook 3 sharing so much similarities with its macOS cousin that you’d believe at first glance it was a MacBook, but running Windows.

 

You might recall that I have previously used an Asus ZenBook UX410 (reviewed here) that is arguably more modern and robust for a general usage web-browsing machine. I found the UX410 to be a bit too thick and heavy for what I need out of a laptop, and the ZenBook 3 waved from afar, with its beautifully light and thin chassis, being 11.9mm thick at its thickest point, and a strikingly-light 900g.

 

I did buy mine used, however one of the first things I did to the machine was make a battery upgrade, as the battery inside has degraded from its original 40Wh capacity all the way down to 29Wh. Despite this, I was able to pick this laptop up for a measly £349.99. That’s compared to the £529.99 I spent for my brand new Asus ZenBook UX410.

 

My model sports an i5-7200U, with 8GB of RAM, and a 250GB Liteon M.2 SATA SSD, with a gorgeous glossy 12.5” IPS display, although this display has been reported in some places as an AHVA, either way, the colors, sharpness, viewing angles, and stellar resolution are all amazing and make looking at the screen a breath of fresh air.

 

 

Like I mentioned before, this machine is heavily inspired by Apple’s 12” MacBook, and it definitely conveys itself as an imitator. There is no area of the device you can point to and say it doesn’t look like Apple’s own child.

 

The screen is a glossy but otherwise interrupted panel with no protruded bezels, with a stealthy ‘Asus ZenBook’ monitor down the chin, similar to Apple’s own MacBook tramp stamp.
There are some speakers just above the keyboard, which aren’t anything special. They sound tinny but are bearable if you keep your expectations low.

 

 

The keyboard is also placed unapologetically like the 12” MacBook, with the keyboard spanning across the entire lower body. The keys also have just 0.8mm of travel which is something Asus should not have copied.
Being a lover of mechanical keyboards, and the OEM keycap profile, it has taken me forever to get used to Asus’ dangerously-thin amount of keyboard travel, it has virtually zero depth and very difficult to judge if I’ve even made a keystroke.

 

The trackpad however is awesome, with its glass-surfaced, Windows precision-certified technology, and with a neat little fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello in the top-right. Some might say this is weirdly-placed, but in my experience, I have not found any issues with it being in the way, except from when I first got my ZenBook 3, and I kept hitting over the fingerprint sensor thinking it was something else, only to remember that the fingerprint sensor was there. You get used to it fairly quickly in my experience.

 

 

On the right side, there is a single USB Type-C 3.1 port, no Thunderbolt 3. This port is the sole hole for anything you need, charging, data transfer, it’s all done through a single hole, once again like the 12” MacBook. The ZenBook 3 uses 19V 2.3A 45W charging through this port, so you might find some difficulty as I did finding a charger that supplies enough power to charge this device.
There are also two LED indicator lights, battery and sleep icons, to let you know if the laptop is charging and if it is awake respectively.

 

 

On the left side, there is a 3.5mm combo jack, and that’s all folks.
 

 

 

When migrating over to the ZenBook 3, I was very curious to see how it would perform versus my old UX410, as on paper, the pair have little to differentiate each other in terms of specifications.

To recap, my ZenBook 3 is running a puny i5-7200U, which is a generation behind my former UX410 which was running an i3-8130U.
My UX410 got a 777 score in Cinebench R20, sustaining an impressive 3.4GHz turbo clock. For even further context, my desktop running an i5-8600K would get on average 2800 score in Cinebench R20. Let’s then see how my ZenBook 3 does.
 

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It does extremely poorly, with its score nearly half the former UX410. That’s what the ZenBook 3 gets however for copying the incredibly-thin chassis of the 12” MacBook.

 

Note that this device when I got it already had three years of mileage on it already as it is a used model that was first bought in 2017 originally, so take these results with a grain of salt as there may be a lot of variables to point fingers to for its poor performance.

 

On the other side of the coin, this poor performance would actually be beneficial to the lifespan of the laptop, as Asus has clearly allowed the machine to throttle to prevent it from being too hot. Looking at you, Apple.
 

 

The battery is impressively sound. Typically in my usage, it’s an even split between general web browsing and video consumption. I can get away with 6-7 hours of battery life on a given charge, with the screen on 50%, and the keyboard backlighting sporadically on and off for when I need it.

 

As for charging, I opted to buy a new 65W 20V charger to charge this thing with, and it takes on average 1.5-2 hours to go from <10% to 100%. Although I rarely ever let it go to 100% since it sustains battery life so well even on idle and off.

 

Note that like I mentioned earlier, this laptop's battery had degraded down to 29Wh from its original 40Wh, so my numbers are not indicative of a full capacity battery. If I had to estimate, this laptop would get easily 9 hours of usage out of a full charge based on how long the degraded battery has served me.
 

 

Taking off the bottom lid shows little in the way of upgradability, as most if not all the components are soldered on. The only piece that is upgradable in this tiny machine is the single M.2 2280 SSD. Mine came with a 256GB Liteon SATA SSD, which is fine for my needs. Of course, knowing that one has the option to expand their storage in the future is a great piece of knowledge to have.

There is also a massive battery complex under the hood, taking almost two thirds of the entire bottom construction, being an admirable 40Wh battery.
There is also another set of speakers near the bottom, this time downward-firing.
A fan in the centre for airflow and to cool the i5-7200U chip to the left and above the SSD is also present.
Underneath the hood overall, there is not too much to talk about, as it is fairly simple and easy to navigate around.

 

 

 

This machine is extremely gorgeous on the outside. It may be a 12” MacBook clone running Windows, but if you can’t beat them, join them, and Asus clearly has huge balls to copy a design that is beautiful to even the blindest of consumers.

Beautiful chassis, lightweight, gorgeous screen, there’s honestly not a lot to hate about this device. Taking this around anywhere would garner ogling to the highest degree with its beautiful construction and elegant edges.

 

If I had to complain about the device, it would probably be the keyboard. It is so very shallow and it takes a while to get used to. But it is a pretty-looking keyboard with an easy-to-follow layout and for that, I don’t find it a dealbreaker.

Some may argue that the single USB type-C port would be the main dealbreaker, but in my opinion, if you’re after a thin and light ultrabook that you only need for casual use, you probably don’t need the whole works to use the thing. I should note I have bought a dongle for the times I might want to plug in a USB-A device or something to the laptop.

 

As a whole, this is a solid device for the everyday user. Sure, the performance is comparable to Apple’s 12” ThrottleBook, but I will happily trade some performance loss for something this thin and light, especially when I’m not a power user for any laptops I use anyway.

[Guest]

 

Did you intentionally make this work so well w/ the wallpaper and the deskmat aligning this way?

Either way, I love it.

[sub68]

4 hours ago, sowon said:

The ZenBook 3 uses 19V 2.3A 45W charging through this port

hmm my school lenovo chromebook has a 45watt brick model ADLX45YDC2D but I don't think it could power it due to 2.25 amp at 20 volts

 

[sub68]

4 hours ago, Den-Fi said:

 

Did you intentionally make this work so well w/ the wallpaper and the deskmat aligning this way?

Either way, I love it.

wow that does fit perfectly I feel like this was intentional