The Taiwan giant has been innovating off late with extreme laptops like this ZenBook 17 Fold OLED or ZenBook Pro 14 Duo OLED and others, but their OLED revolution has totally changed the laptop market forever. It’s due to them that most premium laptops these days have shifted to OLED and even they are the only ones to provide OLED panels at affordable pricing.
I like the fact that while disrupting the market they haven’t stopped innovating and they launched the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED last year. While we are a bit late receiving the laptop but still reviewing this wonder is always worth it! By the look of it, it again reminds me of the ZenBook premiumness, from packaging to minute details on the laptop.
As it comes folded one can never imagine how big this thing can be when stretched, like 17-inch is almost a monitor! Practically it exceeded my expectations and the design is clearly top-notch, if you remember, this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED resembles the flop Surface Duo that Microsoft launched.
While Microsoft did a disaster or say didn’t get it right in terms of how useful or polished the product will be for the customers, ASUS even handled this big challenge tactically. So, let’s do a deep dive into why this ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is an engineering marvel and does it justify the extraordinary price ASUS is asking.
ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED Specifications
- Processor: 12th Gen Intel EVO Core i7-1250U, 1.1 GHz base speed, 12MB Cache, Up to 4.7 GHz turbo max speed, 10 (2P+8E) cores
- Memory: 16GB LPDDR5 onboard 5200MHz with | Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 Performance SSD
- Display: 17.3-inch (43.94 cm), 2.5K (2560 x 1920) FOLED 4:3 aspect ratio, Touch screen, 0.2ms response time, 500nits HDR peak brightness, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, VESA CERTIFIED Display HDR True Black 500, 1.07 billion colors, PANTONE Validated, Glossy Panel, 70% less harmful blue light, Screen-to-body ratio: 87 ％
- Graphics: Integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics
- Operating System: Windows 11 Home | Software: Office Home and Student 2021 included
- Design: 0.87 ~ 1.29 cm Thin | Thin & Light | 1.50 kg weight |US MIL-STD 810H military-grade standard | 75WHrs Battery Capacity | Up to 9.5 hours Battery life, Note: Battery life depends on conditions of usage
- Keyboard: Soft Keyboard (included in the Box), 1.4 mm key travel, 19.05 mm key pitch, 0.2 mm key-cap dish
- I/O Port: 2x Thunderbolt 4 supports display / power delivery | 1x 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack
- Other: 5.0M camera with IR function | face recognition Login | Wi-Fi 6E(802.11ax) (Dual band) 2*2 + Bluetooth 5.0 | | Built-in speaker | Built-in array microphone | AI noise cancellation
Design & Build Quality
By the look of it, you will understand a lot of time has gone through designing this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED to perfection, there are two parts that have been merged carefully while still maintaining the ethnicity so that it doesn’t become too heavy or unusable. One irritating thing about the foldable has to be the crease between two screens which I also thought would be there on this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED but it isn’t to my surprise.
Whether you fold or unfold it, the careful design to hold the screen even when bent or kept in tent mode makes it an incredible thing. ASUS has made the display like a laptop and the hinge at the back is almost invisible, resulting in a huge uniform 17-inch foldable device which acts both as a huge display or a laptop or even a humongous tablet.
The best part of this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is it isn’t a dream of concept anymore because you can readily buy it now and the advancement ASUS has done in its first attempt is truly appreciable. The hinge is rock-solid to hold the display, also you have support at the back which can be used to unfold and use this 17-inch display as an independent unit with the keyboard and a mouse.
While most won’t need this much luxury but having a laptop like this is itself a big deal, a foldable truth that truly exceeds any design. The build quality is also good and there’s no flaw of any sort I noticed but obviously, you have to be careful with how you fold or unfold, the rest of everything has been taken care of.
Display
Here I had full trust in ASUS having tested dozens of OLED laptops by them and this ZenBook 17 Fold OLED even with its 17.3-inch huge display there’s no compromise in quality. Promising up to 100% DCI-P3 color accuracy, this 2.5K display has a resolution of 2560 x 1920 and a 4:3 aspect ratio, going up to 500 nits of peak brightness.
With HDR support and VESA CERTIFIED display, both media consumption and productivity work can be done easily. Being PANTONE Validated display and having that blue light filter on it, helps a lot when you are working for long hours while still needing that perfection in work without hurting your eyes much.
Having a laptop like this ASUS ZenBook 17 Fold OLED is that you can use it as a big display for media consumption or casual stuff and work as well or just fold it, use the keyboard on top, and use it like a regular tablet. I was doing the latter because the practical use of that big 17-inch display in my work is less and so it depends on your use case completely.
Obviously, it’s a unique and niche product which will not be needed by the masses, targeted particularly for selective audiences who actually need this kind of flexibility. Let’s see how good the laptop’s display is in our SypderX Datacolor Pro tests:
As you see in the display tests, this ZenBook 17 Fold OLED’s massive 17.3-inch display performs as promised with up to 100% DCI-P3 color coverage. Not getting up to 500 nits of peak brightness but it’s still bright for taking it outdoors or for casual usage and with excellent contrast, overall, the display of the laptop is unique, foldable and impressive both in terms of color accuracy and brightness.
Performance
This ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is Intel EVO certified and is powered by the Core i7-1250U with 10 cores, which to be fair is efficient most of the time. However, with boost speeds of up to 4.7 GHz most demanding works are well met, however, you cannot do intense graphical work on this because of the lack of a dedicated GPU.
So, practically this is not for those heavy graphics editors or video editors but for mid-range users whose work is sufficed through web browsing, media consumption, quick reads, business calls and other casual stuff. Whenever I pushed for intense tasks, it could manage up to Photoshop or Lightroom to some extent or open multiple Chrome tabs but beyond that, it cannot sustain.
Now, you are paying over Rs.3lakh on this laptop for only doing basic work is kind of a shame but because ASUS has limitations to cool down the laptop and has to deal with design challenges, the need for strong hardware can’t be meant at least with this iteration of the laptop. So, here are some of the benchmarks of this ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED for your reference so that you have a better idea about its performance:
In Performance mode, it does really perform well but mostly I used Whisper mode to conserve battery life as again this laptop draws a lot of power because of the all-display design. As you see in the benchmarks, this Core i7-1250U isn’t the most powerful out there you expect drawing from 9W to 15W but the performance is underwhelming considering it’s 2023.
In the new Geekbench 6, this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED came up with a 1900 single-core score and 4925 in multi-core, so its clear, the multi-core score is not very good, great for a low-TDP CPU but not for a laptop which is this expensive. During benchmarking too, the CPU remains controlled under 80 degrees celsius and the spike in temperature is not too high, so thermals are controlled.
If you also pay attention to the benchmarks, even the older Ryzen 4000 or 5000 series chips perform better at similar TDPs which again makes the use case of this laptop very limited. It’s only ideal for basic work and not pushing it to extreme workloads and productivity work, I hope ASUS works on the performance front in the next iteration of this extremely exciting laptop.
Connectivity & I/O
The ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED comes with two Thunderbolt 4 ports, both supporting power delivery and display, and a 3.5mm Combo Audio Jack, that’s it, clean and minimal. However, you have to live a dongle life for those things which do not have Type-C ports which again comes as a con for a minimal design.
Also, you have the latest Wi-Fi 6E support which to be fair works pretty well and I do love the strong network coverage it has to offer. I was in another room from where my router was at home but still, I was getting a great signal and band-on download or upload speeds with very low latency.
Though ASUS used the older Bluetooth 5.0 standard there was no lag or problems connecting and using multiple Bluetooth devices like mouse, keyboard, etc.
Keyboard & Trackpad
The downside of having an all-display laptop is you have to rely on an on-screen keyboard but as human nature, we love the clickiness of a physical keyboard anyways. Previously as I remember, Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold had no physical keyboard and one had to rely on the on-screen one but ASUS played it right by including a soft detachable keyboard.
One can easily keep it on the second screen that automatically senses this and the folded display in front of you adapts right away, though then it becomes a Windows tablet for you, I didn’t mind doing my everyday work on it. Kind of I got used to doing work using the such setup as my work didn’t need the whole 17-inch display.
However, the supplied keyboard is very tactile and comfortable to type on and I loved using it every day, as the area is small, the trackpad is also small but still very usable for basic needs. Though a dedicated mouse is always good you still have the entire display with touch support to use any part of the screen using your hands itself.
Audio & Webcam
Coming to the audio, this ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED won’t fail you like any other ASUS ZenBook laptop, having both Dolby Atmos and Vision support, it’s made for luxurious media consumption. You have a plethora of speakers across this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED that makes such great sounds that they can fill your entire room.
It is tuned to perfection and whether you listen to music or watch any movie or casual YouTube, the listening experience is really wholesome. Talking about the webcam of this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, here you get a good 5MP camera with IR functionality and Windows Hello face recognition support as well, the quality is much better and very usable for taking business or casual video calls.
Battery Life
While ASUS advertises up to 9.5 hours of battery life with this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, in reality, you can expect around 5 hours of actual usage if you keep the laptop folded, however, that reduces as you use the entire 17-inch display, decreases to 2-3 hours max.
I would have liked better battery life but still is quite decent and note we have used Whisper mode, so expect a further drop in battery life in Standard or Performance mode.
Verdict
Now comes the real question should you buy this ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED for a hefty sum of ₹3,29,990 or not, personally I don’t have that amount to buy and I won’t be buying anyways because I still think this is more of a luxury for normal people. I do appreciate ASUS making such a unique product and I do think the future for foldable laptops is there.
However, making it available for the masses is still a job ASUS has to cope with but nevertheless, this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is in itself a celebrity of its own. A totally unique laptop to brag about and if you are someone who likes impressive tech can actually go for it because a foldable laptop makes more sense than a smartphone.
Actually, this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is in itself a design marvel though it has its own downside like it cannot be pushed with intense graphical workloads or its keyboard needs to be charged after every two-three days but for day-to-day usage, it’s very polished.
ASUS has given a lot of time designing and perfecting it and that is evident, having used it regularly never did I feel I was using a concept device or such. As of now, its pricing is high because of its uniqueness and making the tech is also expensive, so, if you can afford and want a foldable laptop you should definitely go for this Zenbook 17 Fold OLED.
Buy this ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED from Amazon India: https://amzn.to/3Ei4Yly
