Asus has launched its desirable ZenBook Pro 15 UX550GD without any fanfare. Claimed to be "designed to entice, and crafted to perform," the new laptop features an attractive mix of powerful components, premium construction, all day battery life, and svelte good looks. Purchasers have a choice up to a 6C/12T Intel CPU, up to a 15-inch 4K touchscreen, up to 1TB of PCIe SSD storage, as well as an Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU with 4GB GDDR5 as standard.
If you head on over to the official product page tech specs section you can see that Asus will let you configure your UX550GD with a choice of an Intel Core i5-8300H with 4C/8T running at up to 4.0GHz, i7-8750H with 6C/12T running at up to 4.1GHz, or an i9-8950HK with 6C/12T and running at up to 4.5GHz with 8, 9, and 12MB of cache respectively. On the topic of processing power, all three models come with an Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU with 4GB GDDR5 as standard, as mentioned in the intro.
Asus has designed the ZenBook Pro 15 with an 83 per cent screen to body ratio thanks to the 7.3mm bezel around the screen. Again buyers will have a choice here. There is a 15.6-inch LED-backlit Full HD (1920 x 1080) 16:9 display with colour calibration: Delta E < 3, and 100 per cent sRGB colour gamut. You can opt for a touch screen version of this full HD panel too. If you want a 4K version that is also available in touchscreen only with an improved Delta E < 2, and the same 100 per cent sRGB colour gamut. All screen options leverage Asus Eye Care technology (blue light filter).
Onto memory, and there is a choice of just 8GB or 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4. Fixed storage options are wider with 256GB and 512GB SATA 3 SSDs or speedier 512GB or 1TB PCIe SSDs available.
For a slim laptop ports seem plentiful, and Asus has equipped 2 x Type-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Thunderbolt), 2 x Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 2, 1 x HDMI, 1 x Combo audio jack, 1 x MicroSD card reader. Wireless connectivity is catered for by Dual-band 802.11ac gigabit Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0.
Other important specs enhancing the value of this laptop are a 9-hour battery life, full-sized backlit keyboard with 1.5mm key travel, smart gesture touchpad, array microphone with Cortana voice-recognition support, Asus SonicMaster stereo speakers with Harman Kardon certification and a built-in VGA webcam. This 15.6-inch form factor laptop measures just 36.5 x 25.1 x 1.89cm and weighs 1.86kg.
Pricing and availability are not known at the time of writing.
