Display, Keyboard and Trackpad

The ZenBook three is blessed with a 12.5-inch 1920 x 1080 IPS LCD, which is slightly smaller than your typical ultraportable. At 176 PPI, the display provides a crisp viewing experience at a typical viewing distance, and I establish the default Windows scaling level of 125% perfect for this screen size. And thanks to huge improvements to high-DPI scaling in Windows 10 recently, I rarely encountered dreaded blurred text.

The display is reasonably bright, pushing out around 340 nits, which is typical for a laptop of this grade. Viewing angles were great, although the glossy cease can reflect background light at times. However, this glossy finish does enhance the appearance of colors and makes the display 'popular' more than it would otherwise.

The color quality of the ZenBook 3'due south brandish is difficult to mensurate as Asus has implemented dynamic contrast adjustment that seemingly cannot exist disabled. Asus even have a utility that tin can be used to change the display fashion, called Asus Splendid Technology, all the same this utility includes no dynamic range toggle. This is frustrating for creative professionals that desire colour accuracy, as the always-changing colour operation of the ZenBook prevents it from ever being color accurate.

By default, the ZenBook 3 does have a potent blue tint to the brandish due to a cold overall colour temperature. This tin be adjusted in the included brandish utility if you so choose. The screen tends to expect quite proficient, due to deep blacks and saturated colors, however dynamic contrast adjustments are noticeable and somewhat abrasive. Regular users probably won't notice or care, but I'd exist more than positive about the display if the ZenBook had a static dissimilarity fashion.

The keyboard included on this laptop is hit or miss. The large layout makes it piece of cake to hit individual keys, and I honey the corporeality of space allocated to important keys like shift, enter and backspace. Each key is noticeably larger than the keyboard on my Dell XPS 13, and that's because Asus dedicated as much width as they possibly could to the ZenBook iii's keyboard.

While the size of the keyboard is impressive, information technology doesn't provide a particularly bully typing experience. If y'all don't similar the MacBook's keyboard, you won't like the ZenBook 3's keyboard, and that's downwardly to lack of travel distance.

Asus advertises 0.8mm of travel equally "impressive", merely typing on the ZenBook's keyboard is only one pace better than typing on a touchscreen. Simply put, the abrupt end to each key'south travel leads to unpleasant tactile feedback. The Dell XPS 13 and even the slim HP Spectre offer much amend keyboards with increased travel altitude.

On a more positive notation is the glass trackpad Asus has included. Despite the awkward placement of the fingerprint sensor, the trackpad is a practiced size and delivers a pleasant concrete click. Best of all, the trackpad is very responsive and didn't require a massive increment in sensitivity to make information technology usable. If Asus placed the fingerprint sensor elsewhere, the trackpad would be perfect for a device of this size.