The ‘20s in tech is all about making things that couldn’t fold before, fold. That means engineering different types of displays, and placing components in such a way that they’ll function. Asus knows its away around this dance. The company just revealed the world’s first consumer-aimed foldable laptop, called the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED, at CES 2022.
ZenBook in the Fold
The ZenBook 17 Fold features a rather large foldable 17.3in the display, that rocks a 2,560 x 1,920 resolution when unfolded. When in its folded ‘book’ format, you get dual 1,920 x 1,280 displays. It comes with a BlueTooth keyboard accessory, which quickly turns it into a workstation.
Inside, it sports new Alder Lake silicon by Intel (that’s 12th-gen hotness), along with Iris Xe graphics, two Thunderbolt ports along the side, a 5MP webcam up front, and a 75W battery.
Thanks to the size of the device, it weighs in at a hefty 1.6kg without its keyboard. It’s just 8.7mm thick when unfolded, however. According to Asus, you should get up to 3,000 folds on the ZenBook 17 Fold. Which isn’t much if you consider that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 is rated to be capable of withstanding 200,000 folds, according to that company.
That low number has us wondering just how Asus designed the folding mechanism. It’ll be interesting to see the reviews for this device once units are available. The device is Intel Evo compliant, meaning it complies with Intel’s standard of premium consumer laptops. That’s positive, right? It’ll launch in mid-2022, and it may come to SA.
But also in Space
The brand’s best-known business laptop range has gained a special edition entry called the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition. Possibly one of the coolest-looking SE notebooks ever is launching courtesy of the 25th anniversary of Asus’ P6300 laptop’s 600-day Mir journey. The hardware completed its entire space sojourn without failing.
The ZenBook 14X OLED SE features a unique astro-inspired design on its lid, including a 3.5in OLED screen that displays a space-themed animation, time, battery, and custom text.
Inside, you’ll find an Alder Lake Core i9 H-series processor, Intel Iris Xe graphics, 32GB of RAM, four SSD slots and WiFi 6E. Up top, it’s fitted with a Pantone-validated 14in, 16:10 ratio and 2,880 x 1,800 resolution OLED display. The box that the laptop is packaged in even doubles as a nifty 23-degree stand. That should help minimise its environmental impact.
We’ve reached out to local Asus PR to confirm whether the ZenBook 14X Space Edition (and the 17 Fold OLED) will make it to SA, including what pricing would be.
