You Wanted Something Bigger? Here’s The Asus ZenBook 15 UX534 – Singapore

Quite a while back, we reviewed the Asus ZenBook UX434 and said that that laptop might just be the laptop for most people out there. Today, we have the bigger brother, the UX534, to which we would say, if you were looking at the UX434 and you wanted something bigger, well, this is it.

As for specs, we have the latest variant of the UX534 which has the 10th-gen Intel chips. So it’s running an Intel Core i7-10510U, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Max Q, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD. 

With that out of the way, let’s talk about design. It’s pretty much the same as the UX434. You get the same Royal Blue finish, that iconic ripple design on the aluminium surface, and that subtle gold trim near the hinge.

We liked the design on the UX434, so this is no exception. It’s clean, minimalistic, and to a certain degree, quite premium as well.

For the display, you now get a 15.6-inch 4K IPS display that is capable of 100% sRGB coverage.

It goes without saying that the display is great, with good viewing angles and the colours are rich and vibrant. Given that it is 4K as well, you’ll definitely enjoy watching content on this laptop. Although we’ll still stand by our opinion that 4K on a laptop is kind of redundant. But it is nice and sharp, no doubt.

Up top, you get a 720P webcam with support for Windows Hello. And the keyboard is where things get slightly different.

You do actually get a numpad, for the bigger form factor, which I believe some of you out there will appreciate. As for the typing experience itself, it’s comfortable and enjoyable. Keys are nice and tactile and it pretty much feels the same as it did on the UX434. Our only gripe about it is that we would’ve preferred it without a numpad, so that our hands are centralized, instead of being offset to the left. 

But in any case, it’s a great keyboard.

Next is the trackpad, and just like the UX434, it doubles as a smaller secondary display as well, with a maximum resolution of 2,160 by 1,080. 

With it, you can launch apps right from the home screen, or you can swap apps between the two displays and more. Overall, we would say it depends on your usage, but we didn’t really use it all that much, considering it’s a much smaller display and you will have to tilt you head down to actually look at it.

Of course, when you use it as a trackpad, you can’t use it as a display, vice versa.

Now in terms of I/O, this is where we really appreciate what the bigger form factor offers. 

On the right, you get your power jack, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.1, a Type-C port, and an SD card reader. On the left, you get another USB 3.1, with the last one being the headphone/mic combo jack.

Overall, pretty good variety of I/O, and with that SD card reader, we believe this laptop might entice you creatives out there just a little more.

As mentioned, this is the 10th-gen model, and the slight performance bump is definitely nice to have. In Cinebench R20, it’s definitely much faster, compared to the 8th-gen Core i7-8565U in both Multi-Core and Single-Core.

As for DaVinci Resolve, the render times are quite good, though to be noted, DaVinci does favour the GPU more, and that’s why you are seeing much better performance as compared to the UX434 before.

With a GTX 1650, that also means you can play games, and you can expect very playable frame rates in games like CSGO or PUBG, or even triple-A titles like Devil May Cry 5. Overall, it’s a decent, if not, great gaming experience.

As for temperatures, it’s not that bad. It’ll hover anywhere around the low eighties degrees celsius when rendering or gaming, and be able to do so with the clocks, higher than base. 

Included is a 71wh battery, which will get you around 8 hours of battery life, depending on your usage. Honestly, not too bad, considering this is a 4K display.

Final thoughts? If you were looking at the UX434 and you wanted everything that was offered, but in a larger package, this is it. It’s just great as an everyday laptop, and can even do creative work or a bit of gaming on the side. 

More information and purchase options for the Asus UX534 (starting at S$2,498) is available on the Asus website.