Asus Unveils Zenbook ZX500 Notebook With 4K IPS Display
Asus' new laptop will come with a four-lane M.2 SSD and a 4K IPS display.
Asus has announced a new notebook, the Zenbook NX500, in time for Computex, Taipei. This notebook is a new addition the the Zenbook series, though it brings a lot more to the table than routine refreshes – it brings a new level of display quality, manufacturing quality, and storage speeds.
This is a 15.6-inch laptop with a body crafted out of aluminium. Physically, this makes the laptop very solid, attractive and tough but it isn’t what sets it apart from the crowd, as there are already laptops like this on the market. What sets this laptop apart is the hardware found inside the elegant chassis. The Zenbook NX500 comes packed with up to Intel Core i7 processors, and will pack up to Nvidia GTX 850M graphics. Alongside this is an M.2 PCI-Express based SSD which runs off a grand total of four lanes – two more than most M.2 solutions. On certain configurations you might find SATA3 SSDs in a RAID0 array.
The hero feature of this laptop is really the display. The laptop carries a 4K panel with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 and is built using Asus’ VisualMaster technology. This means it's an IPS display capable of covering 108 percent of the Adobe RGB colour space and a massive 146 percent of the sRGB colour space.
Pricing for the laptop remains unknown, as does availability.
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This is coming from a Lenovo yoga 2 pro owner with the 3200x1800p screen that I end up downscaling half the time just to see the buttons on adobe software
It's called Windows 8.1 DPI Scaling. Works great.
This is coming from a Lenovo yoga 2 pro owner with the 3200x1800p screen that I end up downscaling half the time just to see the buttons on adobe software
Adobe has fixed this and it will be out soon. providing your a paying Adobe Creative Cloud Customer. It was Demo'd at the Surface Pro 3 Event.
This thing is pretty amazing. It has a GDDR5 version of GTX 850M, unlike G550JK and N550JK. It has SSDs (Asus is notorious by now due to REFUSING to put SSD anywhere except top G750 and ZenBook configs, which is a shame in case of laptops like N550... and most of their machines don't even have mSATA or M.2 to add your own without throwing HDD out!), it has a HUGE (96 Wh) battery (specs: http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/Notebooks/News/_nc/asus_nx500chi_10.jpg). In a way, it's everything I wanted my N550JV to have improved. However, I am disappointed that Ethernet jack has been removed, and same can be said about subwoofer jack (which is absolutely needed for proper music enjoyment). Happy that NumPad has been removed, NOT happy that arrow keys became those stupid half-height ones. Not happy that the screen became touch - that will just increase the price (to hell with touch anyhow) pointlessly AND it made the screen glossy. It better have the brightness of 350+ cd/m2 to make up for it.
In a way, this is the best balanced non-workstation laptop on the market right now. But from the other side, removal of the above-mentioned features is just annoying. It's the same case as N550, there's enough space for RJ45 and subwoofer jack. Scumbag Asus can't ever get EVERYTHING right as much as I love their N series.
This is not an ultrabook form factor, Asus is lying. It's the same case as N550JV (slightly thicker than 15'' MBP Retina), and I play Battlefield 3 online multiplayer on mid-high settings and Mass Effect 3 multiplayer on highest (both at 1080p of course), and remember that N550JV has a worse card - GT 750M with DDR3 VRAM. Notebookcheck tests revealed CPU throttling during high load on both CPU and GPU but it doesn't actually happen during gaming. In N550JK, which has the same CPU and GTX 850M (DDR3 version, ugh) the throttling is gone since GTX 850M is a cooler-running card, it seems.
This case's cooling is not ideal - the bottom of the screen's frame is almost blocking the exhaust vents, like on the new MBPs. However, there are two fans and although the top of the case (next to the screen) gets pretty hot, it does not have any impact on gaming.
I imagine that NX500 will use exactly the same cooling and that the GDDR5 version of GTX 850M isn't running considerably hotter. Therefore I conclude that this laptop is fully capable of playing a LOT of modern games on high settings at 1080p. It's not designated for gaming, but if you just want a stylish laptop with good soudn, kickass screen, powerful CPU/SSD combos and good battery life, capable of SOME gaming, this is as perfect as it gets.
It's called Windows 8.1 DPI Scaling. Works great.
You're talking windows itself. As you noted in your other post with Adobe fixing the problem, it's a per app fix and devs have to do that. Games have the same problems. I'm not saying they won't get it all perfect one day, just for now it is definitely not and I don't know anyone running win 8/8.1 that hasn't removed it
DPI scaling doesn't fix the fact that you're pushing a massive amount of pixels either. Gaming at 4K with a single 850m? It's called a "Slide show". Works terrible.
Oh, and we still don't have brand name 1440p monitors <$300