ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U (UX490UAR-BE082T)
Key Features:
- Model: ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U (UX490UAR-BE082T)
- Colour: Royal Blue, Quartz Grey
- Aerospace-Grade Aluminum Alloy Body
- 8th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-8550U 1.80 GHz Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.00 GHz) Operating
- Windows 10 Home
- 14” LED-backlit Full HD (1920 by 1080)
- 60Hz refresh rate, wide 100% sRGB colour gamut
- 178° wide-view technology
- Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5
- 1000:1 TV-grade contrast ratio
- ASUS Eye Care technology for up to 30% blue-light reduction
- 7.46mm-thin bezel with 84% screen-to-body ratio
- Integrated Intel® UHD Graphics 620
- 16GB 2133MHz LPDDR3 onboard
- 1TB PCIe Solid State Drive
- Illuminated 1.2mm Chiclet Keyboard
- VGA Web Camera
- Wi-Fi Integrated 802.11 AC
- Built-in Bluetooth V 4.1
- I/O Ports
- 2 x Thunderbolt™ 3 USB-C™ with support for:
- Charging DisplayPort (Dual 4K UHD external displays)
- Thunderbolt™ (up to 40 Gbps, 8 times faster than USB 3.0)
- USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps, 20 times faster than USB 2.0)
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 USB-C™ with support for:
- Charging Data transfer (up to 5 Gbps)
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- 2 x Thunderbolt™ 3 USB-C™ with support for:
- 4 Cells 46 Whrs Polymer Battery
- 32.9 x 21.6 x 0 ~1.29 cm (WxDxH)
- Weighs <1kg
- 4CH Quad-speaker ASUS SonicMaster Premium stereo audio system | Harman Kardon-certified
Where To Buy
Unboxing – ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U
https://youtu.be/n8ARcV27U40
Above is a simple unboxing video while below is a more detailed image to image unboxing.
The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U laptop comes with a two packaging style. The first box we see is the box designed for travel or shipping. It has a plastic handle at the top and it doesn’t highlight any product features. The back of the box is plain black with product code specification sticker displayed.
Opening the packaging box reveals another packaging box. This box feels premium when touched. It’s compact and much sturdier than the first box.
Taking all the content out of the box reveals that ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U comes with four accessories. A protective sleeve, a pouch, a charger, and a dongle.
Accessories
The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U laptop comes with four different accessories.
The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U comes with a free PU leather protective sleeve.
It also comes with a pouch bag for the charger and the dongle. Out of the box, the pouch contains the user guide and warranty card of the laptop.
Then the last two accessories that come with the laptop is the USB Type C power charger(65W) and a USB Type-C to USB-HDMI-USB Type-C port dongle. Also known as the Asus Mini Dock.
The Asus mini dock features 3 ports. One HDMI, one USB Type-C, and one USB Type A. This dongle can be used to connect to TV or monitors with resolutions of up to 4K or Ultra High-Definition.
Closer Look – ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U
Design
The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U, like most ZenBook, features a slim design. It’s the first impression that you will get from looking at this laptop. It’s so thin. When closed, it has a thickness of 1.29cm. Which is thinner than a one peso coin.
The key and the selling features of the ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U is its battery capacity, its processor, lightweight, a PCIe SSD which is drastically the fastest storage drive these days, its integrated fingerprint sensor with Windows Hello support, and its ultra-thin bezel design.
This laptop has 4 I/O ports and those are 2 x Thunderbolt™ 3 USB-C™located on the right side, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 USB-C™ on the left side, and one 3.5mm audio/mic port on the left side as well.
The two ports of the right side are capable of supporting dual 4K UHD external displays with up to 40 Gbps of bandwidth.
In terms of display, this laptop features a 14” LED-backlit Full HD (1920 by 1080) with 60Hz refresh rate. It also has a wide 100% sRGB colour gamut with 178° wide-view technology. Protected by Corning® Gorilla® Glass 5 cover. Contrast wise, it has 1000:1 TV-grade contrast ratio. But the main feature of the display is its 7.46mm-thin bezel with 84% screen-to-body ratio as well as ASUS Eye Care technology that’s designed to reduce 30% blue-light.
Audio
Another key feature of this laptop is its 4CH quad-speaker powered by ASUS SonicMaster Premium stereo audio system with surround-sound effects and is a Harman Kardon-certified.
We did play a couple of videos to test the audio. The sound quality and loudness are quite okay in small rooms and in a quiet environment. However, upon testing on a cafe where there is noise present everywhere, the speakers lack some punch and we ended up needing to use some headset. Furthermore, it feels like the sound is just coming from the speakers above and we couldn’t hear the sound from the bottom speakers when at a distance.
Fingerprint Scanner
Fingerprint security system is now very popular amongst smartphones, so what would stop them from being on laptops too? The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U is equipped with a fingerprint scanner log in system.
This is quite a cool feature to have on a laptop.The responsiveness of it is quite fast too. After registering your fingerprint, logging in to your laptop will now be a jiffy. No need to type in passwords or pins. All you have to do is place your registered fingerprint on the scanner and the system will go straight to your desktop. Furthermore, the touchpad features intelligent palm-rejection, handwriting input support, and Precision Touchpad (PTP) support with up to four-finger smart gestures.
Illuminated Chiclet Keyboard
The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U features an illuminated keyboard that has 1.2mm key travel. Personally, I like this type of keyboards. Though most enthusiast would probably expect atleast a mechanical keyboard given the price of the laptop.
Performance – ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U
System
3DMark | Cloud Gate
Score: 6757
Basically, from the results of 3DMark Cloud Gate alone, we can definitely say that this laptop is not intended for gaming. The Intel UHD 620 is not powerful enough to give you a smooth gaming performance. Although, games like Minecraft can be an exception.
The Intel UHD 620 is mainly there to provide decent graphics with support for dual 4K UHD external display.
Cinebench R15
CPU: 607 | OpenGL 42.32 fps
CrystalDisk Mark
CrystalDisk Mark result of the 1TB PCIe SSD.
AS SSD
AS SSD results of the 1TB PCIe SSD.
ATTO
ATTO results of the 1TB PCIe SSD.
Aida64 Read/Write/Latency
Using Aida64, we measured the write, read, and latency performance of the laptop’s RAM.
With a dual DDR3 running at 2133MHz, the result reveals that the RAM is not a top-notch performer. This is to be expected from a low powered DDR3. LPDDR3 is a power efficient RAM that extends the battery life of the laptop.
CPU-Z ID w/ Benchmark
Here is a quick benchmark result using the benchmarking tool of CPU-Z. We also selected the recorded performance of i7-6700k@4GHz for reference and comparison.
With 4C/8T, the i7-8550u scored 424.1 with the single thread and 1828.7 with multi-thread.
Thermal Performance
The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U features a unique cooling system. It is equipped with a liquid-crystal-polymer fan impeller that’s just 0.3mm thick and a copper-alloy heat pipe with walls that are 0.1mm in thickness.
Despite this unique design, the laptop ends up getting hot when in heavy use such as downloading while browsing or doing some office work. The aluminium body ends up being a heat sync to further dissipate the heat. So using it for gaming can be an issue.
Final Thoughts…
The ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe UX490U is definitely a premium grade laptop. Despite being expensive, this is a laptop that literally goes with the saying, you get what you paid for. For us, we believe that the 1TB PCIe SSD is the reason to what made this laptop very expensive.
Performance wise, hands down. This laptop offers a solid computing and actual experience performance. The only downside for us is that this laptop is not for gaming and it doesn’t feature a 4K UHD HDR display. At PHP110,000, we were expecting at least a 4K display.
Overall, the ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe is a premium laptop with a solid performance. If you’re looking for a lightweight laptop that weighs less than 1kg and has a solid computing performance, then the ASUS ZenBook 3 Deluxe might just be the one for you. Otherwise, there are other options out there that might be better for you.
Where To Buy