The new Asus Zenbook 13 (2018) is super light and powerful

If there’s one laptop that’s been announced at CES 2018 (so far) that’s got us excited, it’s Asus’ Zenbook 13. Asus describes it as “ultralight, ultrathin and ultrapowerful”, so it looks well placed to replace last year’s Zenbook 3 as a lightweight powerhouse capable of challenging Apple’s MacBook.

READ NEXT: All the trends and products released at CES 2018

Asus Zenbook 13 UK price: How much does it cost?

Unfortunately, there’s no news on how much the Zenbook 13 will cost in the UK. However, if pushed to make an educated guess, I’d expect it to be around the £1200 mark like the Zenbook 3, if not more.

Asus Zenbook 13 UK release date: When’s it coming out?

Again, there’s no news yet on a release date for the Zenbook 13 in the UK – or indeed the rest of the world – but we’ll be sure to update this page as soon as we receive official details.

Asus Zenbook 13 specs: What’s inside it?

Despite being so thin and lightweight, the Zenbook 13 features an 8th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a superfast 1TB of SSD storage. It’s a mighty impressive spec for a laptop that’s so portable, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be a very strong all-rounder, perfectly adept at multitasking as well as raw processing performance. Asus also claims that it delivers an impressive 15 hours of battery life, so it’ll be interesting to see how it fares in our own tests.

The lightweight laptop comes with Windows 10 pre-installed, so you can take advantage of features like Windows Hello – which speeds up the log-in process using facial recognition – and of course Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana. Thanks to a Harman Kardon “audio system”, the laptop should also be able to punch out powerful sound with decent clarity.

Asus Zenbook 13 design: What does it look like?

Weighing only 985g, the Asus Zenbook 13 is lightweight and ultra thin (unfortunately we don’t have any official dimensions yet) and aimed squarely at giving users the ultimate in portability. Beyond knowing that it has an all-metal chassis, it’s impossible to say much about its build quality, but I’d expect it to have the kind of lavish design that wouldn’t look out of place alongside Apple’s Macbook.

Asus Zenbook 13: Early verdict

It’s impossible to come to any real conclusions about how good the Zenbook 13 is without getting our hands on it, especially without knowing how much it’ll cost. However, on paper, the specs look very impressive. A quad-core i7 processor backed up by 16GB RAM should be more than enough power for most users, and weighing less than 1KG, it won’t be weighing you down when you take it everywhere with you.
Stay tuned for my full Asus Zenbook 13 review in the very near future.