ASUS unveiled theZenbook 17 Fold OLED laptop with a foldable screen, after announcing more information during the 2022 Hong Kong Computer and Communications Festival, it has now officially announced the listing information.
The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is ASUS's first foldable laptop. Compared to Lenovo's ThinkPad X2020 Fold, a foldable laptop showcased at CES 1, which was built with a 13.3-inch screen, ASUS directly uses a 17.3-inch foldable OLED screen with a 2.5K resolution design.
In terms of body thickness, the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is 8.7mm thick when unfolded and only 17.4mm thick when folded. The frame is made of magnesium alloy and covered with dark green leather. The sound system is equipped with four sets of speakers, tuned by harman/kardon, supporting Dolby Vision and Dolby ATMOS, and the microphone supports artificial intelligence to eliminate background noise.
ASUS said that this foldable laptop was created in collaboration with Intel and BOE. It uses an Intel design and a BOE-provided foldable screen. When the screen is unfolded, it can correspond to a 4-inch display area with a 3:2560 display ratio and a resolution of 1920 x 17.3.
When folded, the display area is 12.5 inches, with a 3:2 aspect ratio and a 1920 x 1080 resolution. The OLED screen itself supports a 100% DCI-P3 wide color gamut and an 87% screen-to-body ratio. It also complies with VESA's Display HDR True Black 500 certification, as well as other certifications such as German Rhine and Pantone Validated.
More diverse usage modes
In addition to being used as a laptop, ASUS emphasizes that the screen can be folded so that the laptop can be directly transformed into a large "tablet" or "reader". In "laptop" mode, it can be operated through a virtual keyboard or with a magnetic Bluetooth keyboard. If the keyboard is separated from the screen and a mouse is added, it can be used as a "desktop", allowing the laptop to have more diverse usage modes.
Regarding screen durability, ASUS emphasizes that the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED's foldable screen can last approximately 3 normal folds and can work with the built-in split-screen function of the Windows 11 operating system, or with ASUS-developed ScreenXpert 2 and Mode Switcher to quickly switch between different screen display modes.
As for future development, ASUS believes that such products will move towards larger screen sizes. It will also consider integrating stylus usage modes and continuously improving the durability of laptops. It will also continue to try to reduce the thickness of the screen so that the thickness after folding can be more acceptable to consumers.
Hardware specifications
In terms of hardware specifications, the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED uses Intel's 12th-generation Core i7-1250U ultra-low-voltage processor, integrated with the Iris X display design, and is equipped with 16GB of LPDDR5 memory and a 1TB M.2 NVME PCIE 4.0 Performance SSD. The battery adopts a 75Wh specification, which can correspond to approximately 5-6 hours of normal use time. It also supports fast charging via the USB-C port.
In terms of video cameras, in addition to integrating a 500-megapixel lens, it also includes sensors that can help correct color and screen brightness, as well as an HD-quality infrared camera that is compatible with Microsoft Windows Hello technology and Intel visual sensing technology. It can automatically lock the laptop when the user leaves it, or automatically wake it up when it returns to the front of the laptop, and can even reduce the brightness when the user is not continuously looking at the screen.
The physical wireless keyboard features a concave keypad with a center dip of 0.2mm, full-size keys with a center-to-center distance of 19.05mm, and a 1.4mm key travel distance for a more comfortable typing experience. The keyboard itself is magnetically fixed to the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED and can be connected and switched between up to three devices simultaneously via Bluetooth.
The connection ports correspond to 2 sets of USB 3.2 Type-C and 1 set of 3.5mm composite headphone jack, and support Wi-Fi 6E wireless network and Bluetooth 5.2 connection.
summary
At present, although the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED can adapt to more usage modes through its foldable screen design, it obviously needs to be improved in thickness, weight, battery life, and whether it supports stylus function. Otherwise, under normal use, it will actually make people feel like using an earlier laptop model.
But it does allow the laptop to display a larger screen and support more diverse operating modes. Obviously, it will be a 2-in-1, flip-able, or detachable screen design, which can provide a different user experience by folding the screen.
Lenovo is also preparing to promote larger-screen foldable laptop models, and Samsung has also proposed a new foldable laptop design. It is expected that laptop products will have more unique developments in the future.
As for the price of Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, it will be sold at NT$12 and is expected to be officially launched in the fourth quarter of this year.
