Asus ZenBook Flip S (UX371) laptop review: Solid alternative to Dell XPS 13

Priced at Rs 1,49,990, the ZenBook Flip S (UX371) seems to be a solid laptop for work, play and entertainment. How does it justify its price tag? Let's find out

The Asus ZenBook Flip S (UX371) is among the first laptops in India to be powered by Intel’s 11th Gen Core processor. Based on the Intel Evo platform, the laptop is touted to be deliver optimal performance, top-notch connectivity solutions, enhanced on-battery time, and fast data transfer rate. Besides, the ZenBook Flip S (UX371) boasts a vivid 4K OLED screen, a premium metallic design, full-size backlit keyboard, and Harmon Kardon-certified audio system. Priced at Rs 1,49,990, the ZenBook Flip S (UX371) seems to be a solid laptop for work, play and entertainment. How does it justify its price tag when put to the rigours of daily use? Let’s find out:

Design

The ZenBook Flip S (UX371) is a premium laptop with a convertible design and thin-and-light form factor. It is only 13.9mm thick and weighs around 1.2kg. Its lightweight build makes it convenient to use in diverse environments – office, home, cab, metro, etc. Moreover, its thin profile makes it easy to handle and store; it does not take much space inside a backpack and fits perfectly in a laptop sleeve cover, too.

The ZenBook Flip S (UX371) is a design marvel, at least on the outside. It has a solid build with red copper diamond-cut highlights running across the borders. The highlights accentuate the otherwise regular ‘Jade Black’ finish of the laptop. Open the display lid and it is a different story altogether. The display has thick bezels around it – especially the one at the bottom – which look superfluous.

While the inside design is not awe-inspiring, especially the bezels, there is some zing on account of its black theme, which extends here as well. Like everything else, the keyboard and the touchpad are also black. The keyboard is backlit and the touchpad has an integrated LED-illuminated numeric keypad with two separate touch keys on top sides – one to turn on the numeric keypad and the other to control its backlight brightness.

On the left side of the chassis, the ZenBook Flip S (UX371) has a full-sized HDMI port and 2 x Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports for power delivery and display out. On the right side, there is a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, if you need to connect any conventional product.

Display, Keyboard and Touchpad

The ZenBook Flip S (UX371) sports a 13.3-inch HDR OLED touchscreen of an ultraHD+ (3840 x 2400) resolution, stretched in a 16:9 aspect ratio. The conventional aspect ratio makes it a suitable fit for most content one consumes on a laptop. Moreover, the OLED panel with a high dynamic range (HDR) support works great for multimedia content, too, and makes it suitable for entertainment purposes. Besides, the panel’s ‘PANTONE’ validated colour accuracy, 100 per cent DCI-P3 colour gamut, and ‘VESA DisplayHDR 500’ certification makes it equally good for content creators.

On the keyboard side, the ZenBook Flip S (UX371) sports a full-sized backlit keyboard with adjustable brightness. The backlit keyboard is easy to use in dark environments. However, one might take some time to get used to it because the keyboard has an additional row of keys on the right side. Asus says these keys (home, page up, page down and end key) have put there on purpose to ease the workflow, but they seem counterproductive. For example, I often ended up pressing the page down key when I actually wanted to press the enter key. Similarly, I kept going back to the top of the document in Microsoft Word documents after pressing the home button when all I wanted to do was to use the backspace key to correct a typo in the text. The keyboard lacks dedicated numeric keys in the layout (which is often the case with most laptops), but its glass touchpad with integrated touch numeric layout compensates for that and improves the workflow significantly.

Performance

Powered by the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, the ZenBook Flip S (UX371) comes with 16GB RAM (4266 MHz LPDDR4x) and 1TB PCIe NVMe 3.0 M.2 SSD. The laptop boots Microsoft Windows 10 operating system (Home edition) with preloaded Microsoft Office Home and Student 2019.

Details aside, the Zenbook Flip S (UX371) is a performer that works great for most operations, including processor- and graphic-demanding ones. In everyday use, even if it involves content creation using tools like DaVinci Resolve non-linear video editing software, the notebook sails through easily without any trouble. It manages to deliver a consistent performance while rendering and exporting 1080p videos but the experience of editing a 4K video is not something to write home about. Though not a gaming laptop, you can play games on it, including some power-intensive titles. However, do not expect a proper gaming-rig-like performance.

While everything seems fine, the bottom side heats up significantly when the laptop is used for resource-hungry operations like video editing. Nevertheless, the otherwise uncomfortable thermal issues do not hamper the performance, even if they dampen the user experience.

Complementing the performance is the laptop’s on-battery time, which ranges between five hours and eight hours on a single charge, depending on how you use it.

Verdict

At Rs 1,49,990, the Asus Zenbook Flip S (UX371) is an all-rounder with something in store for everyone. It is one of those few laptops that work great for most tasks, whether work-related or entertainment. It has a premium design, great display, satisfactory keyboard and touchpad, and swift performance. The Dell XPS 13, which recently got upgraded with the 11th Gen Intel Core processor, seems to be the only laptop that works as well. Therefore, the ZenBook Flip S (UX371) makes a solid alternative to the Dell XPS 13 in the premium laptop segment for work and entertainment purposes, but not gaming.