Mark Walton







If you like your laptops thin and light, then boy has Asus got the laptops for you. Asus has dubbed its new ZenBook Flip 14 the "world's thinnest 2-in-1 with high-performance discrete graphics," which is an impressive qualifier if there ever was one. Measuring 13.9mm thick, weighing 1.4kg, and sporting a 14-inch 1080p screen in the footprint of a typical 13-inch laptop, the ZenBook Flip 14 is certainly portable enough.

Inside is an 8th generation Intel Core i7 quad-core processor (otherwise known as Kaby Lake Refresh), along with 16GB of memory, and an Nvidia Geforce MX150 graphics card. The MX150 certainly won't win any speeds awards, but it should handle e-sports games without issue, as well as help speed up rendering tasks in compatible applications. There's also a 512GB PCIe SSD inside, a fingerprint sensor, and a battery rated for up to 13 hours of use. Prices start from €799 (~$950).

Too steep? Try the VivoBook Flip 14, which sports the same convertible 14-inch 1080p screen, albeit in a chunkier form factor. It measures 15.4mm thick and weighs 1.5kg, and only comes equipped with a 7th-gen dual-core Intel Core i7 processor. However, it's completely fanless thanks to a convection-based heat pipe design. It starts from just €399 (~$475).

If you need something more powerful, there's the new ZenBook Flip 15 (UX561), a two-in-one laptop with a 15.6-inch, rotatable display powered by an Nvidia GTX 1050. Once again there's an 8th Generation Intel Core i7 processor inside, 16GB of 2400MHz DDR4 RAM, up to a 2TB HDD or 512GB SSD. USB C and Thunderbolt 3 are onboard too, but it's the display that's most exciting, with a "4K NanoEdge" (thin bezel) option that looks fantastic. It comes in two colours, Smoky Grey and Pure Silver, and starts from €899 (~$1070).























For something smaller, try the new Asus ZenBook Flip S (UX370), which measures a svelte 10.9mm thin and weighs a mere 1.1 kg. There's an 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8550U inside (if you haven't realised by now, Intel has doubled down on laptops at this year's IFA), a 1TB PCIe SSD, and a 12-inch display with a resolution up to 4K.

The 14-inch Zenbook 3 Deluxe (UX490) and Zenbook 3 Deluxe (UX331) have also been updated with 8th Generation Intel processors, but they are otherwise identical to their predecessors.

Listing image by Mark Walton