ASUS’ Zenbook 17 Fold OLED laptop will start at $3,500
All the way back at CES in January, ASUS revealed a 17.3-inch foldable tablet PC called the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, which raised a lot of eyebrows. Soon enough, you’ll be able to own the device, as long as you have a few thousand dollars to spare. ASUS announced at IFA 2022 that the foldable will start at $3,500 (£3,300 in the UK) and start rolling out globally by the end of the year.
The Zenbook 17 Fold has a 4:3, 2.5K touchscreen with a 180-degree hinge that folds to effectively create dual 12.5-inch, 1920 x 1280 displays with a 3:2 aspect ratio. The screen has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio, a 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut, 0.2 ms response time, 60 Hz refresh rate, up to 500 nits of brightness and TÜV Rheinland-certified low blue-light emissions (ASUS says it has 70 percent lower blue-light levels than an LCD display).
There’s Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support. The Windows tablet has four Harman Kardon-certified speakers. It also has a 5MP webcam, a color sensor and an HD IR camera that will allow you to login with a face scan.
The device comes with a full-size ErgoSense Bluetooth keyboard (with a built-in touchpad) that you can place on top of one half of the folded device. Alternatively, you can place the keyboard on your desk and keep the entire display visible.
The Zenbook 17 Fold is 17.4mm thin. It weighs 1.6 kg (3.5 pounds) without the keyboard and 1.99 kg (4.4 lbs) with the peripheral.
You can configure the system with up to a 12th-gen Intel Core i7 processor with Intel Iris Xe graphics, up to 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of NVMe M.2 SSD storage. Two Thunderbolt 4 ports allow for fast charging of the 75 Wh battery and they’ll enable you to connect the tablet to external displays. The only other port is a 3.5 mm audio combo jack.
It’s a fairly expensive device that seems to include an early adopter tax. Since we haven’t tested the Zenbook 17 Fold yet, it remains to be seen how durable the laptop is in practice. We know all too well the kinds of problems a company can run into when they make an all-screen foldable for the first time, though hopefully ASUS has learned from the issues Samsung had with the first Galaxy Fold.
All the way back at CES in January, ASUS revealed a 17.3-inch foldable tablet PC called the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED, which raised a lot of eyebrows. Soon enough, you’ll be able to own the device, as long as you have a few thousand dollars to spare. ASUS announced at…
