The main differences are that the MacBook has a better screen and the Zenbook crams a 15W processor and a fan. Both are advanced tech. I think they are pretty comparable overall. The Zenbook is likely only marginally faster in real world terms and the MacBook's display is moderately better because of the higher resolution.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Asus Announces ZenBook 3, a Retina MacBook Lookalike That is Thinner, Lighter, and Faster
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
so thinner,lighter than the disastrous Macbook Retina,yet has the specs and power of Macbook Pro..not to mention all those necessary ports that are available and accommodated easily..
so where are those simple minded people who were defending the casterated 12 Incher by saying its lack of performance and ports are due to form factor?
so where are those simple minded people who were defending the casterated 12 Incher by saying its lack of performance and ports are due to form factor?
so thinner,lighter than the disastrous Macbook Retina,yet has the specs and power of Macbook Pro..not to mention all those necessary ports that are available and accommodated easily..
so where are those simple minded people who were defending the casterated 12 Incher by saying its lack of performance and ports are due to form factor?
Its got the same number of ports as a Macbook. It weighs the same. The base model has 4 GB of ram and no retina display...thats no MacBook Pro :lol:
so thinner,lighter than the disastrous Macbook Retina,yet has the specs and power of Macbook Pro..not to mention all those necessary ports that are available and accommodated easily..
so where are those simple minded people who were defending the casterated 12 Incher by saying its lack of performance and ports are due to form factor?
This uses the processors from the Macbook Air, not the MBP's. And as I mentioned earlier, in practice, those processors are going to be thermally limited in such a package such that in the real world you'll get almost no performance advantage over Core M, but you'll get the joy of the high-pitched whine of a tiny, razor-thin fan nearly 100% of the time.
It has a modestly faster processor, a lower quality screen, a noisy fan, and it comes with a dongle to augment a single USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 port. How is it that different?so thinner,lighter than the disastrous Macbook Retina,yet has the specs and power of Macbook Pro..not to mention all those necessary ports that are available and accommodated easily..
so where are those simple minded people who were defending the casterated 12 Incher by saying its lack of performance and ports are due to form factor?
Last edited:
I thought there was issues with Vulkan hence why Apple is pushing Metal instead?
FCPX will always fly on OSX as it's optimised really well for it. Though I guess comparing Premiere on Windows and Mac is one way but it'll still not be as clear cut due to software optimisation on hardwares and such.
Haha, can't you see the HP logo at the centre? If I'm not mistaken, this should be HP newest and thinnest notebook entry featuring quite an interesting design approach.
With an OLED top row display, it looks like it'll be
I thought there was issues with Vulkan hence why Apple is pushing Metal instead?
FCPX will always fly on OSX as it's optimised really well for it. Though I guess comparing Premiere on Windows and Mac is one way but it'll still not be as clear cut due to software optimisation on hardwares and such.
Haha, can't you see the HP logo at the centre? If I'm not mistaken, this should be HP newest and thinnest notebook entry featuring quite an interesting design approach.
With an OLED top row display, it looks like it'll be
That was my point. You are not just paying for the hardware. FCPX at $300 is incredible vs the perpetual license of Premiere Pro.
The hyperbole is astounding in your post. Core M is NOTHING like Atom (which Intel still sells). In practical terms, the Core M works just as well as the 15W Skylake in this form factor, no fan required. The other OEMs are just playing spec wars and skimping on the display to keep battery life acceptable. I had a massive OCR job last week that I split between my m7 MacBook and a Haswell Core i7 notebook. Guess what. The m7 was just as good if not better than the Haswell i7. Unlike the latter there was no noisy fan.
[doublepost=1464749705][/doublepost]
$999 with 4GB RAM. $1499 for the more reasonable i5 model with 16GB. They should offer a $1299 model with 8GB and an i5.
[doublepost=1464749874][/doublepost]
Have you ever actually used one? The Skylake Core M is hardly "anemic." For most people it is more than enough. I ran a 12 hour OCR job on this and a Haswell i7. They were pretty comparable, with a slight edge to the m7.
You forgot that the Asus is a clone of an 18month old product...
I mentioned the GPU not the CPU.
[doublepost=1464781695][/doublepost]
Thanks. Thin will be cool when they manage powerful too at a reasonable price point. Too bad I'm not likely to still be living if and when that happens.
It's typical to offer a low end version with the bare minimum specs needed to run Windows in order to get people to look at your machine. $999 is an appealing price point to catch a person's eye in a store display, even if they wind up spending a lot more. I would be surprised if they didn't ultimately spec one out between the 4 and 16gb models.
Have you actually used a core M machine? I think probably not.
Having just spent a week with a core M5 powered machine at work, i can quite happily say that the M5 is more than enough for anything most people might need. Most of the ATOM based machines were crap yes, but that was because vendors cheaped out and paired them with 2 GB of ram and no SSD, just an SD-card for storage.
The machine in question was a Thinkpad X1 Tablet, with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD and it ran everything i threw at it.
including (ALL at the same time - i was trying to stress it out with the software i run and a typical workload)
- full virus scan
- 2 virtual machines (windows 2012 R2 server and Windows 10 in a VM, under the Windows 10 host OS in VMWare workstation)
- a PDF to word conversion in Word 2016
- news, outlook 2016, IE with a bunch of tabs and the weather and money apps
It was still responsive. It handled everything as well as my Surface Pro 4 I5, and had way better battery life, no fan and less weight.
Apple is using the Core M because it draws way less power, can run fanless (which means potentially waterproof at some point) and it is simply way more CPU than the vast majority of people actually need.
If you do need more, don't bother saying "but the Core M is slower than my iMac for me rendering 4k video!". Because most people don't do that, and it's not what the machine is for.
That said. This machine in the OP is a poor imitation of a Retina Macbook. Lower res screen, really crappy colour gamut, and real world battery life will be nowhere near 9 hours, unless bluetooth, wifi are off, screen is run at 25-30%, no audio playing and it's just basically sitting at an idle desktop.
Take any PC power ratings with a bucket of salt. Apple is generally reasonably realistic with theirs, but I'm yet to use a Windows PC that can ever get anywhere near 80% of it's rated battery life, in 20 years of running them for work machines.
Last edited:
Great point. People often get all worked up over specs and start measurebating over perceived issues without considering how the machines are intended to be used.
How do you figure? The Zenbook claims "72% of NTSC". What percentage of NTSC can the macbook manage?
I don't think you'd notice much difference between x2 PCI and x4 PCI. They're both fast.
But since the entry-level Zenbook doesn't list PCI at all... it's safe to assume it's standard SATA.
That's what jerwin was talking about.
(but still... most modern SATA SSDs read/write at 500MB/s... they're not "slow")
I think AnandTech basically confirmed 100% of sRGB, which is also 72% of NTSC. I found it odd that ASUS didn't just say 100% sRGB, unless they are not conforming to it, but instead have skewed coverage to a different standard.
That's cool (love that video), but unless the thermal protection is much better than in the past, I'd be careful doing too much of that kind of thing. I've shortened the life of a couple of MacBook Pros over the years doing a ton of rendering and such on them.
I'm kind of gun-shy about that anymore.
I thought there was issues with Vulkan hence why Apple is pushing Metal instead?
FCPX will always fly on OSX as it's optimised really well for it. Though I guess comparing Premiere on Windows and Mac is one way but it'll still not be as clear cut due to software optimisation on hardwares and such.
Haha, can't you see the HP logo at the centre? If I'm not mistaken, this should be HP newest and thinnest notebook entry featuring quite an interesting design approach.
With an OLED top row display, it looks like it'll be
Yeah, OLED is crazy innovation, how could we live without that!! jajaja