Asus ZenBook 15 UX534 review (UX534FTC – Core i7, GTX 1650, 4K or FHD screen)

45 Comments

  1. Archuk

    October 8, 2019 at 2:51 am

    That's weird. 10th gen has 6 cores instead of 4 and hit over 900 on cinebench on Msi prestige for example. I think some reviews said that there was a difference, they depends on windows performance profiles perhaps? I think there was a link at notebookcheck site… If best you can get is 700 for 10th gen… Then this result is bad

    • Andrei Girbea

      October 8, 2019 at 10:24 pm

      This is 4-core Six-gen. 10510U is 4-core, 10710U is 6-core. There's no 10710U variant on this laptop.

  2. marc

    October 8, 2019 at 8:38 am

    Hi, What I would like to know is which of the mentioned configurations/alternatives listed above (or maybe elsewhere) -except for the configurations that cost way over 2000,- (notmy budget) – is going to offer a better performance (no too much throttling etc.especially on battery) in terms of videoprocessing/rendering (not necessarily gaming) ? Tx, Marc

    • Andrei Girbea

      October 8, 2019 at 10:22 pm

      Not sure about the Lenovo and Acer options. The others are more expensive.

      The thing is, a six-core i7-8750/9750 will help very much for what you need, so I'd advise on going with one of those configurations. Perhaps you can sacrifice on portability to some extent and get something like a Lenovo Y540. Acer Nitro 5?

      • Marc

        October 12, 2019 at 3:05 pm

        I am looking for a 15inch model that's not too heavy. Over here, they sell a coffee lake/i7 (9750H) variant of the Y540 (81SX008DMB) for about 1500-1600 euros. The cooling system seems ok, but the small battery (throttling on battery?) and the weight (2,4kg) scare me off a bit however.

        I was thinking about the X1 extreme ? However, a six core i7 variant (80Wh battery) starts at 2370 euros !

      • Andrei Girbea

        October 14, 2019 at 9:57 am

        What does not too heavy mean for you? The Y540 is competitive, but it's a mid-range laptop with a thicker build and a small battery. Did you check the Asus Zephyrus M or perhaps the Acer Predator Triton 500?

      • Marc

        October 18, 2019 at 11:55 am

        Heavy for me means >= 2kg. The zephyrus S GX502 sells for 1900€ (RTX 2060) and since you gave this 4,5/5 … (don't know difference with RTX 2070)
        https://tweakers.net/pricewatch/1411206/asus-rog-zephyrus-s-gx502gv-es001t-be-(azerty-toetsenbord)/specificaties/
        The Triton 500 is more or less the same price (2000€), same config, same weight (2kg).
        You gave both 4,5/5 ! :)
        With only a small price difference, I would go for the better screen and battery. Any advice on this ?

      • Andrei Girbea

        October 18, 2019 at 1:24 pm

        I'd get the GX502 for these reasons:
        – slightly better build
        – per-key RGB keyboard
        – better control software
        – better thermals
        – cheaper

        Par of the Triton's 4.5 rating is in the competitive pricing in most regions. Should sell for less than the Zephyrus imo.

  3. PJPeter

    October 8, 2019 at 4:28 pm

    You hinted in the article it's coming soon, I'm really looking forward to your comparison of the performance of the i7-10510U and i7-8565U models. I've got a UX534 i7-8565U for the next few days and I'm split between keeping it or getting the new 1650MQ Razer Blade Stealth or the UX534FTC i7-10510U once it becomes available.

    Thanks!
    Peter

    • Andrei Girbea

      October 8, 2019 at 10:23 pm

      It should be up in a few more days. TO keep it very short, though, the 8565U and 10510U are within 2-3% on the UX534, so the 10th gen is not worth waiting for. That Blade Stealth should be very nice if Razer manage to cool the 1650 properly. It's the same chip in the ZenBook.

  4. dunfluq

    October 10, 2019 at 10:22 am

    Hi, thanks for awesome review! Would it be possible for you to review the Lenovo Ideapad S540-15IWL with GTX 1650? It would great to see how it compares to UX534. It seems it is a few hundred $$ cheaper and has a better screen.

    There is almost none reviews on S540 on the internetz. Only Notebookcheck has one. I guess it is just being introduced (at least in Europe).

    Cheers!

    • Andrei Girbea

      October 11, 2019 at 9:57 am

      I'll look for it, but it's not available here, despite the fact that it was announced in Spring.

  5. Vin

    October 13, 2019 at 8:04 pm

    There is a mistake always occuring in the article: you always refer to i7-10710U as the cpu. The only avaible one for the model is 10510U.

  6. First Last

    November 16, 2019 at 5:14 pm

    I'm surprised you claim that ASUS does not offer fan control on this laptop or any ZenBook models when that is not true. ASUS offers the MyASUS app through the Windows 10 store that allows you to customize various hardware options such as fan mode, battery charging mode, and hotkey mode, depending on the laptop.

    On most ZenBook ultrabook models (such as the UX391FA I am typing this comment on) you can choose between balanced and silent fan modes, while on some of the pro ZenBook models you can choose between balanced and high performance fan modes. The fan profiles also affect TDP and boosts depending on the model. For example, in the ZenBook S13 setting the silent mode forced the CPU TDP to 5W which significantly lowered performance, but with the ZenBook S UX391FA with the same i7-8565U CPU setting the silent mode allowed the TDP to stay high especially in the boost periods so performance wasn't affected at all, which is why I kept the UX391FA and returned the other one.

    I've used a lot of ZenBooks and they all have at least two thermal/fan profiles from what I've seen, you just have to manually download the Windows 10 store MyASUS app to access them.

    • Andrei Girbea

      November 19, 2019 at 12:30 pm

      I'll look into this more carefully in future reviews.

  7. Mark McKee

    January 9, 2020 at 3:50 am

    As a professional video and motion graphics artist/producer, I'd just like to say how much I REALLY hate laptop reviews. Games, gamers, charts showing how games run, yet no one, anywhere, can simply fire up Adobe Premiere or After Effects and tell us whether or not it takes advantage of the GPU…or not. You don't even know what I'm talking about….

    • Andrei Girbea

      January 9, 2020 at 12:55 pm

      Hold your panties, Mr. We do our best to cover as many tests as we can, and the fact that we've missed those that you're interested in gives you no right to disrespect our work.

  8. KDB

    January 22, 2020 at 12:59 am

    Hello there.
    Great article with just one real criticism. When I am looking at laptops like these it is because of the Full Size keyboard that many business pros demand. They often do not travel with keyboards but absolutely demand it have the numeric keypad. Unfortunately your comparison laptops do not fit this mold. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to find full size keyboard laptops that are offering all next gen tech that are being offered in their other pro type offerings. I would like to see those comparisons made.

  9. Mark

    February 25, 2020 at 3:41 pm

    Excellent review! I have been looking to upgrade from my older Zenbook 13 which is still working fine, but as a writer, I needed more screen real estate and a bigger keyboard. There are few in-depth reviews of this Zenbook model and I really appreciate your thorough analysis.

    And the 'gamer' guy is out of place with his criticism.

  10. Adonis Floren

    April 15, 2020 at 7:04 pm

    I bought a brand new Asus zenbook 15 ux534. However, I seem to have a problem using the Ethernet. It says something like "Identifying". Thanks

  11. bogdanp

    May 12, 2020 at 2:14 am

    Hi, is this better than Asus expertbook b9450fa? Mostly for work, don't care about battery. I want it not to get too hot, nice display, finish, keyboard..

    • Andrei Girbea

      May 12, 2020 at 10:13 am

      they're different. The UX534 is larger and more powerful, the B9 is more compact and a better typer imo

      • bogdanp

        May 12, 2020 at 10:32 am

        How about the displays? Now I'm working on a 2015 Mac Pro (the 2019-20 i7 16gb is too expensive and I don't want lower specs) and I like its display and the keyboard is decent. Another option is the Xps 15 but is it worth the money difference?

      • Andrei Girbea

        May 12, 2020 at 11:01 am

        The displays are reviewed in each of the articles you'll find on the site. Both are fine, not great, not MacBook Pro level.

        The XPS is something else, it's a Core H platform, larger battery, better screens. Dell laptops seem to be overpriced in Romania, imo, though. I'd also look into the ThinkPad X1 Extreme or perhaps the matching Yoga C740/C940 15

  12. Artur H

    May 16, 2020 at 10:57 pm

    I'm planning to buy ZenBook PRO UX580G-EE2030T with
    i7-8750H ( 6 core, 9 MB cache, 45 W TDP, 8th gen Q2 2018 ),
    16GB RAM,
    1TB SSD,
    UHD touch LED backlit ( is it OLED or IPS? )

    1. Is it sufficient to edit 4K videos? I'll be using Blender on Ubuntu for 4K videos editing and rendering.
    2. Will Ubuntu work well with this laptop?
    3. Can this laptop work under heavy load for many hours, while rendering 4K videos for instance?

    I put my current laptop on the aluminium cooling pad with holes, and 3 fans underneath, and I additionally blow the table fan on the left side of the laptop, which moves away the hot air coming out from the vents, and I'm planning to use this approach with my 4K laptop as well. It has proven to do the job, and truly helped to keep the laptop temperature down.

    I don't want to have a desktop machine, as I'm frequently travelling to other countries, and I want to be able to render 4K videos, and perform other heavy load processing tasks, wherever I go.

    • Philipp P

      May 21, 2020 at 9:53 am

      Great review, thank you.

      But where do I get the 4K version from?
      Can't find anything on the net, not even in the Asus webshop

      • Andrei Girbea

        May 21, 2020 at 10:31 am

        Configurations vary between regions, and if you can't find it, there's a good chance Asus decided not to offer it in your country. I'd get in touch with their rep over phone or Social Media and ask about that.

      • Philipp P

        June 3, 2020 at 7:30 pm

        Me again, thanks for your answer last time.
        I got the FHD version now, but seem to have run into an issue with the fans.

        Can you tell me which firmware version was installed to your test device?
        I`ve got the most recent version 304 and some comments on the www have it that this version might trouble the fan control. When running games I recognized fan noises up to 80 (!) dB while the CPU operated at 30% only and really not much heat development.

        You obviously cannot step down to the previous firmware in BIOS, but funnily enough Asus is offering that one (version 300) as the most recent on their homepage.
        They have yet to answer my question on that.

        Did you get version 300 or 304?

      • Andrei Girbea

        June 4, 2020 at 1:29 pm

        It's been a while since that review, and at the time we did not log the BIOS and software versions used for the test. Sry, I can't answer your question.

        You should get in contact with support, and if upgrading tot hat previous BIOS doesn't fix the issue, just return the product within the free return window.

      • Philipp P

        June 4, 2020 at 5:04 pm

        Okay nevermind, thank you.
        Quite sure you got the older one though. I just saw that .304 was not even released when you made the review.
        I trashed all the bloatware that was delivered with the notebook now and it certainly helped already (measured 40-45 dB under stress), though I'm still not convinced.
        I will make a clean reset of Windows in the next step and if it will still not help, I send it back.

      • Andrei Girbea

        June 4, 2020 at 5:08 pm

        40-45 sounds right

  13. Bart

    May 27, 2020 at 12:12 pm

    In your article, I see:

    > one USB-C gen2 with video support

    But according to someone on the Asus forms, there is no support for display export through USB-C on this laptop: https://zentalk.asus.com/en/discussion/25603/zenbook-15-ux534ft-usb-c-over-hdmi-issues.

    Was that what you mean with 'video support'? Or is that about something else?

    • Andrei Girbea

      May 27, 2020 at 1:12 pm

      That's a mistake in our specs sheet, the USB-C port only supports data on Zenbooks. Sry for the confusion, and I've addressed it.

  14. Fil

    June 15, 2020 at 9:46 pm

    Is there any Ryzen-powered version of the Zenbook 15 coming? The combination of Ryzen and dGPU would might be quite attractive, given the thermal limitations, I suppose.
    And the smaller Zenbooks seem to get Ryzen variants.

    • Andrei Girbea

      June 15, 2020 at 10:21 pm

      Not that I know of, but there might be one eventually.

  15. Tomio

    June 27, 2020 at 8:02 pm

    Hey, I noticed you wrote that the UHD panel seemed to have 100% sRGB, 100% Adobe RGB and 100% NTSC. Is that right? It seems really high compared to the HD panel

    • Andrei Girbea

      June 28, 2020 at 10:31 am

      It's along those lines, but we were using an older color-sensor at that time.

  16. Landon Kelson

    July 24, 2020 at 10:09 am

    Mr. Girbea,

    Please let me speak for all sane people when I say this is a fantastic review. I've scoured the internet to find reviews on the 4K variant, without luck (just picked one up for $1140 on Amazon). These other reviewers are a bunch of Karens who don't know what they're talking about. Probably the most thorough laptop review I've ever read.

    Kudos to you, sir.

    • Andrei Girbea

      July 24, 2020 at 5:31 pm

      Thank you for the kind words

    • Francis

      June 13, 2021 at 12:58 pm

      No need for the 'Karens' comment. Extremely biased, dumb , and stereotypical of you Landon. Just compliment the autbor on the facts. Indeed Andrei did cover both screen variants and kudos to him for doing that.

  17. Gerard

    November 3, 2020 at 4:29 pm

    Very good review. Many thanks. Just a quick question:

    Is the battery removable on the ASUS ZenBook UX534 Full HD IPS-Level 15.6 Inch Laptop ??

    Thanks again

  18. Marcello Scotti

    November 12, 2020 at 12:58 am

    Congrats on your review and thanks for it, Andrei;

    you really worked hard to do it.

    But let me introduce a respectuful "but"… you don´t even name photographers /videographers and we DO use and need powerful laptops. I don´t know your age, maybe you are a lot into gaming, and maybe I am wrong with this, but I guess pros spend more money and desperately need such great reviews as yours. And from what you tell us about this laptop, we can´t even figure out it´s performance for these kind of tasks.

    Trust me, it´s been said with repect for your great work, but remember this is a BIG market segment and (my guess) more interested in 1500 and beyond than gamers.

    Regards!

    • Andrei Girbea

      November 12, 2020 at 11:16 am

      Hi Marcello. Thanks for your feedback.

      We analyze each laptop's performance in demanding loads in the Cinebench loop tests and the other stress tests and benchmarks. Based on how the CPU and GPU perform you should deduct how each laptop can handle the workloads that you're planning to run.

      It's true that we don't run specific Photoshop/Premiere work loads because those would require a specific a very expensive Adobe Cloud license to install the software on tens of different laptops each year, and frankly, we can't afford it, being a small publication. Will consider it for the future though.

  19. Pablo

    February 21, 2021 at 2:41 am

    Hi and thanks for the review!
    I am looking for a laptop with good performance, robust built and low weight. I've considered the Lg Gram 15 and the MSI Presige A11SCS, but according to reviews, the performance of the former and the built quality of the second are not the best. This Asus Zenbook 15 UX534 seems a good all-rounder, but from your words I don't see you very conviced with this model. ¿Which alternatives that "tick the box" on performance, built and weight would you recommend? After browsing the market the budget for me would be about 1000 – 1500 euro.
    And by the way, ¿is it expected any update of this model with something like an i7-1165G7?
    Thanks in advance

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