Imagine that a Ryzen 7-based 5800H laptop computer with OLED display is available. Add 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage, GeForce RTX 3050 Ti, plus touch screen capabilities in just over 4 pounds for US$999. I ordered one, an ASUS ZenBook Pro UM535. I've always felt that ASUS' laptop computers were an alternative to Apple, but it took me three recent tries to arrive at this one.
It isn't a gaming machine. It is officially a creator's machine. It only has a resolution of 1920x1080, but that's fine, considering the games that I will play, and the photos and video that I will edit.
What's wrong with the MacBook Air M1? Nothing is really wrong with it, but I'm missing some games that I played daily on the Windows machine. Sadly, a number of those games aren't playable on the Steam Deck, as well.
So, first impressions are:
Great display
Poor WiFi
Decent keyboard and trackpad
For US$1399.99. I would feel that the display was too much of the cost. At the price I paid, it's a good machine. It hasn't been 24 hours and I've had multiple instances of difficulty connecting to the router downstairs, even though my other devices aren't having a problem. I'm wondering if this is a Windows 11 thing, along with Intel's crappy compatibility in the WiFi department.
I haven't really pushed the machine, but Unreal Tournament 2004 and Asphalt 9 were smooth. That should be the case with this hardware.
Bitlocker was enabled, even though I don't have the key. I disabled it. Besides, the SSD already has some encryption.
It also came with Alexa enabled. I removed that and McAfee anti-virus. Getting rid of the stickers could be more interesting.
Initially updating software is always a pain and of course, the WiFi connection didn't work during the updates, so I used my iPhone as a hotspot with T-Mobile 5G service to complete the updates.
It's been a year since I had a Windows machine and that 7th generation quad core i7 Omen by HP wasn't much faster than the 3rd generation i7 MacBook Pro. This feels so much faster. I want to say that it's smoother but Windows 11 feels broken so far. None of the game launchers seem happy.
I connected my Corsair mouse and there was no mention of new hardware and it seems to be working without incident. I had so much trouble with the iCue software, I'm not sure that I want to load it onto Windows 11.
Update 2022.12.10: Was searching for new Intel WiFi and Bluetooth drivers and the machine restarted. It mentioned something about fTPM being corrupt, having a new CPU, and tried to use Windows Hello to check my face to log into the machine. I freaked out a bit. I couldn't access the internet and needed Microsoft Authenticator to authorize the login. I couldn't use Microsoft Authenticator for some reason and it took me some time to find solutions. It's all working again.
Update 2022.12.14: The machine is still working but the WiFi is still
erratic. For a company that sells routers and extenders, I'd think
they'd be better. I ran Windows 11 diagnostics and I've had some
marginal improvement. A new driver and diagnostics have helped but it
just isn't all that reliable. I'm wondering if Windows 11 has something
to do with the problem. I've seen a few comments about it being beta
test quality. It's just odd that the ZenBook Pro is the only device out of four that is having WiFi issues on the same household connection.
Games run well, whether they use the inbuilt Radeon technology or the mobile RTX 3050 Ti.
I
did some research and the Ryzen 7 5800H and the Apple Silicon M1 don't seem
that far apart in performance but the MacBook Air seems much faster in
launching applications and switching web sites in a browser window.
Update 2023.01.04: I got an e-mail from ASUS thanking me for taking the effort to write a review but that it did not follow their guidelines and was rejected. I guess you can't tell people that the WiFi isn't working well and that it was the only one of four devices not staying connected. Oops.
Update 2023.01.21: Saw a report about Intel's WiFi hardware dropping connections in other machines. It didn/t mention the Intel hardware I have but I wouldn't be surprised if all of their technology is just a bit sloppy.
I've moved to another room and my computer desk is pretty much right above the router, so I'm getting a better signal.
Windows update 22H2 was ready today and I confirmed that I wanted it installed. Things don't seem different so far. Hopefully, the bug fixes will make things better. Windows 11 seems buggy.
Update 2023.06.04: I haven't seen a firmware update for a while and only occasional Windows updates, although a substantial feature update is due.
Machine is working well. Fans kick in frequently while I'm playing Honkai: Star Rail and other recent games. Graphics are good and OLED is sharp. Keyboard is...meh.
Update 2024.09.09: Microsoft keeps pushing AI-related updates and each one seems to degrade performance of games and other high usage applications. The machine itself is doing a great job. The keyboard is still annoying. They should have ditched the numeric keypad in order to have a better keyboard.
Update 2025.06.11: 2.5 years on the same Windows machine is amazing. The other day, it didn't seem to be responding. It's happened a few times but the power button didn't seem to work, either. I didn't want to open it, but it makes me wonder if the heat is getting to it. It's a Creator's machine, not a gaming machine. (Trying telling me that processing video doesn't take a lot of power.) I have the fans set to start early, to avoid a meltdown. The laptop cooler is working but may not be enough.
Windows updates are still a pain, but this last one may have made it less worse.
I looked at the ASUS ROG Zephryus G14 with an RTX 4060 and AMD 8945HS as a replacement. It's a bit smaller, a bit more powerful, and it's made for gaming, so that the airflow should be improved, plus the AMD processor should be more efficient.
Update 2026.05.24: Got a replacement about 1 week ago, an MSI Crosshair 16 HX with AMD Ryzen 9 8940 HX and Nvidia RTX 5060. That's a step up, although not a big one. The ZenBook Pro was starting to overheat a bit since I've been playing Where Winds Meet. It doesn't help that Windows 11 performance has been going downhill with all the AI bits they're using whether you approve or not.
Since the Ryzen 9 8940 HX is three generations newer and has twice the number of cores, it should do much better and for the most part, it does. The RTX 5060 is at the same position in the RTX lineup, but with 8 GB of GDRAM instead of 4 GB.
I'm not getting the best out of it yet\, and there is a BIOS update that may fix that, but the update procedure is a pain.
I updated the ZenBook without a problem. I've updated many a machine without a problem. MSI wanted me to jump through hoops.
In any case, the ASUS machine may have a second life as a Linux machine running CachyOS.
