On the occasion of IFA 2022, ASUS is proud to present its Zenbook 17 Fold OLED: the first laptop with a foldable 17.3-inch OLED screen. A futuristic machine whose concept is not new, but which nevertheless remains one of the first folding laptops really successful to see the light of day.
In 2020, Lenovo announced the ThinkPad X1 Fold, one of the very first large-scale folding laptops. An interesting and innovative product, but which nevertheless retained the air of a prototype. And if the Chinese firm has potentially not said its last word on the subject, its Taiwanese rival ASUS is going further by unveiling today, on the IFA stands, its impressive Zenbook 17 Fold OLED. Very successful, this new product takes the form of a large 17.3-inch folding tablet, powered by Intel and Windows 11. Very versatile, it allows 6 distinct modes of use thanks to a detachable keyboard provided.
A machine of the future…
Centerpiece of the device, the 17.3-inch OLED panel chosen by ASUS benefits from a 4:3 format and a 2.5K definition, coupled with Dolby Vision certification to offer more or less what is done visually better. ASUS also announces full support for the DCI-P3 spectrum and a maximum luminance of 500 nits.
This large foldable panel can be used as is, as a tablet; be placed on a desk to serve as a sort of all-in-one PC once the keyboard is paired; or even be folded to 90% to serve as a laptop. The device thus forms two 3:2 screens of 12.5 inches with a definition of 1,920 x 1,280 pixels. In this configuration, the detachable keyboard can then be positioned on the lower half to adopt the form-factor and the functionalities of a full-fledged laptop.
In its press release, ASUS wants to be reassuring about the hinge of its Zenbook 17 Fold OLED: it has been tested to withstand more than 30,000 opening and closing cycles. As an indication, it is still much less than the 200,000 cycles announced by Samsung for its new Galaxy Z Fold 4.
The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is also intended to be compact, with 287.6 x 189.3 x 34.4 mm (at the widest point) when folded. Once unfolded, we go to 378.5 x 287.6 x 12.9 mm for 1.5 kg, barely more than an ultraportable PC. If we add the keyboard, the weight increases this time to 1.8 kg, says ASUS.
… at the necessarily exceptional price
On the component side, the Taiwanese manufacturer relies on the Intel Evo platform and a Core i7-1250U. As a reminder, this chip has 10 cores (2 high-performance cores and 8 high-efficiency cores) and 12 threads, clocked at a maximum of 4.70 GHz for a thermal envelope of 9 W. It is therefore not the raw performance that you have to look here, but rather autonomy and mobility, even if the Intel CPU will take care of common tasks and multimedia without flinching.
Coupled with 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM at 5,200 MHz, this processor will draw strength from a 75 Wh battery, rechargeable via a 65 W USB-C block. The Zenbook Fold 17 OLED has two USB-C ports for the rest. Thunderbolt 4, a 3.5mm jack, and relies on Wi-Fi 6E/Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity. ASUS finally mentions the presence of a 1 TB M.2 SSD and a 5 Mpx webcam with secondary infrared sensor which should allow facial recognition via Windows Hello.
Atypical gear requires, the Zenbook Fold 17 OLED is not the accessible kind. ASUS France announces a price of 3,999 euros for the device, the availability of which is planned somewhere on the 4e quarter of 2022. A grip of the Zenbook Fold 17 OLED will arrive in a few hours on Clubic.
Source: ASUS Press Release, ASUS Briefing
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