Nine months after the first announcement at CES 2022 in January, Asus and Intel finally launched the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED at IFA 2022 in Berlin. The foldable notebook, which was developed behind the scenes in cooperation over a year and a half, comes onto the market with an Alder Lake CPU at a price of 3,699 euros.
With 17.3-inch foldable OLED display
The main feature of the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED (UX9702) is the 17.3-inch 60 Hertz OLED screen. The display has a 4:3 format with 2,560 × 1,920 pixels and offers typical OLED properties such as high brightness (typical 350 cd/m², maximum 500 cd/m²), high contrast and 100 percent DCI-P3 -Coverage (validated by Pantone). According to Asus, the ability to fold the display in the middle allows the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED to cover various usage scenarios. The mechanism for this is designed for over 30,000 folding processes.
Completely unfolds a “full PC”
When the display is fully opened, the result is a flat surface (17.3 inches, 4:3). In combination with the included Bluetooth keyboard, a full PC can be replaced in this mode.
Rotated and angled one of three notebooks
Rotated 90 degrees and angled (resulting in two 12.5-inch screen halves), the “notebook mode” results. In this case, too, the entire display can be used, albeit in 3:4 format – either again with a clip-on keyboard or with a virtual keyboard displayed on the touch display.
However, the keyboard can also be placed on the lower half to represent a quasi-complete notebook. The visible screen then measures 12.5 inches with a resolution of 1,920 × 1,280 pixels (3:2).
Thin, but it needs space when folded
Fully unfolded, the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED measures 37.85 × 28.76 × 0.87 to 1.29 centimeters. The side view makes it clear:
- The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is not the same thickness everywhere, because the chassis, which is divided into two halves behind the foldable display, has a robust hinge.
- When closed with the Bluetooth keyboard housed between the display halves, the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED needs space across the width of a bag or backpack.
With Alder Lake U CPU without dGPU
As announced in January, the foldable ZenBook is powered by an Intel Core i5-1250U from the Alder Lake family. The CPU only uses two P cores, but eight E cores, which means that its performance falls significantly short of Alder Lake CPUs with more P cores. A CPU of this performance class is still sufficient for everyday office use and in the browser. The Zenbook 17 Fold OLED does not use a dGPU, instead it uses the 96 EU strong iGPU that only clocks at a maximum of 950 MHz in the Core i7-1250U.
16 GB of soldered LPDDR5 as main memory is flanked by a 1 TB SSD as mass storage, which is not based on PCI Express 4.0 but on PCI Express 3.0 (four lanes).< /p>
There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports (USB type C incl. DisplayPort and Power Delivery) and a 3.5 mm jack, although only one Thunderbolt 4 port can be seen on the renderings presented by Asus. The keyboard also has a USB Type-C port, but this is only used to charge the keyboard battery.
The battery of the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED is 75 Wh comparatively large, but Asus has not yet provided any information on the battery life. Because the system carries Intel's Evo certificate, it should be closer to ten hours than five.
Compared to the first announcement, something has fallen the weight excluding the keyboard: the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED weighs 1.5 instead of 1.6 kilograms.
Overview of specifications
The table below clearly lists all specifications of the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED announced by Asus.
350 cd/m² (500 cd/m² peak),
100% DCI-P3 (validated according to Pantone) RAM 16 GB LPDDR5 (onboard) SSD 1 TB NVMe M.2-SSD (PCIe 3.0) Connections 2 × Thunderbolt 4 ( USB Type C incl. DisplayPort, charging)
1 × 3.5 mm jack Wireless network Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2 Webcam 5 megapixels (AI Noise Reduction) Dimensions (W × D × H) 37.85 × 28.76 × 0.87 – 1.29 cm Weight 1, 5 kg battery 75 Wh (4 cells) Windows 11 Home operating system Scope of delivery Bluetooth keyboard,
Sleeve,
USB-C-to-A adapter,
Charger Price from 3,699 euros
Price and availability
Asus quotes a recommended retail price of 3,699 for the Zenbook 17 Fold OLED Euro, there will probably only be one configuration with a Core i7-1250U, 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB NVMe SSD. Asus does not give a specific date for the market launch: “In the 4th quarter” and thus from October 2022, the foldable notebook PC should be available in Germany. Asus provides a 24-month warranty on the device.
ComputerBase received information about this item from Asus under NDA. The only requirement was the earliest possible publication date.