Right here’s what Asus is pitting in opposition to the MacBook Professional this 12 months — 9 OLED laptops

From the start, the Asus Zenbook was an try to beat Apple’s MacBooks at their very own sport — utilizing data Asus initially obtained whereas serving to to construct these laptops for Apple. Why do I convey that up? We’re questioning whether or not the brand new Asus ZenBook Professional 14 and 16X may give them a run for his or her cash.

One in all them, the Zenbook Professional 14 OLED, is brand-new, with a 14.5-inch 120Hz OLED display at 2.8K decision that shows one hundred pc of the DCI-P3 coloration gamut and homes as much as a Core i9-13900H and GeForce RTX 4070 GPU — and might let these chips hit 105W regardless of its 1.8cm (0.7-inch) body. (That’s solely barely thicker than Apple’s MacBook Execs.) It manages to suit a 76Wh battery in there, too.

It could activate and off that 40-series cell GPU with a devoted change and includes a full-size SD card slot, full-size HDMI 2.1, full-size USB, Thunderbolt 4, and USB-C, all at USB 3.2 Gen 2 speeds, plus a headphone jack.

Then there’s the Asus Zenbook Professional 16X OLED, the refreshed model of the flamboyant keyboard-tray-lifting machine I informed you about final 12 months. It’s greater than your common refresh: Asus says it labored with Intel on a customized i9-13905H chip, shrunk the motherboard by 38 %, and added liquid metallic cooling and a curved vapor chamber so its chips — together with an RTX 4080 cell chip — can hit a 155W TDP. That one’s obtained a 3.2K 120HZ OLED panel, two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an SD Categorical card slot, HDMI 2.1, and a pen, plus a 96Wh battery all in a 16.9mm body.

Relatively than inform you about all the remaining, since they’re principally spec refreshes, I’m going to benefit from Asus’ helpful bento field type spec and have breakouts! However I’m actually desperate to see how the Zenbook Execs carry out later this 12 months. Right here’s the press launch if you’d like extra proper now.

Asus didn’t reveal costs for these new machines but, however they’re additionally not coming immediately — the Zenbooks, ProArt Studiobooks, and Vivobooks are coming in Q2, with the ExpertBook B9 arriving in Q3.