ASUS started the year by teasing the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED, a 17.3 inch foldable laptop, which is something you don’t see every day. It was teased at CES 2022 and becomes official at IFA 2022, for a hefty price.
The device is priced at 3999 euros and it appears under the codename UX9702. This hybrid packs a 17.3 inch OLED screen with a 4:3 aspect and 2560 x 1920 pixel resolution. It offers 500 nits of brightness and when fully unfolded it can sit on its own kickstand and work as a monitor. There’s also a Bluetooth keyboard, which will be placed on top of the bottom part of the screen and turn this product into a 12.5 inch laptop with Full HD res.
ASUS Zenbook 17 Fold OLED runs on Windows 11 and inside it we find a CPU up to an Intel Core i7-1250U, coupled with 16 GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The CPU used here is an Intel 12th gen chipset with 2 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores. On the graphics front we have the Intel Iris XE GPU.
The specs list includes also 1 TB of M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD storage. There are also two USB-C ports on the device, both with Thunderbolt 4 and charging, at up to 65W. There’s also a 3.5 mm audio jack. Inside we find the 75 Whr 4 cell battery, which offers up to 9 hours and a half of screen on time.
The device is available for $3499 in a hue called Tech Black. Honestly for me the device felt rather massive and much heavier than what ASUS is claiming. I also admire the fact that the crease is invisible when completely opened up. Also, with the keyboard on it makes sense as a legit small laptop, although the bottom screen curve may get in the way.
We also have a first impressions video of it below:
