Asus ZenBook Flip 14: Premium 2-in-1 at a Reasonable Price

Starting at $899, Asus's upcoming ZenBook Flip 14 UX461 will offer a host of attractive features when it launches in March. The 14-inch, bendback 2-in-1 weighs just 3.08 pounds (with integrated graphics) and offers such niceties as an 8th Gen Core i7 CPU, a bright 1080p screen, a PCIe SSD and an active stylus.

We had a chance to spend a few minutes going hands-on with the Flip 14 and found its design attractive, screen bright and build quality solid. Images on the display were colorful and Asus claims that the 1920 x 1080 touch panel can reproduce 100 percent of the sRGB color gamut. The company also claims that the screen can reach an impressive 300 nits of brightness. We'll find out for sure when we test it in our lab.

The all-metal chassis has an attractive look and feel, with Asus's typical concentric-circle pattern on its lid and a body that's either Slate Gray or Icicle Gold. The keys offer a decent 1.4 millimeters of travel and seemed fairly punchy during our hands-on experience.

Though the device is just 0.54 inches thick, it packs a full array of ports, including dual USB Type-A ports, a USB Type-C port and a full sized HDMI out port. Asus claims that the ZenBook Flip 14 can last up to 13 hour son a charge, thanks to its generous, 57 watt-hour battery.

We don't yet know exactly what amount of RAM and storage you will get in the base configuration, but the ZenBook Flip 14 will be available with up to a 512GB PCIe SSD and up to 16GB of RAM. There will also be a model with Nvidia MX150 graphics, but that unit will weigh a slightly-higher 3.3 pounds.

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The official Geeks Geek, as his weekly column is titled, Avram Piltch has guided the editorial and production of Laptopmag.com since 2007. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram programmed several of LAPTOP's real-world benchmarks, including the LAPTOP Battery Test. He holds a master's degree in English from NYU.