<\/p>\n
Photograph: ASUS<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n The Asus ZenBook<\/span> 17 Fold OLED is very much a first-generation product, but an intriguing one. WIRED has an exclusive look at how Asus arrived at the first 17-inch laptop with a foldable screen.<\/p>\n In foldable phones, Samsung had a shaky start before honing its propositions over four generations, with Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Honor producing similarly mixed, and expensive, offerings. But what about laptops and tablets? There are rumors Samsung could launch a folding version of its Galaxy Tab range in 2023, while a laptop-like foldable PC has so far been limited to Lenovo\u2019s X1 Fold offering\u2014released in mid-2020 with a follow-up expected soon.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve seen the Lenovo machine, you\u2019ll recognize Asus\u2019 design immediately. The latter\u2019s foldable has a much bigger screen though\u2014the Lenovo sports a 13.3-inch compared to this device\u2019s 17-inch panel. This is reflected in the price of the Asus, which starts at $3,500 (\u00a33,300).<\/p>\n So, what do you get for that obscenely high price? I\u2019ve been testing the ZenBook 17 OLED for the past couple of weeks\u2014look out for our full review soon\u2014and in my experience thus far this is a fully formed device. It is beyond concept and a viable purchase for someone looking to splash a lot<\/em> of cash.<\/p>\n Bending Perceptions<\/p>\n The display is a flexible, 17.3-inch OLED that, like the Lenovo before it, can be fully unfurled to take advantage of the large display size. A stand in the back keeps it propped up at a comfortable angle, and there\u2019s an included Bluetooth keyboard for big-screen typing. The quality of the 2K OLED HDR panel, along with 500 nits peak brightness is impressive, and it\u2019s a great size for watching videos and movies by yourself or with someone else.<\/p>\n Once you bend the screen into a clamshell shape, you can place that Bluetooth keyboard on top of the lower half of the screen. This transforms the machine into a 12.5-inch laptop. This mode feels less fully realized; the large bezels become more noticeable when the screen is smaller, which removes the futuristic charm a bit. As you\u2019d expect, the ZenBook 17 Fold OLED will recognize when you place the keyboard onto the lower half of the device, and the screen will respond accordingly.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the inside, you get Intel\u2019s latest 12th Gen i7-1250U\u2014this is one of the first devices released with the chipmaker\u2019s lower-powered U-series flavor of its latest processors. There are 16 gigabytes of RAM and a 1-terabyte SSD, and the 17 Fold offers up two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack. For thickness, it measures 0.34 inches unfolded and 0.51 inches folded (0.87 cm unfolded and 1.29 cm folded). The whole assembly\u2014computer and keyboard\u2014weighs in at 3.31 pounds (1.5 kg). Carrying it around, it does feel heavier than you\u2019d expect for a device the size this is when folded, but that isn\u2019t bad when you consider you\u2019re really carrying around a 17-inch machine.<\/p>\n Going for Fold<\/p>\n Those are the basics for the first Asus entry in the foldable market. But how did it get here? The company started its work in this direction more than 10 years ago, and prototyping work started more than three years ago. This foldable product\u2019s research and development teams worked through roughly 20 iterations before arriving at the final product. Asus tried out a 13-inch model and even tried a reverse-wraparound fold (similar to Huawei\u2019s Mate X2), but these designs fell by the wayside. To get the scoop on the prototyping process, I spoke to Asus\u2019 director of technical marketing for gaming and PCs, Sascha Krohn, and senior design manager Bastian Albinus.<\/p>\n \u201cTrial and error.\u201d That\u2019s how Albinus describes the prototyping process. \u201cYou always imagine things to be nice and smooth, but in reality it rarely always works out, or you hit a bump in the road that you didn\u2019t expect.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photograph: ASUS The Asus ZenBook 17 Fold OLED is very much a first-generation product, but an intriguing one. WIRED has an exclusive look at how Asus arrived at the first 17-inch laptop with a foldable screen. In foldable phones, Samsung had a shaky start before honing its propositions over four generations, with Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1195638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1195637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrity-gossip"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1195637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1195637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1195637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1195637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1195637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}