Asus ZenBook Pro UX550VD (i7, GTX 1050, Full HD) Laptop Review

The chassis of the new ZenBook Pro UX550 is created from a single piece of aluminum. Asus advertises 40 manufacturing steps, including the polishing for the iconic design with the concentric circles on the lid. The top edge of the base unit is also polished, which creates a very nice contrast to the otherwise matte black chassis. The other two visual accents are the Asus logos underneath the screen and on the lid. The latter is translucent and will light up when the system is turned on. The polished edge is also comfortable for the wrists. The bottom is slightly rounded as well and the overall handling is very good. The only problem with our black model is the susceptibility to fingerprints. You will have to clean it a lot (an appropriate cloth is not provided). We can imagine the optional blue model (Royal Blue) is more convenient in this respect.

The stability, however, cannot fully meet the high expectations. The base unit is very sturdy at the palm rests and the sides of the keyboard, but this changes towards the center. Even medium pressure is sufficient to dent the surface. You can also dent the bottom panel at this spot and you can hear it has contact with the surface below. It is possible to remove the whole bottom panel for maintenance purposes, but more on that later. The notebook stands very well on the desk thanks to four large rubberized support feet.

The display hinge is very firm and it is hard to open with just one hand. There is a small indentation with two status lights on the front edge, which are easy to see both when the lid is open and closed. The firm hinge prevents bouncing very well and the maximum opening angle is ~140 degrees, which should be sufficient in practice. The thin lid is surprisingly sturdy. You can dent or twist it with a lot of pressure, but there are no picture distortions and the whole construction leaves a good impression in practice.

All in all, the new Asus ZenBook Pro UX550 is a very elegant and stylish device. We did not find any flaws with the build quality, but the aluminum case from Apple still has the edge in terms of the stability.

Asus can use a smaller chassis thanks to slimmer bezels, which is clearly evident compared to the old ZenBook Pro UX501. However, the rivals can do this as well, and the new UX550 is actually (slightly) beaten by the comparison devices in terms of footprint. Only the MacBook Pro 15 is lighter, but you also have to consider the bulky power adapter (580 grams/~1.3 lb) in addition to the 1853 grams (~4 lb) of the laptop – the travel weight is therefore basically on par with the other Windows rivals.

The ports are located at the rear half of both sides. Asus uses a combination of new and old standards. You get two regular USB 3.0 ports (maximum transfer rate: ~380 MB/s with Samsung SSD T3) as well as two modern Thunderbolt 3 ports with a USB Type-C connector (Gen.2). We cannot say whether the two ports are attached with the full bandwidth or not. Picture output as well as network functionality via adapter is supported, but the two ports cannot be used to charge the internal battery. The general layout is okay, but we would have liked to see a regular USB-A port on the left side as well.

The slot for the microSD-card is located at the right side. We can measure an average transfer rate of 77.4 MB/s when we copy pictures from our Toshiba reference card (Exceria Pro M501). However, the tool AS SSD repeatedly stopped the test, so we cannot give you a maximum result.

An Ethernet connector is not available, so you are limited to wireless networks. Asus has implemented Intel's current 8265 module, which supports all important standards in 2.4 and 5 GHz networks as well Bluetooth 4.2. Our standardized test with the router Linksys EA8500 (1 meter/~3 ft away) determines comparatively low transfer rates for this module compared to the rivals. However, we did not experience any connectivity issues in practice and even large downloads were no problem.

You also get a webcam in the upper screen bezel, but we do not understand why Asus uses a VGA webcam with just 640x480 pixels in 2017. The pictures are extremely blurry and noisy. You can recognize the other person in Skype video chats, for example, but that is it.

Asus offers a two-year warranty for the ZenBook Pro UX550 in Germany, which includes a Pick-up & Return service. The battery is covered for only 12 months. Please see our Guarantees, Return policies and Warranties FAQ for country-specific information.

The color deviations increase at higher saturation levels, which indicated an incomplete sRGB gamut. We measure 90% sRGB and 58% AdobeRGB. This – in combination with the color deviations – is not sufficient for professional users, but some light editing of your holiday pictures is no problem. The high-resolution 4K UHD panel is supposed to provide a full sRGB gamut according to Asus, but we cannot check the statement at this point.

Thanks to the higher clocks, the Core i7-7700HQ is obviously slightly faster than the Core i5-7300HQ, but you can only see a big advantage if the application can make use of the additional threads (8 vs. 4). A perfect scenario is the current Cinebench R15 Multi test, where the Core i7-7700HQ is 45% faster. The old Core i7-6700HQ inside the previous ZenBook Pro UX501 on the other hand is just 11% slower, so the new processor does not justify the upgrade.

The ZenBook Pro UX550 performs very well in the benchmarks, which indicates an excellent Turbo utilization. The processor performance is not reduced on battery power.

By the way, Asus has increased the short-term power limit for the processor; it can consume up to 60 W within the first 28 seconds. The usual 45 W limit is still active for longer periods to keep the temperatures in check. The CPU in our test sample consumes only 42 W (4x 3.4 GHz) in the Cinebench Multi test. Only extreme workload, which is the case with the tool Prime95, for instance, can increase the power consumption for short periods. But more on that later.

It is always interesting to see whether slim notebooks with limited cooling capabilities can maintain the performance under sustained workloads. We run a loop of the Cinebench R15 Multi test and the result is very good, because the result is stable even after 30 iterations.

You can use our comprehensive CPU benchmark list for more comparisons with other processors.

The subjective performance impression is very good thanks to the fast SSD and the powerful components, but we experienced multiple freezes within two days. The laptop stopped working two times during “Witcher 3” (both times after ~10 minutes) and once when we opened Microsoft's Edge browser. Only a long push on the power button would turn the device off.

The first two issues appeared during the test with “Witcher 3”, so we suspected temperature issues at first, but this was not the case. Currently, we have no idea why it happened, but we will obviously observe the behavior over the next few days. The test model is equipped with the current BIOS (version 300).

Update 09/14: We did not experience more freezes during our 3-week test period. We think this might have been caused by a driver issue (probably Intel Wi-Fi) after we talked to Asus, which was automatically fixed via Windows update. We will obviously check the second test model when we get it.

Our subjective performance impression is supported by the synthetic PCMarks and the Asus is only beaten by the Gigabyte Aero 15 with the more powerful GTX 1060 GPU within our comparison group.

It is possible to replace the M.2-2280 SSD. However, since this is already a very fast drive, it would only make sense to replace it with a larger module. You can use our SSD/HDD list for comparisons with other hard drives.

We will soon see that the CPU performance is limited when you also stress the graphics cards, since the cooling solution struggles with the heat development. We therefore checked how this affects the gaming performance. The positive result: Modern games in high details mainly depend on the graphics card and the CPU is not overly important.

However, this changes when you reduce the settings/resolutions. We started our “Dirt 4” Benchmark and did not move the car on the track. The frame rate is between 200-210 FPS in the Low preset, which drops to ~175-180 FPS after one minute (CPU throttled to 15 W). The drop is smaller in the Medium preset from 92 to 85 FPS, but it is still there. It does not change with the High preset.

Witcher 3 shows a drop from 70 to 61-63 FPS in the Medium preset and we can still notice a drop with high settings from 39 to 35-36 FPS. This is currently not a huge issue, but the limitation will have a bigger impact in the future when games will have higher requirements.

The results in the gaming benchmarks are usually at the lower end for a GTX 1050. You can still play almost all modern titles with high details in the native 1080p resolution. The optional GTX 1050 Ti should be another 30-40% faster. More gaming benchmarks are available in our tech section.

The two fans of the ZenBook Pro UX550 are often deactivated or hardly audible while idling. However, it is still not a silent device since there are electronic sounds. There are two different types: a quiet whining sound, which is unfortunately a problem for many current laptops, but there is also a louder and much more annoying electronic sound at around 30.5 dB(A) when you stress the notebook. The value itself is not very high, but it is a very high-pitched noise. We noticed it in benchmarks and also games, but not during everyday tasks such as web browsing or watching videos on YouTube.

The fans can increase their speed seamlessly. They are unfortunately very sensitive to load changes, which is rather annoying. The fan murmur itself is no problem. The fan will reach 36.8 dB(A) and later 38.3 dB(A) with medium workloads (3DMark 06). Our stress test and the “Witcher 3” test result in 39.8 dB(A), so the cooling solution is quieter compared to the rivals. However, you also have to consider the reduced CPU performance, which is described in the next section. 

Update 09/26: The fan behavior did not change with the updated BIOS version 302, but the annoying electronic noise was not present. We believe the high-pitched sound is coming from the Samsung SSD inside the first test sample.

You can argue that the stress test is an extreme scenario and not really relevant in practice. However, we can also see this behavior while playing “The Witcher 3”. The analysis above clearly shows the CPU drop after just a couple of minutes, while the GPU has a bit more headroom and runs at 1400 MHz on average. Many modern games mostly benefit – especially at high settings – from powerful GPUs. This is also the case here (Witcher 3 Ultra), so the drop of the processor performance does not really affect the frame rates (minus 1-2 FPS). This is still an interesting aspect and we are already eager to review the recently announced quad-core ULVs.

A 3DMark 11 run immediately after the stress test determines a 13% lower score (7757 vs. 6758 points), and the deficit is roughly similar for the CPU & GPU. This means that you cannot utilize the maximum performance immediately after heavy load periods.

Update 09/26: The second test sample with the Core i5-7300HQ processor showed the same behavior under load. The TDP is limited to 15 Watt once the core temperature surpasses 90 °C.

The sound system consists of four speakers certified by Harman Kardon. Two of them are located next to the keyboard, and the other two in the front of the bottom panel. We are positively surprised by the modules, because the sound is very spatial and rich when you watch music, play games, or even listen to music. Our subjective impression is supported by the measurements, where we can see very balanced medium and high tones. An even better result would require a dedicated subwoofer, since the quality suffers a bit in this respect.

Still, the overall result is very good considering the compact size. This is also the case for the maximum volume at almost 82 dB(A). The chassis starts to reverberate a bit at higher volumes, but there is no static or the like. You can definitely enjoy a movie or a game with the integrated speakers, and an external solution is not necessary. The 3.5 mm jack provides a noise-free signal.

Frequency Comparison (Checkboxes select/deselectable!)

The test model is very efficient while idling and consumes less power than the rivals. The impact of the keyboard illumination in the Idle max value is quite interesting. The result of 12.2 W includes the illumination at its highest level, but it drops to 9.7 W when we turn it off. The load results also represent the respective maximum values before the CPU starts to throttle its performance. For example: The stress test value quickly drops from almost 120 W to ~82 W, which is also the level for “Witcher 3” after we can measure 93 W in the beginning.

The provided 120 W PSU is just sufficient for the maximum consumption, but there are still no problems thanks to the performance throttling. However, Asus should ship the GTX 1050 Ti SKU with a more powerful unit (120 W would still be sufficient if the CPU throttling is by design).

Our new “Witcher 3” runtime test is supposed to show how long you can play on the road. The result is little more than one hour, which is supported by the Battery Eater Classic test (70 minutes).

A full charge of the battery takes 148 minutes when the device is turned on. Asus advertises that 60% of the capacity is ready after 49 minutes. The diagram actually shows that the charging speed is higher until the capacity reaches 65%, and we reached the advertised 60% after ~40 minutes; 95% after about 1.5 hours. There was no preloaded software on our model to adjust the charging limits.