Asus unveils UX430 and UX530 ultra-thin notebooks with dedicated graphics

Asus has officially announced the new 14-inch UX430 and 15-inch UX530 thin and light ZenBooks. Both laptops feature slim bezels and dedicated Nvidia (albeit Maxwell) graphics. Asus is calling the UX430 its thinnest ZenBook with a dedicated GPU ever. The UX430 measures 15.9mm at its thickest point and weighs 2.75 lbs.

Full details on the 15-inch model's screen aren't yet available, but the UX430 sports a matte 14-inch FHD display with 100% sRGB color accuracy, all skirted by thin 7mm bezels. The brains of the machine will be Intel U-series i3, i5, or i7 CPUs, as well as a discrete Nvidia GeForce 940MX with 2GB of video memory. The UX430 will support up to 16GB of RAM, and Asus is claiming that its 50Wh battery will provide up to 9 hours of battery life. While the laptops won't come with Thunderbolt 3, they will have USB-C, one USB 2.0 + 3.0 port each, micro HDMI, and an SD card reader. 

The UX530 will be similar to the 430, but will utilize a more powerful GTX 950 GPU instead of the 940MX. It's somewhat surprising that the 530 is still using Nvidia's Maxwell chips now that the GTX 1050 is already shipping, but the 940MX and GTX 950 should still provide enough graphical muscle to play less-demanding games such as Dota 2 or Overwatch on lower settings.