Asus ZenBook with GTX1060 confirmed; release date unknown

The UX550 has a more modern, sleeker design than its chunky predecessor. (Source: Taiwan Excellence)

Asus has yet to officially announce a 15-inch ZenBook Pro with GTX 1060, but the Taiwan Excellence Awards website reveals some details.

Douglas Black, Published 03/12/2017

Asus's ZenBook Pro UX501 was quite the competitor in the 15-inch desktop replacement category when it debuted in mid-2015. Though it wasn't as powerful as the Razer Blade or as slim as the XPS 15, its quad-core CPU, large 4K (pentile) display, and Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M made it a very solid well-rounded workhorse at the time. It's been a while since the ZenBook Pro saw an update, though—and while it was rumored that one would be revealed around MWC, that didn't happen either. What has been confirmed via the Taiwan Excellence Awards, however, is that a ZenBook Pro UX550 with an Nvidia GTX 1060 and a quad-core CPU is in the works.

The page reveals a fairly handsome redesign of the classic ZenBook Pro. The bezels have thankfully shrunk, and there is a distinctively MacBook-like milled edge in the aluminum chassis to allow for easy opening. Most exciting is the addition of both quad-core Kaby Lake CPUs and a Nvidia GTX1060 GPU in such a (relatively) svelte package. Packing such a powerful graphics card will give the UX550 a solid advantage over the XPS 15 9560, Yoga 720, and other 15-inch thin-and-light desktop replacement notebooks.

Although its existence is confirmed by the Taiwan Excellence Awards, there has been no word yet from the Taiwanese company on a release date for the UX550.