The Asus ZenBook Pro’s latest touch-screen based touchpad technology seems to have been inspired by American startup Razer. The latter had launched a new Project Linda earlier this year which showcased an ultrabook with a similar setup, with the only difference being in the fact that the trackpad was a complete phone in itself, and could be detached whenever needed. That, however, isn’t the case with the case with the Asus ZenBook Pro 14 (UX480) and Asus ZenBook Pro 15 (UX580). Asus has incorporated a 5.5 inch Full HD panel into the touchpad of the new laptop and is aptly calling it as the ScreenPad. The implementation nearly mimics the functionality of the touch bar of the current generation MacBooks, if not improving on the same. Users can change switch between using the 5.5-inch panel as a standard touchpad or a display by simply pressing the F6 key. When the display mode is turned on, the ScreenPad comes with adaptive menus and controls that changes with the app in focus. Currently, the apps compatible with the new ScreenPad of Asus ZenBook Pro 15 include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Calculator, Music Player and a few others. Going forward, Asus will be allowing developers to build their own proprietary apps and tools for the nifty secondary display.
Apart from the secondary display cum trackpad, Asus ZenBook Pro 15 feature a 15.6 inch 4K NanoEdge Pantone LCD panel with 100 percent NTSC color gamut. Lower specced 14-inch variant of the ultrabook feature a 1080p panel. Internally the Asus Zenbook Pro 15 comes with an Intel Core i9 processor, which in turn is clubbed with up to 16GB DDR4 RAM and NVidia GeForce GTX 1050i GPU. Asus has also included up to 1TB of SSD storage. Additionally, the laptop features a Harmon Kardon certified audio system and a fingerprint sensor.
The Asus ZenBook Pro 14 and ZenBook Pro 15 with ScreenPad run on the latest build of Windows 10. Both ultrabooks would go on sale later this year. The Taiwanese PC maker hasn’t revealed any information regarding the price of either of the laptops yet.
