Asus claims the ZenBook 13 UX331UN is currently the world’s thinnest laptop with discrete graphics.
If you’re not sure why you should care about that, it’s because it shows we’ve finally reached a point where you can get an ultraportable laptop with long battery life without sacrificing graphics performance or spending a ton of money.
WIth laptops that are half an inch (12.7 mm) thick like the ZenBook 13 ($999.00 at Amazon.com), you’d typically get integrated graphics that are more power efficient, run cooler and cost less than a standalone discrete graphics chip. The downsides are integrated graphics also eat into your system memory and just can’t handle more demanding graphics tasks or gaming. Though the Nvidia GeForce MX150 chip used here is entry level, it has 2GB of its own memory, and Nvidia says it can deliver up to four times faster performance over integrated graphics for photo and video editing as well as deliver better gaming performance.
