Asus ZenBook Pro 15 with a touchscreen display instead of a trackpad launched at COMPUTEX 2018 at a starting price $2,299

Ever heard of a laptop which has a whole display instead of the trackpad? **Project Linda** by Razor is the closest example of this, but with Linda, Razer was offering a phone that could double as a laptop. Asus, however, has gone and built a laptop with an integrated display panel in the place of a touchpad. [caption id=“attachment_4497147” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Asus ZenBook 15.[/caption] The  Asus ZenBook Pro 15, unveiled at Computex 2018, comes with 5.5-inch 1080p IPS display below the keyboard where, under normal circumstances, we might find a trackpad. The touchscreen display is set to be customizable according to what application you are using on the laptop, kind of like the touch bar on the new MacBook Pro, but better because it’s adding functionality rather than replacing a perfectly functional mode of interaction. As per a report by Gizmodo, if you were to be playing music on your laptop, you could quite easily see a visualizer pop up on the screen pad. The ‘ScreenPad’ can also play YouTube videos via an extension or you can browse on Chrome.  It seems to be one of those things which you don’t actually need but really want. Obviously, the ScreenPad also functions as a regular trackpad.

The hardware on the laptop is impressive as there exists a variant of the laptop which has an 8th-Gen i9 8950HK CPU, up to 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD storage. Asus ZenBook Pro 15 also has a variant which supports 4K.  There are other variants which have 8th-Gen i5 and i7 processors as well. In terms of graphics, the laptop supports a 4 GB of Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti. Other connectivity options for the phone include 2x USB Type-A ports, 2x USB 3.1 ports, 1x Thunderbolt type-C port, 1x HDMI port and a micro-SD card reader [caption id=“attachment_4497153” align=“alignnone” width=“800”] Asus ZenBook 15[/caption] Superb specs come with a hefty price tag and the ZenBook Pro 15 is no different. The laptop comes at a starting price of $2,299 and with all the options for customisation, the price can only go up. The laptop is said to launch in mid-July and there is no word on when this laptop will make its way to India. Hopefully, that launch will happen very soon.