Asus skips robots at this year’s Computex event and flaunts super-thin laptops instead

Remember Zenbo, the cute humanoid robot that stole the show at Asus’ Computex press conference last year? Zenbo was absent from the stage this year, as were ZenFones. Instead, in an unusual departure for the event, which took place today in Taipei, Taiwan, the focus was solely on Asus’ new laptops, with the spotlight shining on the newest additions to its ZenBook line: the ZenBook Flip S and the ZenBook Pro UX550.

Asus claims the ZenBook Flip S is “the world’s thinnest convertible laptop.” It weighs in at just 1.1kg and is only 10.9mm thick (Asus’ press materials compared it to the HP Spectre x360, which weighs 1.29kg and is 13.8mm thick, and the MacBook Air at 1.35kg and 17mm).

The ZenBook Flip S’s 13.3in 4K touchscreen display can flip 360 degrees, while its specs–an Intel Core i7-7500U processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD–should ensure a fast performance. Asus claims the machine’s battery can last up to 11.5 hours and reach a 60 percent charge in 49 minutes, and it has a USB-C port for peripherals. The ZenBook Flip S will be available for sale in September starting at $1,099.

Like its predecessor, the ZenBook Pro UX550 also has a 15.6in 4K touchscreen display–but this time it runs on Intel’s seventh-generation Core i7-7700HQ quad-core processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and a discrete graphic card, the Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti. Another selling point is the ZenBook Pro UX550’s slim profile: it weighs 1.8kg and is just 18.9mm thick. Pricing will start at $1,299 when it hits the market in July.

Other laptops showcased today include the ZenBook 3 Deluxe (which debuted at CES in January), the $499 VivoBook S (it comes with up to a Core i7 CPU and Nvidia GTX 940MX GPU), and the VivoBook ($799, with a Core i7 CPU and Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU).