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Asus reversed the notch to get its laptop bezels even thinner

Asus reversed the notch to get its laptop bezels even thinner

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Nvidia discrete graphics mean you can play the latest games on this laptop

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Image: Asus

Display bezels are dying off in a variety of laptops, and now, Asus claims that it has created the “world’s slimmest display bezel” for CES 2019. Instead of sticking the webcam beneath the display, on its keyboard, or even removing it altogether, Asus has created a notch at the top to squeeze a webcam into its new ZenBook S13. It’s a reverse notch, the opposite of what’s found on the iPhone XS or many of the latest Android handsets.

Asus claims this slim bezel display is 97 percent screen-to-body ratio, and the company is hiding the bottom notch of the display behind the keyboard to make that claim. The bezels are 2.5mm on either side of the 13.9-inch 1080p display, so the overall footprint is less than most 13-inch laptops. Inside the ZenBook S13, Asus is adding 8th Gen Intel Core i7 processors, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of PCIe SSD storage.

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You’ll be able to play ‘Fortnite’ at 30 fps

Asus is also, surprisingly, adding discrete graphics into this laptop. Nvidia’s GeForce MX150 GPU will be available, and Asus claims that this makes the ZenBook S13 the “world’s thinnest laptop with discrete graphics.” Most laptops in this class have had to rely on integrated graphics from Intel, so if OEMs are able to start squeezing in discrete graphics from Nvidia, then this is good news for gamers. These laptops should be capable of running even the latest titles at low resolutions. Games like Fortnite will even run at the display’s native 1080p in 30 fps.

The ZenBook S13 has the ports you’d expect to see on a modern laptop, with two USB-C ports, a single USB-A port, and even a microSD reader. Asus has also integrated a fingerprint sensor into the trackpad, so you’ll be able to log into Windows 10 with Windows Hello support. Asus is launching the ZenBook S13 in Q1, but the company has not yet released US pricing.

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