Asus South Africa recently held their Performance Day, where the company released more information on innovation from their R&D department, alongside displaying a number of their latest notebooks. According to Marce Bester, Asus South Africa’s Technical Public Relations Manager, the company is undergoing solid growth, performing particularly well in two segments – OLED and Creator notebooks. Its OLED notebooks currently hold a 68% worldwide market share, with South Africa standing at a significant 94% (granted, the local OLED offerings from other companies are few and far between).

Another segment the company excels in is the Creator segment. These are notebooks focused on professionals typically looking for solid performance and strong graphic capabilities, without having to settle for a gaming notebook as in the past. In the Creator category (NVIDIA Studio laptops), Asus holds the number one position, believing there is a potential market size of two million Creator notebooks in 2023.

Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo Oled with dual screens

Intel onboard

According to a KANTAR 2019 consumer survey, performance remains the number one feature end-users are looking for, with battery life at no. 2 and display quality at no. 3. To this end, Intel joined Asus at the Performance Day to provide more detail regarding the 12th Gen Intel Core H-series Processors.

Nitesh Doolabh, Africa Consumer Ecosystem Manager at Intel, explained the company’s 12th Gen Intel Core Hybrid Architecture incorporates two types of cores into a single die. To take care of speed and performance, there are the Performance-cores, while the smaller Efficient-cores take over for less intensive tasks.

Doolabh noted the 12th Gen Intel Core H-series Processors as the company’s fastest mobile units (at the time of the event this was correct, however, the 13th Gen has been announced at Intel Innovation). Intel claims the performance hybrid design is up to 40% faster than the previous series, while content creators will be able to extract value from the processors’ ability to provide video editing, 3D modelling and rendering. On top of this the processor provides Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E capabilities, plus Thunderbolt 4’s access to 40Gbps transfer speeds.

Asus Vivobook Pro 15 OLED notebook

It's (not) getting hot in here

Bester stated Asus sees a strong opportunity in implementing Intel’s H-series processors in thin chassis, with the H45W appearing in certain models of Asus’s sleek Vivobook S and X line, for example. In a thin chassis, one would expect serious heat issues from such a powerful processor. However, Bester explained that part of Asus’s R&D budget is dedicated to thermal design. Some of the innovation that goes into their cooler thermal design includes an increase in fan blades (from 59 in 2020 to 87 blades) which are now also thinner; the fan speed has advanced by 30%, leading to a 17% air flow increase; and the incorporation of a dual heat pipe design, for example on the Vivobook X1403, which helps to dissipate heat faster.    

All this contributes to innovative products such as the Asus Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED, which was on display at the event.  It comes specced with the Intel Core i7-12700H Processor (H45), but also a unique dual screen, with a 14.5”, 2.8K OLED as the main screen and an additional 12.7" screen underneath called a ScreenPad. If you are a creator, this definitely looks like the type of machine that can power its way through video production or 3D designs, which one would expect from its R54k asking price.

From the Performance Day, it’s clear that Asus is not resting on its laurels and continuing with innovative, unique products, such as the Zenbook Fold 17 with its full dual screens. Indeed, the company has a rich heritage of unique concepts, including a Bamboo notebook, the Eee PC (contributing to the explosion of netbooks in 2007) and of course the powerful gaming series, which deserves an article in its own right.