ASUS ​2018 Asus ​​ZenBook Flip 14 to edit photos on ?

I've been researching this to death, but looks like since manufacturers come out with new model every year and with so many configurations, the info is either old, or talks about other configurations then the ones I'm looking at

What I need: a portable (slim, light, 14" max) , 2-in-1 laptop ( so I can edit with a pen right on the screen), I can take with me anywhere and edit pictures (mainly on Lightroom Classic), and strong enough to allow me to stack a bunch of raw files in PS ( i use that for long exposures, made out of shorter xsposure frames).

What Specs ( I think) are important: Core i7 (8th gen ) | 16 gb RAM | SSD (512gb) |Dedicated graphic card

Budget: I was thinking anything under $1500 is good.

What I found: after A-L-O-T of reading and watching youtube reviews, I'm thinking the ASUS 2018 Asus ZenBook Flip 14 ($1223) will be the best set up. has better components then most of the other 2-in-1's I saw even up to $1500. I was considering the Lenovo Flex 6, but some reviews were unfavorable and it has a slightly slower Graphic card (MX 130 vs Asus's MX-150)

Questions:

-Does anyone on here uses it and can recommend it or dis-recommend ?

-Will I be able to accurately use the Asus pen to edit in LR/PS or is it too laggy ?

-Any thoughts on other laptops I should consider instead?

TIA for any advice.

You will get a million opinions of varying degree. My suggestion is the get what best suits you, not us. And for what it's worth, I see nothing wrong with the notebook you picked.

Let the fun begin....

How about the screen. Most 2-1 use an IPS panel which is critical but what about the color gamut? If your edits are culling, cropping, and not color adjustment this may not matter.

greg

plantdoc said:

How about the screen. Most 2-1 use an IPS panel which is critical but what about the color gamut? If your edits are culling, cropping, and not color adjustment this may not matter.

greg

Click to expand...

good point, according to Laptop Mag : "According to our colorimeter, the ZenBook Flip's screen produces 115 percent of the sRGB spectrum" so hopefully it will do ok, no?

matikr said:

I've been researching this to death, but looks like since manufacturers come out with new model every year and with so many configurations, the info is either old, or talks about other configurations then the ones I'm looking at

What I need: a portable (slim, light, 14" max) , 2-in-1 laptop ( so I can edit with a pen right on the screen), I can take with me anywhere and edit pictures (mainly on Lightroom Classic), and strong enough to allow me to stack a bunch of raw files in PS ( i use that for long exposures, made out of shorter xsposure frames).

What Specs ( I think) are important: Core i7 (8th gen ) | 16 gb RAM | SSD (512gb) |Dedicated graphic card

Budget: I was thinking anything under $1500 is good.

What I found: after A-L-O-T of reading and watching youtube reviews, I'm thinking the ASUS 2018 Asus ZenBook Flip 14 ($1223) will be the best set up. has better components then most of the other 2-in-1's I saw even up to $1500. I was considering the Lenovo Flex 6, but some reviews were unfavorable and it has a slightly slower Graphic card (MX 130 vs Asus's MX-150)

Questions:

-Does anyone on here uses it and can recommend it or dis-recommend ?

-Will I be able to accurately use the Asus pen to edit in LR/PS or is it too laggy ?

-Any thoughts on other laptops I should consider instead?

TIA for any advice.

Click to expand...

I looked into this a fair bit for myself and I found that it generally comes down to three main things:

1) Use of Lightroom Vs Photoshop Vs other software. Photoshop (depending what it's used for) can be a lot more demanding on a device than LR or other programs like Capture 1.

2) Ability to deal with heat. The more you do, the hotter the laptop will get. If heat doesn't bother you, than you have a lot of options. If it does, some devices are much better than others

3) Price you're willing to pay. The less heat and more "grunt" you want, the more you have to shell out. I looked really hard at the Surface Book 2 for example. Lots of pluses, such as excellent screen and pen, GPU in the base and everything else in the "tablet" so heat is more evenly distributed etc. But at 15" models trending north of $2000 I just couldn't justify it.

The Zenbook looks good and the specs will "handle" what you're asking of it, but it's never going to be as "snappy" as a desktop, and it will get warm, maybe even hot. Laptops have come a long way but every single one I've tried or researched still gets hot after a few layers in Photoshop. If you're OK with that then it looks to be a solid choice.

I suspect you can get better info about this model in Amazon reviews than here:

https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B078YN3VY9/ref=acr_search_see_all?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

On the HP store site, I just configured an Omen 15.6" with better specs for $1080, but it's larger. For instance, the MX150 GPU benchmarks at 2124 G3Dmark, the GTX 1050 at 4600.

Thanks for the detailed answer Brian, I agree with you 100%, and heat is the only thing really bothering me. I think in real life I'll be using LR way more then PS on the laptop (it will be my "get things done while out of the house" computer, not my main editing one), so hopefully it won't get too crazy. I did read a review where the guy was saying the heat is not heat is not that bad on a core I5 he was testing, but he was assuming it will be much worst with the i7, hopefully it's not adorable, especially in full tablet mode which I expect to be using a lot

Brian P Smith said:

matikr said:

I've been researching this to death, but looks like since manufacturers come out with new model every year and with so many configurations, the info is either old, or talks about other configurations then the ones I'm looking at

What I need: a portable (slim, light, 14" max) , 2-in-1 laptop ( so I can edit with a pen right on the screen), I can take with me anywhere and edit pictures (mainly on Lightroom Classic), and strong enough to allow me to stack a bunch of raw files in PS ( i use that for long exposures, made out of shorter xsposure frames).

What Specs ( I think) are important: Core i7 (8th gen ) | 16 gb RAM | SSD (512gb) |Dedicated graphic card

Budget: I was thinking anything under $1500 is good.

What I found: after A-L-O-T of reading and watching youtube reviews, I'm thinking the ASUS 2018 Asus ZenBook Flip 14 ($1223) will be the best set up. has better components then most of the other 2-in-1's I saw even up to $1500. I was considering the Lenovo Flex 6, but some reviews were unfavorable and it has a slightly slower Graphic card (MX 130 vs Asus's MX-150)

Questions:

-Does anyone on here uses it and can recommend it or dis-recommend ?

-Will I be able to accurately use the Asus pen to edit in LR/PS or is it too laggy ?

-Any thoughts on other laptops I should consider instead?

TIA for any advice.

Click to expand...

I looked into this a fair bit for myself and I found that it generally comes down to three main things:

1) Use of Lightroom Vs Photoshop Vs other software. Photoshop (depending what it's used for) can be a lot more demanding on a device than LR or other programs like Capture 1.

2) Ability to deal with heat. The more you do, the hotter the laptop will get. If heat doesn't bother you, than you have a lot of options. If it does, some devices are much better than others

3) Price you're willing to pay. The less heat and more "grunt" you want, the more you have to shell out. I looked really hard at the Surface Book 2 for example. Lots of pluses, such as excellent screen and pen, GPU in the base and everything else in the "tablet" so heat is more evenly distributed etc. But at 15" models trending north of $2000 I just couldn't justify it.

The Zenbook looks good and the specs will "handle" what you're asking of it, but it's never going to be as "snappy" as a desktop, and it will get warm, maybe even hot. Laptops have come a long way but every single one I've tried or researched still gets hot after a few layers in Photoshop. If you're OK with that then it looks to be a solid choice.

Click to expand...

CAcreeks said:

I suspect you can get better info about this model in Amazon reviews than here:

https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B078YN3VY9/ref=acr_search_see_all?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

On the HP store site, I just configured an Omen 15.6" with better specs for $1080, but it's larger. For instance, the MX150 GPU benchmarks at 2124 G3Dmark, the GTX 1050 at 4600.

Click to expand...

Thanks, but the Omen is not a 2-in-1 that fully flips either, so won't be what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that using the laptop in tablet mode will be very handy when working in places like an airplane or other places where there isn't too much room

matikr said:

matikr said:

On the HP store site, I just configured an Omen 15.6" with better specs for $1080, but it's larger. For instance, the MX150 GPU benchmarks at 2124 G3Dmark, the GTX 1050 at 4600.

Click to expand...

Thanks, but the Omen is not a 2-in-1 that fully flips either, so won't be what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that using the laptop in tablet mode will be very handy when working in places like an airplane or other places where there isn't too much room

Click to expand...

The Spectre x360 models are 2-in-1 and include pen, but come with only 13" and 15" screens. The 13" ones are less expensive and the 15" ones are more expensive.

I guess if you're using Lightroom the GPU doesn't matter.

matikr said:

Thanks, but the Omen is not a 2-in-1 that fully flips either, so won't be what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that using the laptop in tablet mode will be very handy when working in places like an airplane or other places where there isn't too much room

Click to expand...

I have a 14-inch Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga X1 2-in-1 notebook and love it. The fact that it can be set to tent mode saving space is a plus. Here's mine with photos and specs.

Regarding heat. All notebooks produce heat since everything is placed in a compact space, so if you're worrying about heat that much, perhaps a notebook isn't for you. That said, if the notebook's cooling system is well designed, heat and fan noise will be minimized.

BTW I also have a 13-inch Asus Zenbook Prime (not a 2-in-1) and I loved it till I outgrew it as it only came with 4gig of non upgradable RAM and both LR and PS CC would slow to a craw on it. No issue with PS & LR on the ThinkPad with it's 16gig of RAM. Both notebooks feature i7 intel processor - 5th gen on the Asus, 7th gen on the ThinkPad.

With that, if you're going to be running LR & PS, get nothing less than 8gig of RAM. 16 if price permits.

Questions?

Did you get the Asus flip?

I am also trying to decide between that and the flex 6.

If so...what do you think?

dimoda said:

Did you get the Asus flip?

I am also trying to decide between that and the flex 6.

If so...what do you think?

Click to expand...

I actually did. very happy with it, especially the screen color accuracy. The screen is enough to go over images and even light editing, but it's obviously harder work to see sensor spots etc .

As far as processing power, it is strong enough, although to be fair, I use it with an external SSD ( so I can go back and forth to my desktop). in that regards the USB 3.1 connection is not fast enough, and it would have been great to have a USB 3.2 port. I do want to try and move images to the internal SSD and then just use the external one to sync edits, but I haven't gotten to that

Another thing I noticed, and this might be something I'm doing wrong on my end, is that the Nvidia card doesn't really help when using LR. my understanding is that this is a bigger deal when editing video.

Haven't used the pen too much, but it's nice to have. what's more awkward then I thought was using it in tablet mode, vertically. it's kind of long and heavy. in horizontal mode it's fine.

It does get hot when editing images.

overall I think it's a pretty good deal for what it is. the day to day use is excellent. much more accurate and easy to use then any other of my laptops

The Flex 6 is cheaper, without the GPU card, and has fill size SD card reader, so it might make more sense for you, as it is $200 cheaper right now at BH

Hi Mati,

Thank you so much for the detailed response.

I haven't been able to find a zenbook flip 14 in stores to look at so I really was unsure.

Also I am not used to glossy screens and am a bit hesitant as both are glossy.

What did you think of the zenbooks screen? Bright enough? I have read that the Lenovo Flex is not so bright and doesn't have a great color range, but does have good contrast.

And that the Zenbook has a better range and is a tad bit brighter.

And yes there seem to be pluses and minuses on each. The full SD card slot in the flex is definitely better than the microsd. But the zenbook has the better battery life.

I just wish I knew which had the better screen.

That is very interesting about the graphics card. I really thought it was supposed to make a big difference. Did you see a difference in photoshop?

There was a good deal on a zenbook at Costco ($1099) and originally it said it had the graphics card (but only mx130) and now it says that it is an integrated Intel.

They also have a Lenovo flex with that mx130...but it only has 8 gig ram and 256 ssd (i7 - $749/ i5 - $649).....

Can't really tell you about the brightness, I feel it's good enough, and I'm afraid I don't know how to turn the GPU on and off in PS to see the difference

I think the 16gb is more important than a GPU

I ordered mine from B&H, that's where I saw the Lenovo Flex for $999

Thanks again!!