Damage:
R24 999
What you need to know:
No word yet on when this baby will be available locally.
What I think you want to know:
Okay, full disclaimer. When the Asus Zen AiO arrived I actually thought it was just a monitor. Queue crickets. Kind of stoked because my desktop set up is old and runs as a peasantry 60Hz, and because of my mission to beat Toolz in CS:GO, I needed something a bit better according to ALL the gamers. I was bouncing off the walls when it arrived.
On unboxing the realisation hit that the Asus Zen AiO is actually an entire PC – which was disappointing at first, until I actually read what was hidden away in that shiny smooth aluminium casing. Packed with an Intel i7, 512GB SSD, 32gigs of Ram, 4K UHD IPS panel and the all important Geforce 960M I happily replaced my gaming rig with the Asus for a week to get some practice in.
I must mention that a sleek Asus wireless keyboard and mouse came included and not only looked the part but were pretty responsive too. The screen is also touch enabled. I did resort to my trusty keyboard and mouse for when I decided to play which the Asus had no problem in detecting and installing drivers for. Winning!
Design-wise this PC looks fantastic! The power cable is the only cable you’d need to deal with if you were to use the inclusive keyboard and mouse so it’s super stylish for neat freaks. The brushed aluminium is another plus in my book because I’m a sucker for brushed aluminium. The aluminium isn’t just for looks; it also serves as the heat sink for the PC, so its deathly quiet too. I thought it had turned itself off one evening when I went to make some tea.
The Asus Zen AiO is not just a pretty face either, games played fast and smooth, including the newly released Dark Souls 3, and movies were clean and forever ruined for when I need to use my current desktop. It’s pretty amazing watching movies in 4K!
This little beauty is a super all-in-one PC. It’s not infallible though. I’ve never been a fan of bloatware on laptops and pre-built PCs. I rarely find anything useful and will never sign up to the endless trial periods McAfee offers me. The Asus Zen AiO has plenty of bloatware. All useless. Asus did include their own cloud storage software (asus@webstorage) which is pretty cool for those users who don’t have cloud storage at the moment – so not all bad.
Another cool feature on the Asus Zen AiO is the Intel® RealSense™ camera. I say feature because it feels like a gimmick to me, although an awesome way to unlock the PC (with your face) I often found myself moving my hands too far away or ended up way to close and might as well have been using it as a touch screen anyway.
Lastly, as always the Asus Zen AiO isn’t upgrade friendly. Although a beast right now, chances are you will need to replace it in a few years time, which is never a cool thing to do.
