ASUS began its planning for the first ZenBook in late 2010. At that time, laptops had become indispensable personal devices, both at work and at home, and laptop sales had surpassed traditional desktop PC sales. The portability of laptops made computing much more personal. However, majority of laptops available at that time shared a conventional style and design. It was at that point that ASUS realised that laptop owners wanted models with more stylish design features – laptops that looked more like fashion accessories than just functional devices.

This realisation inspired the creation of a model with a specific design focus – the thinnest, most portable and best-looking laptop that ASUS had ever designed – while at the same time not making any compromises in terms of performance. The ZenBook not only had to look good, it had to perform well. To achieve the desired results, the inspiration for the ZenBook design had to be drawn from unconventional sources.

During then, ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih (a student of Zen philosophy) and the company’s laptop designers were great admirers of precision engineering and the design of luxury timepieces. These widely differing sources of inspiration were eventually perfectly echoed in the ZenBook design.



In any laptop, performance is usually compromised due to size and weight limitations. The overall ZenBook design followed the Zen principle of achieving a perfect balance between opposing elements. Thousands of design hours were poured into making the ZenBook components smaller and better fitted. The resulting design broke the conventional mould with its balance of extreme thinness and extreme performance.

The Zen principles of Kanso (簡素), which means simplicity by eliminating clutter, and Seijaku (静寂), which means tranquility, are evident in the minimalist lines of ZenBook.Visits to serene Zen gardens also inspired ASUS to create its most recognisable design element: the spun-metal finish on the lid, with its pattern of concentric circles. Such circles can be seen raked into the gravel outside of meditation halls, or when a drop of water falls into a garden pond. This concentric-circle theme became one of the iconic features of ZenBook. All of these design elements differentiated the ZenBook from other models in the market, and helped establish the ZenBook brand.

From start to finish, manufacturing of the ZenBook follows a very strict quality assurance process. This begins with the refined metallic design of the cover and its concentric circles, and continues with the fitting of powerful components into ZenBook’s durable monoshell body: a 32 step manufacturing process that takes approximately four hours.

To ensure total quality, only five ZenBook shells are produced every day! At each step, the quality and resilience of the product are assured, and performance tests are conducted to make certain buyers get the power and style they expect.

To find the perfect red shell, ASUS designers spent 80 hours making 50 red panels, and each panels takes 90 minutes to anodize.

The final colour selected is stylish burgundy red; the colour is more bluish rather than yellowish to make it more trendy and young looking. The designer also visited factories in 5 cities to come up with all other parts, the texture and colour on all models are chosen under rigorous selection.

Not every colour works with a hairline-spun aluminium finish; only the ones that reflect light the right way and satisfy the Zen concepts were chosen.

For more information on the ZenBook, please visit https://www.asus.com/sg/Laptops/ZenBook-Series-Home/