 Have you ever seen something and immediately assumed that it's a gimmick? Like for example this, Brush Buddies Justin Bieber singing toothbrush. I mean, it's certainly fun, but if ultimately when I'm finished, my teeth are no cleaner than if I had saved $7 and gotten a regular one. Well, when I first heard that Asus put a touchscreen in the touchpad of their new ZenBook Pro, I have to confess that it triggered my gimmick detector, at least before I used it for a while. As for now, well I'll say this, it's a lot better than a worthless gimmick, but then also kind of worse. You know what's not a gimmick though? Glass wire. Glass wire is a firewall that displays your PC's incoming and outgoing network connections in real time. Use offer code LINUS to get 25% off GlassWire 2.0 through the link below. The overall design of the Asus ZenBook Pro UX580GE is a solid B+. The brushed aluminum and relatively small bezels are nice, but I just can't shake the nagging feeling that it looks kind of like an Inspiron, but made from better materials. And making matters worse, compared to Dell's professional XPS 15, it is a fingerprint magnet, and the reduced chassis rigidity makes it feel significantly cheaper, which I mean, fortunately for it, it actually is. With that said, I can't think of a situation where I'd be embarrassed to be seen with the ZenBook Pro. I mean, whether it's in an office or a studio or a library, it does a great job of blending in seamlessly. That is, at least until your study mates notice the second display. So there's a standard one up top, though it might not be fair to call it standard, because between its 4K resolution, touch support, and factory calibration, everything from consuming to creating content is a joy, as long as you don't care about HDR. And then there's the one where the trackpad would normally be. Asus is calling their little creation here the screen pad. Most of the time, it just acts like a normal trackpad, and actually quite a good one. You'd think it would feel weird, but it has a nice soft touch and a satisfying click. In fact, even without a screen under it, it would already be getting a pretty positive review. And then it's got extra functionality, like contextual shortcut keys and the ability to use it as an extended display. Well, that should get it right into A-plus territory, right? Hold on. In some situations, it's actually great. The YouTube integration on Chrome puts ad skipping and a full screen toggle right at your fingertips, quite literally. And it even lets you scrub along the timeline. And this is while keeping most of the screen free to be used as a regular trackpad. Then by contrast, Spotify shouldn't even be listed as compatible. I mean, you know how most keyboards have media hotkeys up here at the top, making play, pause and track control a single action? Well, for some inexplicable reason, ASUS has removed those functions and replaced them with nothing. So you can have the pleasure of executing three actions instead of pressing one button. And then making matters worse, once the Spotify app is open, the touchpad no longer works, meaning that it is literally always faster and more convenient to just click on the actual Spotify app. And this problem of not being able to use the touchpad when in certain apps hampers the usefulness further for things that would otherwise be great, like the numpad or calculator, which is particularly annoying given that these are issues that were solved in the Word numpad. Like in Office programs, the numpad works freaking fantastic, but also reveals its limitations. Only the numpad and symbol inserter actually really save you time. And then for power users, keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl S are going to be the way to go for a very long time. And then finally, the lack of features like macros and equations on the screenpad meant that we really just didn't get many opportunities to use it. Overall then, I don't think the screenpad is a huge selling point at this moment, but at least if you don't like it, there's still a perfectly usable touchpad like normal. And so I like where ASUS is going with this, and I hope we continue to see development on the apps, something that should speed up when they release the SDK, which is coming soon. Now, this is kind of a funny thing because we're halfway through this video, and I haven't even gotten to the specs of this machine. On paper, the ZenBook Pro is an absolute beast, with a Core i9 6-core processor, a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, 16 gigs of RAM, and 512 gigs of NVMe storage. And at that price, whoo, unfortunately, it doesn't touch the maximum performance of the Core i9. And you know what? I'm just going to come out and say it. I blame Apple for this very unfortunate industry trend. Like a Core i9 MacBook Pro, the ZenBook Pro, Pro, right? Almost immediately overheats under heavy load, dropping the frequency even below the base clock of the processor. And even though the temps do get a bit better when the fans kick in, it's still running well under base clock. Realistically, you could be better off with a cheaper Core i7 if you want a chassis that's this slim. And the heat problems don't stop there. While you're gaming, or even in some cases, while performing mundane tasks like installing programs, the bottom of this machine would regularly get uncomfortably hot, sometimes close to 50 degrees Celsius, making the ZenBook Pro less of a laptop and more of a desktop. Well, I mean, not like a desktop, but the point is it works better sitting on a desk. You guys get what I mean. Also, the battery life isn't that great. That was supposed to tie into the desk thing. Desk top? Desk? Okay, forget it. So continuing on the dislike train, only the storage is upgradable. The webcam is softer than soft camembert cheese. And the keyboard leaves a fair bit to be desired. It's pretty similar to the one found on the Dell G3, which is alright in a budget gaming machine and overall pretty good. But when you compare it to professional machines from Microsoft, Lenovo, and Dell, the keyboard on the ZenBook lacks key stabilization, chassis rigidity, and tactile feel, which I guess nicely leads into our conclusion. Besides the thermals, nothing about the ZenBook is bad. In fact, the speakers, which I couldn't find another place to talk about, are pretty good. But at $2,300 for our build, the only thing that really stands out against the competitors is the top of the line Core i9 CPU and the screenpad. But since the thermals don't allow the i9 to stretch its legs and the screenpad needs a lot of work on the software side before I would consider it a selling point, at this time, the ZenBook would probably need to be more than a couple hundred dollars less than a Surface Book 2 for me to recommend it. Squarespace lets you create a beautiful website with their all-in-one platform. Their award-winning templates make creating a powerful online identity easier than ever. And every template can be a starting point for a wide range of projects. Squarespace provides award-winning 24-7 support via live chat and email, and you can even attend a live webinar or check out their help guides. And this is cool, some domains news. You can now transfer your third-party domains to Squarespace. So instead of working with multiple vendors to maintain your online presence, you can manage all of your domain and billing settings with Squarespace. 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