[1][2] Asus designed the Zenbooks with brushed aluminium chassis and high rigidity, rather than plastic, the usual laptop construction material.

[7] The bodies of the ZenBooks are made of aluminium, chosen for its light weight, strength, vibration dampening, appearance and acoustic properties.

ZenBooks were the first opportunity to put this into practice,[8] the crossover being achieved, he said, by "the unfolding of the laptop from the side recalling the elegance of minute and hour hand movements".

[13][14] The concentric circles on the lid of ZenBooks[15][16] were intended to look like ripples in water and to reflect "philosophical ideas such as the infinite nature of Zen thinking and self-improvement".

[18] To preserve space, some Zenbooks use two PCBs connected by a communications ribbon so it can have ports on both sides of the device, with a heatsink and fan centred between them.

This second display resulted into the move of the keyboard nearer to the chin and the touchpad to where a numberpad would be similarly to Asus' gaming ROG Zephyrus laptop.

[10][11] Other aspects of the laptops that reviewers liked were the Bang and Olufsen speakers, fast boot times due to Asus' BIOS design and the speed of general tasks within the operating system resulting from the SSD and Sandy Bridge processors.

[88][90][91] Reviewers also noted the shallow key-press of the metal keyboard and lack of backlighting, a feature that Asus did not have time to implement before shipping.

Some models (such as the UX32) suffer from lockdown when the lithium polymer battery cell gets drained or discharged below its recommended threshold, for example if the device is left on and unattended.

[93] The new screens on the ZenBook Prime were highly praised by reviewers when considering brightness, contrast ratio, viewing angle and colour accuracy, the improvements over previous models being put down to the switch from TN to IPS displays.

[92][94][95] The keyboard also garnered praise for the increased backlighting and improved key travel while the Intel Wi-Fi controller was found to perform better than the Qualcomm used in the first generation of Zenbooks.

[103] Numerous Zenbook models with resolution specifications of QHD+ (3200 × 1800) and 4K (3840 × 2160) utilize Pentile RG/BW displays,[104][105] which are regarded by some as a "shady practice"[106] and "sort of cheating".

[108][110][109][111][112] By contrast, the Sandy Bridge chip, a previous-generation part at the time of sale, was outlined as a detraction as was the lower battery life compared to the UX31E.

[109][111] The screen has a matte finish and relatively high brightness which Notebook Check's reviewer, Christian Hepp, found "quite suitable for outdoor use", noting that it had a good contrast ratio but a narrow range of colours.

[116] Chris Griffith of The Australian found that the screen of the UX31A responded well and that the Windows 8 gestures worked predictably, his only criticism being the high price.