Ever wanted your laptop to smell of basil and mandarin? Your fragrant dreams can come true with the Asus Adol Book’s built-in scent dispenser
Other scents include ‘Be a New Her’ and ‘Rose of Man’s Land’
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Never mind a gorgeous display to look at, or top-notch audio to enjoy, those who wish to have a different sense stimulated when using one of thebest laptops– namely, their sense of smell – are in for a treat thanks to a new notebook from Asus.
We realize this means pretty much no one, though to be fair, the scent perspective is not the only selling point of the Asus Adol Book 14 – although it’s a central gimmick presented here.
The Adol Book is obviously aimed at a niche audience, namely those keen on the world of fashion as well as technology. It’s been manufactured in collaboration with fragrance and fashion brand Anna Sui, and the mentioned smell comes courtesy of a ‘fragrance dispenser’ housed in the center of the laptop’s lid.
This dispenser has a fragrance puck inside that lasts for so long before the smell runs out, and it needs to be replaced. Asus is offering a choice of three scents to begin with: ‘Basil and Mandarin,’ ‘Rose of Man’s Land,’ and the somewhat less well-defined ‘Be a New Her.’
As for the laptop specs, it’s a 14-inch notebook in a thin-and-light style, with a peppy enoughAMDRyzen 9 8945H processor, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD – so it’ll be no slouch.
That APU hits some39 TOPS in total, for AI processing, and there are also integrated Radeon 780M graphics that are decently nippy for a built-in GPU, too.
On top of that, there’s a tasty screen in the form of anOLEDwith a 2,880 x 1,800 resolution (and a 240Hz refresh rate), plus it’s seriously good with color accuracy (covering 100% of DCI-P3).
Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.
Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.
The Adol Book 14 is finished in a subtle purple color, by the way, and comes with a matching purple (padded) carrying bag, as well as various other accessories, notably a purple wireless mouse, and a bottle of Anna Sui’s Wishing Elf perfume (50ml of the stuff).
Analysis: Smells like mean spirit?
Do we want a laptop that generates its own smell? Definitely not, frankly, but then we’re not keen on artificial scents of any nature, let alone a notebook that attempts to give us some kind of fragrance-induced headache (depending on how strong the effect is, we guess – hopefully it’s relatively subtle).
Maybe we’re being a bit mean-spirited, though, because for the target audience of those keen on fashion – which is admittedly niche as we already observed – this looks like a nicely put-together package. Also, the laptop spec is far from bad, too, and in fact those components are actually a nicely specified mix.
The catch, no doubt, will be that it’s stupidly overpriced, right? Or we don’t know the price yet, maybe? Well, it’s a no on both counts actually, as the Asus Adol Book 14 is out in China priced at 6,999 RMB, which is about $970 (or £750, AU$1,480).
AsTom’s Hardware, which spotted the launch of the device, points out, given the spec, that’s actually very competitive with the vanilla Asus Zenbook 14OLED(plus you could sell that free bottle of perfume on eBay, perhaps). In fact, this is a good value laptop overall, so that’s a bit of a surprise given its fashion angle (which typically, you’d expect would mean the price would be jacked up somewhat).
Whether we’ll ever get to smell the ‘Rose of Man’s Land’ outside of Asia – or find out how ‘Be a New Her’ defines itself in an olfactory sense – is probably unlikely. But if you’re keen on the idea of the Adol Book 14, you never know…
You might also like
Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
MacBook Air OLED reportedly delayed until at least 2028 – here’s why
Apple MacBook Pro 14-inch M4 (2024) review: one of the best Pro laptops around just got better
Sihoo Doro S100 ergonomic office chair review
